I had started to write a lengthy follow up post about the crapstorm unleashed by UI faculty member Steve Bloom’s article in the Atlantic. But all this is superfluous; the central issue is going to come down to tenure, that rare and anachronistic mechanism by which a faculty member, after a period of “vetting” by his or her peers, is granted what is de facto employment for life. The rationale is that academics need to be protected from retaliation so they will be free to pursue scholarship wherever it leads.
The UI administration is going to be pressed on several fronts to defend tenure and Steve Bloom is going to become the poster boy for everything that is wrong about tenure. Bloom replaces the University of Colorado’s Ward Churchill in the role of poster boy. Churchill, who basically offended everyone with a conscience with his remarks following 9/11, was eventually fired but not for what he said. Rather, the Colorado regents dug deep enough to find some evidence of scholarly shadiness that gave them the opportunity to avoid the academic freedom issue.
The UI is going to be caught dead in the middle and they are fully aware of this. It didn’t take Mason long to distance herself from Bloom’s article although UI spokesman Tom Moore did point out that Bloom has the right to say anything he wants. No recriminations coming, folks. No can do.
It’s like someone coming to your house, calling you an ugly idiot, telling you that your kids are fat imbeciles, your decorating taste sucks, your kitchen stinks, your toilet is filthy, your husband is a lazy bum and then demanding money. $105,000 a year to be precise. Chutzpah at its most exquisite.
For the most part, Iowans are fair people but this one is going to require some ‘splainin’. This flies in the face of common sense. It’s one thing to ensure that scholars are protected from reprisals when they advocate an unpopular stand based on their scholarship. It’s quite another to be protected from the type of stereotype-laced diatribe Bloom unleashed. If there is scholarship at all in this, it’s pretty well disguised as petty meanness. Bloom is acting like a prick and he’s going to get away with it. That’s what strikes Iowans as unfair.
The sideshow now will be to watch Mason and the UI defend academic tenure. Tenure is a sword with two edges. Academics will circle the wagons to defend it but departmental administrators who are stuck with non-productive faculty members drawing down big salaries rail against it in their management meetings. And when old professors who don’t teach and don’t bring in grant money hang around, there’s no room and no money for new blood to enter the academy. But that’s a different (albeit important) issue.
Bloom didn’t write this nasty stuff because he had tenure but if he didn’t have tenure, it’s a pretty safe bet he wouldn’t have written this stuff.
Bloom’s “boss” (faculty members don’t really have bosses in the traditional sense), UI J-school director David Perlmutter, says “Faculty members have academic freedom and freedom of speech, but that works both ways. Professors can write what they want to write, but everybody has the freedom to criticize or challenge that.”
Perlmutter is correct and the media, social and mainstream, is awash with criticisms of Bloom. But the real impact will be when Iowans contact their legislators and their legislators contact Mason. And contact her they must. Bloom has used a national forum to call their constituents meth addicts and their towns “skuzzy.”
Bloom is either completely unaware or uncaring about the delicate political situation Iowa’s public universities are facing in the legislature. At a time when the state budget is stretched thinner than tissue paper and at a time when a Republican sits in the governor’s mansion, this isn’t good. Bloom may have academic freedom but the legislature has the power of appropriations and I would bet my last $10,000 that the UI lobbyists have working overtime the past couple of days making nice with legislators.
Interestingly, Bloom is now casting himself as a victim. He says the enormous reaction to his story proves that he has touched a nerve. Could be. But if someone stereotypes a racial or ethnic group as stupid, lazy, dishonest and untrustworthy the reaction against that isn’t because of truth-telling. It’s because it’s offensive. Stereotypes are the refuge of the intellectually lazy, the kind of people who revel in ethnic jokes. Scholars don’t engage in stereotyping. While Steve Bloom may hold a tenured faculty position at a Big Ten university, I think it’s pretty clear that doesn’t make him a scholar.
Yale Cohn on 12.19.2011
Here’s our show about Bloom’s article:
“Four native Iowans talk about the depiction of them and the state they call home in Stephen Bloom’s scathing and controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly, his motives for publishing it, the response its generated across the state, and its national implications with regards to Iowa’s first in the nation voting status.”
http://patv.tv/blog/2011/12/18/talking-with-stephen-blooms-observations-oniowa/