Culture and Consolidation

This past October when my wife and I attended the annual meeting of the Georgia Sociological Association, we were given an earful.  Colleagues from around the state complained bitterly about their experiences with “consolidation.”  According to them, it was definitely not going as planned.

At the time, some eight schools were being merged into four—although we were told that the term “merger” was declared off-limits.  Schools like North Georgia State and Gainesville were experiencing shotgun marriages that were not to the liking of those forcibly so joined.

We heard of colleagues being laid off, of long travel times to meetings at locations far from where people taught, and of communities losing the identities that a college name afforded.  What we did not hear was about the efficiencies these amalgamations supposedly delivered.

And no wonder.  According to statistics provided by Inside Higher Ed, the grand total of saving has so far been $7.5 million.  That turns out to be about 0.1 percent of a $7.4 billion budget.  In other words, for all the angst that has been visited upon my colleagues, the university system might have saved enough to furnish one new building—that is, assuming it was not a science building.

Now it develops that Kennesaw State University (my college) is to be merged with Southern Polytechnic State University.  This came as a stunning surprise at both schools.  All of a sudden what had been someone else’s problem became ours.

I say ours, but from KSU’s point of view there will be few dislocations.  As the larger institution, we get to keep our name, our president, and control of our own affairs.  Sadly, the students, faculty and administrators of Southern Poly cannot say the same.  No wonder they have been protesting their proposed fate.

So far as I can see, they have a point.  From the perspective of the University System’s central office, colleges can be moved around like pieces on a chessboard, whereas from that of those so moved their lives may be torn asunder.  Yes, they will probably adjust, but the process may be wrenching compared with the gains obtained.

What remote administrators frequently overlook is the importance of organizational culture.  Schools develop ways of life that bind them together and provide the spirit that moves them forward.  This may seem to be an intangible, but people take pride in their uniqueness and seek to elevate what makes them distinctive.

Take this away by treating groups as interchangeable assemblages of anonymous faces and the evident lack of respect robs them of the motivation to do their best.  Why, they will wonder, should they strive to improve when those who control their destiny have no concern for their individuality?

Consider Augusta State University and the Medical College of Georgia.  What have they in common?  In what ways do they share common habits of learning when one is preparing budding physicians and the other is addressing less academically minded undergraduates?  Is it enough that they are located in the same city for them to be lumped together as Georgia Regents University?

This may seem like a small matter, yet if it is so small, why has so much time and effort been put into this reorganization?  Couldn’t these intellectual and administrative resources have been better applied to improving the existing colleges?

Professor Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins University has bemoaned the development of the “all administrative university.”  He notes that the number of college bureaucrats has been growing at more than twice the rate of professors.  What’s more the comparative compensation of these administrators is mounting even more quickly.

So I offer a modest proposal.  If Georgia wants to save money on its colleges and universities, it should slash the number of college administrators in half.  Their ineffectual meddling will not be missed, while the hundreds of millions saved can be better expended elsewhere.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Some Lessons about Bullying

Most of us were appalled by the suicide death of a young Florida girl who was relentlessly bullied by classmates for over a year.  Continuously bombarded with threatening e-mails that recommended she take her life, the time came when she could see no other way out.

We have also learned that at least one of the bully’s parents made no effort to intervene, and may even have encouraged her daughter’s transgressions.  So vile was what occurred that media and law-enforcement agents have suggested something must be done.

A call for new laws is, however, misguided.  So is an insistence that schools become no-bullying zones where teachers are constantly on the alert for violations.  Worse still is recommending that the victims immediately report their tormentors to the authorities.  None of these measures are likely to work.

In fact, they are apt to backfire.   Thus, a student who has been maltreated by classmates and goes to a teacher for protection is now going to be labeled a snitch.  He or she will be despised, not just by the perpetrator, but by otherwise uninvolved peers.  Having been a target, he or she will henceforth be converted into a pariah.

This is not to say that adults should tolerate bullying.  Parents and teachers who become aware of it should intervene.  Nonetheless those who are its butt should not be encouraged to regard adults as their first line of defense.  If they are to have satisfying lives, they must learn to protect themselves.

This was a lesson I learned a hard way.  As a youngster, I was smaller than most of my classmates.  When we lined up in the schoolyard I was generally the second or third shortest boy.  Naturally this persuaded some of the bullies to assume I would be an easy mark.

Indeed, for a while I was.  But then my father told me that if I were to avoid this harassment, I must fight back.  At first, I was horrified by his advice.  Didn’t he realize that if I put up a fight, these larger boys would pummel me?  Why did he want me to get hurt?

