Especially in the United States but across the world, we witness a stunning recurrence of an at least 60 year old tradition. University presidents, most loudly former university presidents, publicly blame faculty—most directly tenured professors-—or the many problems of higher education today.
There are many motivations. Prominent today are selling books, deflecting all responsibility for their own and other institutions failings away from themselves and on to anyone else; and running for elective office.
In the 1960s and 1970s, faculty and also students were blamed for universities’ awkward and contradictory stances on civil rights and then anti-war movements. Later, it was affirmative action broadly defined from equal opportunity to Diversity-Equity-Inclusion, among many manipulated themes, intended to distract attention from administrative failures of leadership and refusal to accept responsibility. These illegitimate, unprofessional manipulations typically contradict administrators’ wholesale statements about the roles of colleges and universities in the social, moral, and civic orders.
