University Life

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently highlighted the accomplishments of a number of scholars who continue to be active well into their 80s and 90s (September 4th online).

But let’s not overlook the centenarians.  Here are six noteworthy books that have been published in the past year by emeritus professors who are 100 or older. 

The Jesus I Knew (Ezekiel Stubbs, Harvard Divinity School):  Professor Stubbs is one of the few living academics who was personally acquainted with Jesus of Nazareth.  Kirkus Reviews praises the book as “a warm, affectionate tribute that reveals a madcap side of the Son of God that is largely missing from Biblical accounts.  Stubbs devotes an entire chapter to the bar mitzvah where Jesus transformed a donut into the world’s first bagel.  A must-read.”

Cheese (Maxwell Labrine, Vanderbilt University):  The author devotes this 575-page memoir to a single morning in which he sat on his living-room sofa contemplating what type of cheese he would put on his lunchtime sandwich.  The New York Times Book Review calls it “a dazzling stream-of-consciousness work that combines the best qualities of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and Joyce’s Ulysses.  This cheese is delicious.”

I Remember (Monica Von Blazen, Tufts University):  Von Blazen recalls the glorious days when cartoons in The New Yorker were actually funny.  She  wonders: “What the hell happened?”  “A plea for a return to laughter that is so poignant it will leave you in tears,” says The New York Review of Books. 

Sequence (Caleb Stavens, The College of Charleston):  On a cross-country road trip with his daughter, Stavens reviews his medical bills in an attempt to reconstruct the precise order in which he had his knees replaced, hips replaced, cataracts removed, hearing aids installed, and teeth capped.  The Guardian’s reviewer describes it as “a fun ride, but with a serious message about aging for us all.”

“That’s Not My Problem…” (Arlene Ambergris):  A side-splitting account of the hundreds of different reasons for missing an assignment deadline that students gave Ambergris over the course of her seven decades as a professor.  Each brief chapter focuses on a single excuse and ends with the response Ambergris always gave:  “Sorry, but that’s not my problem.  That’s your problem.” 

Carving History (Fiona Thrush, University of Denver):  A day-by-day account of the process by which the Grand Canyon was created by the relentless flow of the Colorado River over millions of years.  “Tedious and repetitive, but worth it” (Washington Post).

All of these books can be ordered from Amazon’s Century website.  

As faculty members across the country return to college and university classrooms this week, many are anxious about the challenges they’ll face in managing students who are more prone than ever to take offense at anything their instructors might say or do.

But no one is worried at the University of Missouri.  

At Mizzou, traditional teaching assistants have been replaced by lawyers.  Indeed, every course at the University of Missouri this fall has a classroom aide who is also a practicing attorney.  

“The attorney is there to make sure that instructors never behave in a fashion that would make them legally vulnerable,” notes Mun Choi, Chancellor of the University.  “Let’s say a professor announces that the due date for an assignment is December 8th.  Well, that happens to be the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day for Catholics. The attorney could advise the instructor to suggest that students turn in their paper on that day if they’re in the mood, rather than require them to do so.  Voila!  No lawsuit!

“Another example: during class discussion, a student asserts that Scotland started World War II when it dropped an atomic bomb on Düsseldorf.  The professor might be tempted to immediately respond, ‘No, you’re wrong’, exposing the student to humiliation and the risk of trauma.  Before that can happen, the attorney is likely to recommend an alternative reply, such as ‘That’s certainly one way to look at it.  Good job!  With historical stuff, it’s often so hard to know for sure what really happened.’  Trauma averted!”

Choi acknowledges that the University will probably not be able to hire graduates of elite law schools to serve as classroom aides: “Folks from Harvard and Yale tend to view Missouri as a toxic landfill, a place where your Chardonnay comes in a shoebox.  But we’re OK with that.  We’re looking for lawyers who possess down-to-earth expertise, ones who learned their craft representing people who shoplift Twizzlers and No-Pest Strips from Dollar General.”

On August 8th the Board of Trustees at Emerson College in Boston announced that the school “will not…issue statements on complex geopolitical issues” (Emerson College website).  

