Hinton: Professors might be a dying breed

‘ ‘ ‘ This Sunday, a troubling piece appeared in Stanley Fish’s New York Times blog, ‘Think… ‘ ‘ ‘ This Sunday, a troubling piece appeared in Stanley Fish’s New York Times blog, ‘Think Again.’ Titled ‘The Last Professor,’ Fish’s article discusses the dismal future of the classic liberal arts professor, tenured to muse in an ivory tower. Referencing Frank Donoghue’s new book, ‘The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities,’ Fish articulates his view that for-profit higher education and a burgeoning utilitarian ethic might christen the end of the traditional professor. ‘ ‘ ‘ Projecting that a combination of adjunct faculty and tech-driven pedagogy will usher out the professor, Fish cites Donoghue’s conclusion that ‘… all fields deemed impractical, such as philosophy, art history and literature, will henceforth face a constant danger of being deemed unnecessary … professors will come to be seen by everyone [not just those outside academia] as unaffordable anomalies.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ This profoundly downcast future is by no means a new anxiety. In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published ‘The Treason of the Intellectuals’ in which he decries the modern trend of yoking intellectual activity to practical endeavors. By making liberal thought essentially a tool of political and economic development, Benda accuses the intellectuals of a betrayal of culture. ‘ ‘ ‘ As we fuse intellectual advance with practical ‘mdash; and especially political ‘mdash; progress, we lose the virtues of a disinterested morality. Such changes in the intellectual environment promote a value system in which, as Benda wrote, ‘The morality of an act is measured in adaptation to its end and that the only morality is morality of circumstances.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Fish’s and Donoghue’s state of professorship in the modern university is the capstone of Benda’s almost-century-old, worried thesis. As our modern technological era becomes ever more smitten with pragmatics, we are faced with losing with the otherwise-useless intellectual dialogue that has fueled the construction of our value systems and reserved itself for their husbandry. ‘ ‘ ‘ If professors find themselves replaced with DVD learning guides and marginally educated adjuncts-for-hire, it will be a dismal day for morality and cultural health in general. If the practicality is allowed to demand that the more heady humanities produce measurable results, progress will be stripped of its independent dimension. ‘ ‘ ‘ The pragmatic imperative announces that all progress must be either political progress, technological progress or harbored under some other specific and useful discipline. Cultural value is lost and supplanted by political value, technological value, etc. Culture is replaced by encyclopedia. ‘ ‘ ‘ Liberal professorship has survived as long as it has largely by the intensely virulent publish-or-perish initiative under which faculty is forced to fill journals with nods to their ward universities. For all its many faults, publish-or-perish has succeeded as a counter-intuitive sleight of hand, making tenured professorship have a certain phantom, quantifiable worth. ‘ ‘ ‘ However, publish-or-perish has been so frequently criticized ‘mdash; and rightly so ‘mdash; that its sleight of hand has become transparent, and the profit motive has turned against tenured faculty. ‘ ‘ ‘ Fish writes that Donoghue alleges to offer ‘nothing in the way of uplifting solutions to the problems [he] describes.’ Similarly, I feel strapped for panacea. The problem isn’t that we are any greedier or less refined than we used to be. The problem is that our society has gotten too good at what it does. ‘ ‘ ‘ We are too efficient to allow large paychecks to go to hermetic ponderers and those who engage only in coffee-shop discussion. No matter how much I laud intellectual pursuits, they will continue to be anomalous in a world where post-Fordian resourcefulness shaves time and money with the fine blade of Blackberrys and Google. ‘ ‘ ‘ So, do we just throw our hands in the air and hope for the best? Benda wrote in the ’20s, and morality and culture haven’t completely evaporated yet. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ One glimmer of hope seems to materialize in the way of the blogosphere. While intellectual activity might suffer a critical blow in the shift away from tenured faculty, legitimate thought is finally figuring out how to best exploit the Internet. ‘ ‘ ‘ By networking thinkers, we might be able to collectively achieve what we will lose the means to do ourselves. If scholars find themselves having to get ‘real’ jobs and culture decides to stop tolerating the impractical philosopher, the blogosphere suggests the birth of the meta-thinker. Bits of thought might shoot back and forth between like-minded communities of thinkers to turn the wheels of disinterested intellectualism when pure authors are no longer possible. ‘ ‘ ‘ Benda wrote that this problem is ‘more important than all political upheavals.’ We must approach it with similar solemnity. Don’t be a traitor. E-mail Erik at ech15@pitt.edu