By Paul Bonicelli
Friday, September 11, 2015
The University of Tennessee managed to attract national
attention last week that it surely didn’t want. A university Web page (cached
version here) hosted by the institution’s Pride Center that falls under the
Office of Diversity and Inclusion counseled students via a handy chart to use
“gender neutral pronouns.”
To make everyone feel included, students should use “xe”
instead of “he” and “she,” and “hir” and “zir” instead of “her” and “him.” One
student named Mandy attending an event celebrating the publication of the chart
introduced “xymself” this way: “Hi. I’m Mandy. Xe.”
Tennessee politicians were up in arms, and vowed to
address this matter when the legislature sits again in January if the
university had not already done so. The university has as of Tuesday removed
the Web site and strained to explain yet again that while it had not mandated
that students use gender-neutral pronouns nevertheless the reputation of the
university was being harmed by the confusion over the issue. It is still quite
possible that the legislature will hold hearings to investigate the matter.
As an alumnus of UT, I’m embarrassed; as a college
English major, I’m outraged. One wonders if the UT English department was
consulted. Maybe they have drunk deeply from the well of political correctness
and aren’t bothered by this, but they should at least have objected to the
chart’s assertion that “they,” “them,” and “theirs” are appropriately used as
singular pronouns. No, they are not.
It’s easy to focus on the absurdity and dismiss it all as
eggheads just doing what they do, but there are three stories here worthy of
attention from students and parents who pay tuition and donors who contribute
to universities. One is, of course, about a foolish idea concocted by the kind
of bureaucrats university departments of education produce. Another story is
about the ability of higher education to waste resources even when it is
undergoing tremendous fiscal strains. There’s a third story about the lack of
leadership on campuses, when the last thing universities need is another reason
for the public and their donors to question their relevance and value.
The Educators Who Emote Instead of Educate
Having worked on several campuses as an administrator and
professor, I’m familiar with the kind of thinking that can emanate from some
education departments, and in particular from offices of diversity,
multiculturalism, and inclusion. These offices began to appear on campuses
about 30 years ago, and now they are standard features in most state schools
and in many private ones. It’s de rigueur to have them; no self-respecting
institution would dare not have such an office—and besides, government often
demands it.
So who staffs these offices and what do they do? The
staff is usually made up of people who graduate from higher-education
administration programs. Such programs often have specialties in inclusion,
multicultural education, etc. A review of the curriculum will find benign and
even helpful studies in how students from various backgrounds learn differently
or how they will adjust to university life, but there is a heavy dose of
politics. Think “white privilege,” gender feminism, and increasingly a focus on
LGBTQ theory.
Students are taught that universities are rife with
racism, sexism, and exclusion. The curriculum mirrors the research published in
the journals and discussed at conferences. The solution to these problems is
always for universities to hire more properly trained personnel to battle
against the “isms.” Importantly, those officials also hold mandatory seminars
for the faculty and staff so they can be on guard and help make campuses more
inclusive.
Changing Language Changes Society
How valuable all these efforts are is subject to debate—although
not on campus, because dissenting makes you suspect. Remember what happened to
former Harvard University President Larry Summers when he foolishly tried to
discuss ideas on a university campus? But every now and then we hear stories
like the one coming out of Knoxville that allow us to speculate that these
bureaucrats might not have enough to do, or more likely they are eager to get
on with the real agenda: to fundamentally transform society via the
institutions of higher education.
An ideal way to do that is to change the very words and
meanings of the English language so as to obliterate tradition and cultural
artifacts that offend them. It strains credulity to argue that all the UT Pride
Center wanted to do was make students feel more comfortable with each other.
Their academic literature and other public discourse belie that. This is what
they do, even if it comes off as absurd to everyone else.
Another story is the waste of resources. I doubt anyone
who pays tuition or donates to UT wants to fund bureaucrats whose job it is to
encourage students to stop saying “him” and start saying “zim.” I would even
say that most faculty and staff would prefer to have a raise than to see the
university fund offices to come up with such agendas. Higher education has
enough problems today with record student indebtedness, cutbacks of government
subsidies, and public questioning of the true value of a college degree without
appearing to be out-of-touch spendthrifts.
Their Cluelessness Is a Big Clue
Finally, this is a story of a lack of leadership, and
this is the root of the problem. This story would not exist if University of
Tennessee officials were responsibly governing the institution.