When Jay Bernhardt, Emerson’s President, was asked by reporters to provide an example of a non-complex geopolitical issue, he replied, “all geopolitical issues are complex.  Even ones that look simple are complex.

“Consider the ‘simple’ geopolitical question of which is better: thin-crust pizza or deep-dish pizza?  At first glance the obvious answer would appear to be thin-crust.  As everyone knows, biting into a slice of deep-dish pizza is like sinking your teeth into a stained motel mattress that has been covered with monkey blood and left out in the rain for a week.  

“But what if you’re consuming pizza in a restaurant and have a Ziploc bag of cocaine in your pocket when a DEA agent walks in?  Good luck hiding that contraband in a slice of thin-crust.  On the other hand, slipping the bag into the thick, mushy innards of a deep-dish slice is a snap.  Problem solved.

“I’ll say it one more time: every issue is complex.  Of course, you might wonder, ‘What about the morality of slavery?  What could be more straightforward than that?’  Well, let me ask you this: Have you ever seen a field of unpicked cotton rotting in the blazing sun on an abandoned Mississippi plantation?  I have.  Is that not a moral tragedy?  Chew on that slice of deep-dish for a while and get back to me.”

TRUE FACT:  At New College in Florida last week, hundreds of library books on LGBTQ studies were tossed in a dumpster and hauled away, just one of the consequences of the school shutting down its gender-studies program (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, August 16th online).  

But there’s no need to fret, says New College President Richard Corcoran:  “We’re going to replace all of those books with good, old-fashioned, heterosexual pornography.  The kind of pornography that my daddy used to read, and that his daddy used to read before him.  The sort of hard-core porn that this country needs if it’s going to get back on track, sex-wise.”

The new collection of works will include the classic 11-volume Kitty Litter series (1946-1962), which details the erotic adventures of a randy but naive registered nurse who works the night shift at a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane in Iowa.  Readers will also be able to check out a rare, autographed copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s 650-page epic, Throb Johnson: Beverly Hills Plumber, about a burly clogged-sink specialist whose name is on every wealthy housewife’s speed-dial.

“I’m proud to say that these volumes come from the personal libraries of two member of our school’s Board of Regents,” Corcoran notes.  “The fact that these gentlemen took the time to make these donations even as they are serving life sentences in a federal penitentiary for sex trafficking tells you a lot about their dedication to our institution.”   

TRUE FACT:  The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that an increasing number of colleges “screen students’ academic records and admit them before they’ve formally applied” (Daily Briefing, August 6th online).

Well, hold onto your tasseled mortarboards with both hands, ladies and gentlemen.  Eastern Michigan University has taken this strategy to the next level.  In its “Guess What, You’re Done!” program, potential students are awarded an EMU degree before they even submit an application for admission to the institution. 

According to Eastern Michigan President James M. Smith, “the Guess What initiative enables us to manage enrollment at our school much more precisely than we ever have in the past.  Of course, we no longer have to worry about retention, because students graduate before they have a chance to drop out.  Moreover, we’ve been able to ‘right-size’ our roster of tenure-track and adjunct faculty, since we no longer employ any tenure-track or adjunct faculty.  

“Guess What has allowed us to add staff to both our Business Office and our Division of Alumni Affairs, which is a good thing — the folks there are super busy now.  For example, collecting tuition from someone who has never taken a course at your institution can be challenging.  But it’s a challenge we embrace with enthusiasm…and with a no-nonsense collection agency.”

NOTE:  If you would like to attend EMU, just check your email.  You may already have graduated!  An invoice should be arriving soon.  Payment is due upon receipt, so respond promptly.  Things can get very unpleasant if they have to contact you a second time.

TRUE FACT:  Student applicants to Harvard University will soon be answering a new question as part of the admissions process:  “Reflect on a time when you strongly disagreed with someone about an idea or issue. How did you communicate or engage with this person?” (Harvard Crimson, August 4th online).  

