A World of Lies

I’m coming back to this story again because I think it’s important for people who are in a position to do so to call out and resist the world of lies in which we are all now expected to live. I also think that, quite apart from my role in it, it’s a story that says a lot about the degradation of higher ed in America via rampant corporatization, and other forces working toward destroying academic freedom, and the possibilities of intellectual life more generally.

Law.com yesterday:

“Leaving aside my own personal interest in all this, I think it’s just outrageous for a provost to reappoint a dean to a law school in the face of the very strong, large majority of both the faculty and the students, and that’s quite apart from the fact that even if she had done a great job otherwise, you really shouldn’t be reappointing a law school dean who violated the civil rights of one of her faculty members,” Campos said in an interview with Law.com on Tuesday.

As to why she was reappointed, Campos said, “My personal opinion is the provost did it because, even though he hates Lolita, he hates the faculty more.”

“It’s just the whole notion of faculty governance is utterly inimical to the way these central administrators think,” Campos said. “It’s like, they’re the C-suite bosses and you’re the employees— it’s their job to decide everything important and it’s your job to shut up and follow orders.”

“That’s the attitude in higher ed right now, and this is just an extreme example of it,” he added.

The university’s response to this disgraceful situation is to just keep lying about it, while hoping that no one will have the temerity to point out that the lies are just that:

“In evaluating deans for reappointment, the provost considers a wide range of feedback from faculty, staff, external stakeholders and campus peer leadership, in addition to the aggregate feedback being positive,” Mueksch wrote in her email to Law.com, and listed Inniss’ achievements as leading the law school “through significant reorganization” and fostering “the re-envisioning of a new strategic plan that clarifies the mission and vision of the School,” which “promises to favorably position the School for the upcoming American Bar Association re-accreditation process that will occur in the Spring of 2026.”

Additionally, Mueksch said Inniss accomplished record-setting fundraising years, as well as bringing in some of the most diverse student classes in the law school’s history, and she has “attempted to develop more faculty, staff and student community building opportunities over the last four years.”

This all fabricated.

(1) There’s no evidence that the “aggregate feedback” was positive, and in any event these weasel words try to slip in the assumption that purportedly positive feedback from “external stakeholders” and “campus peer leadership” should count more than what the faculty and students of the law school itself think.

(2) The law school hasn’t gone through any kind of significant reorganization. This is apparently something Inniss made up to make it sound like she’s been doing something over the past four years besides collecting enormous paychecks and violating civil rights law.

(3) The “re-envisioning of a new strategic plan that clarifies the mission and vision of the School” is yet more consultant-speak for a meaningless bureaucratic process that every law school has to engage in every seven years, for the purposes of a pro forma review by the ABA. It’s like getting extra credit for showing up to teach your classes.

(4) As for the purported “record-setting fundraising,” there’s no evidence for this claim either, but I can report that, as of the most recent data I have from early this year, the law school’s endowment was five percent smaller in nominal terms, and 19% smaller in real terms, than it was when Inniss became dean in July of 2021, even though the stock market was up 38% over that same period of time.

(5) The law school’s student body is less diverse now (29.75%) than it was in the year before Inniss became dean (32.0%)

(6) As for “attempting to develop more faculty, staff, and student community building opportunities,” both the faculty and students pointed out to now ex-Provost Russ Moore than Inniss often failed to perform the 90% of her job that went in the proverbial showing up category, such as for example answering increasingly plaintive emails from faculty trying to get her to pay attention to exigent matters regarding the running of the law school, appearing at law school events that had always been considered mandatory for previous deans, or even doing annual performance reviews formally mandated by the law school’s own rules.

In the end Inniss was reappointed despite her flagrant incompetence and radical inattention to almost every aspect of her putative job, for reasons that had nothing to with the actual merits, and everything to do with the prime directive that guides the decisions of central administrators like ex-Provost Russell Moore. That directive is that any kind of faculty governance is inimical to the appropriately authoritarian structure of the contemporary university, and any insolence of that sort must be crushed in the same manner that Henry Clay Frick dealt with his employees during the golden age of American freedom.