We can debate if the office that produced the
gender-neutral pronoun chart should even exist, or at least how large and well-staffed
and -funded it should be given the real mission of a university and the
economic times we live in. But what should not be up for debate is whether this
office should be free to publish policy suggestions so absurd and damaging to
the university’s reputation.
It won’t do to raise the “academic freedom” defense. That
applies only to faculty members in their capacity as faculty members when they
are engaged in research and teaching in their fields of expertise. The Pride
Center and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion fall under the president and
chancellor, and they in turn are responsible to the board. The board is
responsible to the state and to the public, since UT is a land-grant
institution of higher learning. Eventually, they are going to have to deal with
the messes their employees create.
But what was the initial response from UT officials when
the predictable reaction arose from the public and the legislature? The vice
chancellor overseeing the Office of Diversity and Inclusion seemed at first to
be perplexed over the reaction: “I don’t understand what the big deal is,”
[Vice Chancellor Rickey] Hall said. “We’re trying to make people feel included.
We are a campus that is committed to diversity and inclusion.” He added, “We
want [students] to be leaders. And to be leaders, they’re going to have to work
across differences, all kinds of differences.”
The Higher Education Feudal System
But after a couple of days of heat and probably some
urgent meetings between him and the rest of the administration (and maybe some
phone calls from Nashville?), Hall offered a statement on his official website
that was more measured but still defensive of his office’s effort.
Without dealing with the substance—asking students to
change the very language they speak in order to bow to revolutionary cultural
norms demanded by a tiny slice of voices in the public square—Hall kept
insisting that he was just trying to help students negotiate the changed real
world. I cringe at the thought of my fellow alums going out onto job interviews
with UT printed on their resumes and asking the interviewer, “Shall I call you
xe?” or “Please call me xe.”
But what is most revealing is, when another official
weighed in to mitigate the crisis (only in my mind and I imagine in the mind of
the General Assembly), it made it worse. Said Vice Chancellor for
Communications Margie Nichols, “If it was [sic] a policy, it would have been discussed
and vetted through our vice chancellors and discussed with the chancellor. But
this did not rise to that level. We are a university and our colleges and
departments have a lot of autonomy. They develop many newsletters that do not
require the approval of the administration.”
Well, at least Nichols has identified the problem for us
even though she (or xe) thinks that she’s offered a defense. She has not
offered a defense but rather indicted the university’s system of governance—and
that system is common among our country’s universities. Departments, divisions,
and offices operate like fiefdoms, and if the issues they deal with are
“protected” in a de facto sense by political correctness, they are basically
left alone to do what they deem to be right in their own eyes.
Can anyone imagine a corporation operating with such an
“autonomy principle” and remaining solvent? No, because the boards of
corporations demand attention to fundamental goals, brand value, and fiscal
health. They also expect managers to keep everyone in line and on task.
College Trustees Need to Hold Presidents Accountable
But boards of universities and colleges, both public and
private, are often detached and treated like window-dressing. Only when issues
like this one at UT arise do they get exercised, and scratch their heads
wondering how it all happened.
It happened because they are not paying attention, not
holding administrators accountable, and not demanding sound governance on
campuses. Too often they are content with the reasoning, “I know that is how
you run your bank/corporation/business, but we have academics here and they
need freedom to explore and challenge.” Such an attitude gets you and your
beloved institution—for many board members their alma mater—embarrassment and
ridicule.
Only when board members take their jobs seriously and
engage with the institution and do a little challenging and exploring
themselves will they be able to bring rational governance to the institution.
They should hold presidents and chancellors accountable and ask basic
questions, such as, “Are you in control of your employees or not?” “Is the
overall health and success of the institution your goal, or is it to make every
fiefdom happy?” “Are you safeguarding the reputation of the university and
spending its money wisely for the purposes it was chartered? Because that is
what we are holding you to, not how many offices feel autonomous and validated
according to their own objectives.”
So we should make no mistake about the import of this
story coming out of Knoxville, a story that could have emanated from any number
of campuses across the country. This is not simply a story about political
correctness run amok, nor is it a story simply about waste of resources during
difficult economic times for higher education. It is about a lack of leadership
and control of the institution by the duly appointed authorities. I hope it is
a wake-up call for not only UT but higher education generally. The constituency
of taxpayers, tuition-payers, and donors is watching, and they are not amused.
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