The Further Enshitiffication of Academia

So this happened on my campus:

You know what is gutter journalism? Pretending to be a student so you can catch some poor University of Kentucky staffer saying something true and legal, then sandbag him like you’re ICE and he’s a naturalized U.S. citizen taking his kid to school. But the more I think about it, gutter journalism is too complimentary a term for what a bunch of right-wing grifters pulled off at UK last fall; it’s just cheap theatrics that we have to endure for living in absolutely the dumbest time with the worst people imaginable. Sure it was impolitic of that poor staffer in the UK sociology department to tell the fake student from the right-wing watchdog group Accuracy in Media (what a joke) that there was still DEI in the curriculum. Which of course there is because House Bill 4, the anti-DEI legislation, is not supposed to affect curriculum. But most people don’t actually assume the person they’re talking to is a James O’Keefe wanna-be. Guess what? Sociology is the academic study of our human society, social behavior, and social interactions, which are full of diversity, homogeneity, inclusion, exclusion, and systemic racism. That’s why concepts of DEI are in the curriculum, and that’s why HB 4 excluded curriculum and research.

The video in question, if you can stomach it:

There is no limit to the violations of the rules of man and God that these grifters have undertaken, but nobody cares because the point is to generate clicks and get the attention of the state legislature. Fortunately, as of yet no steps have been taken against the staffer, although I have been informed by reliable sources that the administration of my fair university is uninterested in even the faintest whiff of bureaucratic non-compliance. This is quite likely because many if not most of them are eyeing jobs in other Red State universities, and don’t want to be associated with even the penumbra of DEI.

Also look what North Carolina is doing!

An earlier version The Assembly obtained via a public records request, which doesn’t include a date, would prohibit incidents like the one at Texas A&M. Students would not be allowed to record classes, including online lectures, without permission from the instructor. Faculty could record their own lectures but “should describe any intentions to record their classes in their syllabus,” the draft states. There are provisions allowing both groups to record for pedagogical reasons, such as accessibility issues or for personal use in studying.

Whether university administrators should be allowed to record classes was a thornier question. 

The undated draft states that administrators can record classes for instructor evaluations so long as they provide the instructor with seven days’ notice and “collaborate with” them to pick a representative class session. Everyone in the class must also be notified ahead of time. 

But there are two cases in which the policy draft says the university does not need the instructor’s consent or knowledge to record: to “gather evidence in connection with an investigation into alleged violations of university policy,” if agreed to in writing by the provost and chief human resources officer; and for “any other lawful purpose” if authorized by the provost and the Office of University Counsel.

Good that wanna be right wing grifters are barred from recording, I suppose. In practice the success of that policy depends to great extent on the willingness of administrators to wield actual, consequential penalties for violating a professor’s professional space, and it is not faintly clear to me that any administrator will be willing to do that while the state legislator is touting the violator as a Hero for Christian Free Speech or whatever. WRT the exceptions stated above I don’t actually find them all that objectionable in theory (if a professor is incompetent or abusive some steps need to be taken, and a process should be in place to establish that), but again in practice I expect that administration will kowtow to right wing legislators and use this as a tool to discipline faculty.

To elaborate a bit on the point I made above about administration… everyone should be familiar with the tools of defense and stagnation that any bureaucracy of sufficient size can use to defend itself from outsiders. Universities in Red States, staffed by administrators who are in their positions because they care about higher education, should be able to employ those tools to radically reduce the damage that state legislatures and the federal government are inflicting upon the institutions, the students, and the faculty. I have fairly concrete (if anecdotal) evidence that administrators at many institutions are shying away from using those tools. Why? The answer is straightforward; progress in an administrative higher education career requires, at the very least, the plausible threat of moving to a better position at another university. Most often it requires an actual move, which is why we have a system in which senior administrators are basically hired guns who spend no more than 3-4 years at any institution before taking a promotion at their next job. This has all kinds of negative effects, not least of which is that administrators have less than zero interest in doing the difficult work of protecting the institutions that they currently work for. If protecting the University of Kentucky from federal or state interference undercuts your chance of a cushy promotion into the Texas or Oklahoma state systems, why ever take the risk?

Anyway… friends don’t let friends pursue careers in academic. I *firmly* stand by my argument that graduate students who express an interest in doctoral study in fields that predominantly require academic employment should be strongly dissuaded. It’s an okay job now but it’s getting shittier every day.