Given Harvard’s influence in higher education, it’s not surprising that other schools are scrambling to add similar queries to their applications.  Here are five of the more provocative ones:

Mississippi State University:  “Imagine that your fraternity/sorority has just participated in a Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Vicksburg.  As you socialize in costume at a reception following the event, a student comments, ‘You know, I think slavery was wrong then and it’s wrong now’.

“What would you say in this awkward situation?”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:  “Imagine that your boyfriend or girlfriend whispers to you immediately after having sex: ‘You never express any emotion or tenderness when we’re together.  It’s almost as if you view me as a machine whose sole purpose is to provide you with physical pleasure.  And you never blink’.

“Would you respond to this hostile remark as you proceed to put on your clothes, leave the room, and end the relationship?  If so, what would you say?”

Oral Roberts University:  “God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ walk into a bar, where they find the Virgin Mary totally hammered, performing a karaoke version of Donna Summer’s ‘Bad Girls’.

“What feedback should they give her when she finishes singing?”

Carnegie-Mellon University:  “Your History professor’s teaching assistant, in a desperate attempt to win your affection, reveals to you all of the questions on the upcoming final exam.  What would you do, and why?

“Use the information, then dump the TA after one date.

“Use the information, then claim you have a sexually transmitted disease right before you’re scheduled to go on a date with the TA.

“Blackmail the TA by threatening to ‘tell all’ to the professor if you’re not paid $500 every other week for the next six months.  Date the TA if he/she is attractive.”

Dartmouth College:  “You wake up in your luxury dorm earlier than usual one morning and realize that your family’s obscene level of wealth has provided you with opportunities and advantages that the vast majority of people on this planet do not have. What would you do, and why?

“Smile, go back to sleep, and write a thank-you note to your parents later in the day.

“Smile, get up, have a saffron smoothie, and go to the gym.

“Frown, experience guilt, and send a check for $100 to Doctors Without Borders.

“Frown, experience extreme guilt, and send a check for $125 to Doctors Without Borders.”

Moral of the Story:  Now is the time to come up with a probing question for your undergraduate applicants, before the federal government does it for you.  

The challenge of “How to Get Your Students to Read” is the subject of a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (August 2nd, p. 36).

Getting students to read is, to be sure, an admirable goal, but it ignores the painful truth that reading in college is….so….so….OVER.  Navigating a book page-by-page may have been a cool thing to do in the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the 21st there is no way it can compete with listening to Megan Thee Stallion on one’s earbuds.  

Fortunately, help is on the way.  McGraw Hill Publishing Company has partnered with Frito-Lay and the Department of Neuroscience at Purdue University to develop Edible Classics: notable books genetically embedded in popular snack items. 

Simon Allen, McGraw Hill’s CEO, poses the question: “Do you have any idea how many bags of Doritos are consumed by college students in a year?  Millions upon millions!  What if we could incorporate a book’s contents into the ingredients of a Doritos chip, or a Cheeto, or — in the case of elderly students — an extra-soft Pringle?  It would be incredible!  Students would be ‘reading’ every time they chewed.  Hell, instructors would WANT their students to smoke weed constantly, so they would always have the munchies. 

“The good news is that scientists at Purdue have found a way to link the tongue’s taste receptors to the part of the brain that processes language.  Need to have your students read ‘Moby Dick’ without complaining?  Three large bags of Ruffles Potato Chips (Whale Edition) should do the trick. 

“We plan to introduce our first series of Edible Classics in the fall of 2025.  It will include ‘Catcher in the Rye’, ‘Middlemarch’, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, ‘Beloved’, and ‘Little Women’.

“Are we concerned about students gaining weight in reading-intensive courses?  Absolutely.  What’s the point of digesting all of ‘War and Peace’ if you drop dead of a heart attack while discussing it in class?  Moreover, books in some disciplines (e.g., Art History, Sociology) are much higher in saturated fat than the books in others (e.g., Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science).  As you can imagine, this is a very delicate issue to deal with. 

“The folks at Frito-Lay are working on these problems as we speak.  Until they come up with a solution, we recommend that instructors assign no more than 500 pages of edible reading per semester.

