You’re an academic. Your Dean walks in. 

“We need viewpoint diversity,” she says. 

“OK,” you say. She’s your boss. She’s obviously just read some bullshit in CHE about viewpoint diversity, and feels the need to start Deaning. Deaning demands faculty uptake, so you’d better answer. “So what do we do?”

It’s a kosher question. As it stands, her claim has no action-guiding implications. We could need viewpoint diversity, but we might already have it. Or we might have too much of it. Or we might need more. “We need it” doesn’t resolve any of that. 

“Well, we need more,” she says. It’s a non-sequitur, but you let it go. “Pretending that stupid shit isn’t stupid” is your career-long coping strategy. It’s worked so far.
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Just an FYI for any interested readers that Vic Kaplan, the Libertarian candidate for Governor of New Jersey, has a comment in an earlier post about the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. I’d asked the Kaplan campaign to comment, so I’m grateful for the response. I will likely vote for Benvanides, but the marginalization of both candidates is a good advertisement for John Davenport’s argument in The Democracy Amendments, which I highly recommend. I’m a sucker for any book that describes our nation as being in “a death spiral,” as John does.

Now all we need is for John to go out on tour with Lars von Trier and Kirsten Dunst, and I think we’re in business.

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate…
Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose
–Simon and Garfunkel, “Mrs Robinson“

Yesterday was the New Jersey gubernatorial candidates’ debate, pitting Democrat Mikie Sherrill against Republican Jack Ciattarelli. There are third-party candidates in the race, Libertarian and Socialist, but naturally, neither of them appeared on stage. Continue reading →

Rumbling through the New England wood
Hand on the wheel, machine on the asphalt


Feeling the road
I squint to see the tracks and traces
Among the obscuring brambles of time
This curve, that jagged boulder, this once-stately homestead
Do I remember the way?


Tricks and illusions throw me off
A watery road (like a fountain)
A maze of impossible rock-wall twists and turns


And yet there you are


Arguing, explaining, expounding
Success on the first several points!
More trouble on the last two
A matter of public concern – and your physical chemistry fix
An academic in another life for sure


So comforting to find you
Such joy – you in your element
How can old friend and flesh be yet so fresh?
But vexing distance…
I want your unencumbered embrace
Your eyes twinkling for me


Too abruptly, the thread unravels


Feeling left to stand unsteadily as object falls away


No


I will coax the elements back to their assigned places
Neither my inertia nor your beloved entropy
Will have this day


Oblivion denied, I must here bottle this quicksilver of you
To keep so very close
With all the dearest of things


For this is all that remains