“The end of reading as we have traditionally known it need not represent the end of higher education.  It simply marks the beginning of a new, edible chapter in the history of the field.  Enjoy.”

 

A recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay explores the question, “Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?” (July 1st online) 

Well, it’s not for lack of trying. 

Middlebury College, for example, held its first “Bring a Conservative Friend to Campus Day” this past April.  The goal was to demonstrate that a small liberal arts college could offer a welcoming environment to those on the political right.  

The event turned out to be less than a success when most of the Middlebury faculty realized that they had no conservative friends, and another subgroup discovered that they had no friends at all.   

“We had so much food left over at lunch, it was embarrassing,” says Middlebury President Laurie Patton.  “On that day, our town’s local barber, 67-year-old Marv Gaffney, was the most popular man in Vermont.  He had voted for Romney in 2012, and just about every male faculty member at Middlebury invited him to campus.  Marv had a wonderful time, but he has no intention of returning to school for a Ph.D. at this stage of his life.  You can find him back in his shop, Mondays through Saturdays from 10 to 5. 

“We’ll try something new next year.”

Not surprisingly, the California Institute of Technology took a different approach.  According to President Thomas Rosenbaum, “we sedated a random sample of our professors and surgically removed the portion of their brain that’s responsible for critical thinking, hoping it would make them conservative.  What a disaster!  The professors are still liberal, but now they are just stupidly liberal.  They’ve organized a group of feral cats on campus to protest the scarcity of tuna fish in dumpsters outside of our dining halls.  Hell, I’m being burned in effigy on the campus quad at this very moment.  Never again will I take advice from those dipwads in the Department of Neuroscience on how to solve personnel problems.”

Finally, there’s the cautionary tale of the College of William and Mary, which attempted to recruit conservative faculty directly from fundamentalist Bible colleges across the South.  

“What in the hell were we thinking?” laments President Katherine Rowe.  “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to recruit a world-class physicist from Burning Bush Divinity School in Biloxi, Mississippi?  The school offers one science course, in which the sole required text is the Classics Illustrated Book of Genesis.” 

Stop whining.  Nobody said this was going to be easy.  

 

TRUE FACT:  A gun storage room has been added to a student residence hall at West Virginia University in Morgantown.  This is in response to the state’s new “campus carry” law, which allows students on public college campuses to carry a concealed firearm (West Virginia Watch, June 27th online).  

But what if WVU runs out of space to store students’ guns?

“No way that’s going to happen,” says WVU’s Dean of Students.  “There’s all sorts of room to be had in our main library, where last week we torched a bunch of books on race, gender, homelessness, and other unpleasant topics in the Sociology section of the stacks.  As soon as the smoky smell is gone, we’ll be installing new gun lockers in that area.  

“There will be small cubbies available for the derringers and tiny pistols that girls love so much.  Other lockers will be larger, in order to accommodate the AR-15’s that our unstable male students generally prefer.  Finally, a few extra-roomy cages will be included for students who require nothing less than a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher to resolve disputes that can arise at a sports bar or concert venue.

“At West Virginia University, we strive to be inclusive.  We recognize that different students have different needs.” 

In a decision that is being hailed by academicians nationwide, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service has declared that undergraduate history majors are an Endangered Species. 

This means that it will be illegal for anyone — parent, guardian, well-meaning aunt or uncle, faculty advisor, etc. — to attempt to persuade a history major to switch to another field of study.  Violators will be subject to a fine of up to $10,000 and five years in prison.  While incarcerated, offenders will be required to read aloud all 11 volumes of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. 

“We’re playing hardball here,” says FWS Director Martha Williams.  “In some parts of our country history majors are so scarce that they are at risk of not being able to reproduce in the wild.  In these ‘history deserts’ the supply of prime-age, fertile, female majors is rapidly approaching the vanishing point.  Try walking into a crowded Walmart in Fort Dodge, Iowa on a Saturday afternoon and asking, ‘Can anybody here tell me about the Peloponnesian War?’  You know what you’ll get?  SILENCE, that’s what.  Absolute silence.”

History Major Protection Order #172, issued by the FWS, will take effect on September 1st, 2024.