Of course, he didn’t.  He knew something I did not.  Most bullies are cowards.  The last thing they want is to be hurt themselves.  And so if they are to be discouraged, they must be made to fear for their own safety.  They need not be beaten, but they must be given to understand they will not get a free ride.

The moral of this story is that if the victims of bullying are to cease being victims, they must relinquish their victim mentality.  Instead of thinking of themselves as the prey of aggressors, they must realize that they too are capable of inflicting pain.  The best defense, as they say, is a good offence.

The reason this lesson is important is that there are plenty of adult bullies out there.  Accordingly, people who never discover they can protect themselves grow up to be perpetual victims.  This world is not always nice therefore those who are defenseless are destined for a cruel fate.

Nowadays we are witnessing this same phenomenon in politics.  Barack Obama and his circle of partisan thugs are relentless bullies.  Cross them and they will not only call you names; they will call-out the IRS or other government agencies to do you harm.

We saw what they did in the deficit battle.  Their goal, as they acknowledged, was to destroy the Republicans.  At minimum, it was to get critics like Ted Cruz to shut up.  Rather like the neo-Brown shirts who shouted down New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly at Brown University, their weapon of choice was intimidation.

Yet good people must not be intimidated.  They must be prepared to attack when attacked.  Luckily for the Republicans, the Obamacare debacle has provided lots of ammunition.  Now it is their turn to make abusive Democrats squeal like stuck pigs.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Marketplace of Ideas Day

When I give talks around Cobb and Cherokee counties, I am often asked why colleges are such liberal places.  Although Kennesaw State University is more balanced than most, the public perception is that higher education is pervaded by left-leaning ideologues.

The fact is that most of our colleges and universities are skewed dangerously toward “progressive” ideas.  Too many professors perceive their task as converting their students to an “enlightened” social perspective.  They do not educate so much as indoctrinate.

This tilt is especially pronounced in the humanities and social sciences.  Sadly it is more marked in my own discipline of sociology than in most.  Yet this does not have to be.  There are good ideas on both sides of the political spectrum; hence they could be presented with greater symmetry.

Once upon a time it was assumed that colleges should be “marketplaces of ideas.”  They were thought to be bastions of learning where new insights were continuously developed in a give-and-take of competing academics.  This way the wheat could be winnowed from the chafe such that the best positions survived.

But more than this, if colleges were level playing fields on which young adults could compare a multitude of conflicting viewpoints, these students could decide for themselves what was true.  In this way, they would not only learn about the world, but also about how to learn.

One of the most crucial skills needed to succeed in the contemporary world is how to engage in independent thinking.  Those persons who hope to become tomorrow’s leaders must be able to sift through—often on their own—a variety of different solutions before they settle on what is likely to work.

As most persons in stations of authority know, it is not always clear how to proceed.  Indeed, the more complicated the project, the greater the number of uncertainties that are strewn along the path.  This makes it essential to weigh the options before coming to a conclusion.

Our colleges and universities should be the place where the next generation of leaders learns how to achieve this.  But students cannot develop this capacity if they are not allowed to practice it.  And they cannot practice it unless they are exposed to differing intellectual perspectives.

This being the case, many of us at KSU are promoting the goal of moving the school toward becoming an ever more effective marketplace of ideas.  We want the university to be a hotbed of lively discussions and innovative thought.  We hope to make it a center intellectual exuberance fitting for the capital of the New South.

To this end we are launching a series of KSU Marketplace of Ideas Days.  Our intention is do these every term starting with Tuesday November 12 at 7PM.  Students, faculty and the public are all welcome to attend what promises to be a dynamic event in the main auditorium of our Social Sciences Building (SS1021).

Last year Dr. Ken White (a political scientist) and I engaged in a pre-election debate over the comparative merits of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.  The sparks flew and passions were set aflame.  This time our Great Debate will concern the merits of Obamacare.  No doubt there may once again be a few disagreements.

We are also bringing in Dr. Jonathan Imber of Wellesley College to be our featured speaker.  A nationally respected scholar and the editor of the journal Society, he will discuss the ins-and-outs regarding teaching about conservatism on college campuses.

In the future, we also hope to put together panel discussions concerning topical issues.  These will showcase students, faculty, and members of the community on both sides of important questions.  The objective is to have vital subjects energetically presented by committed advocates—who just happen to differ in their allegiances.

Ideas matter.  Independent thinking matters.  None of us, and certainly not institutions of higher learning, should shy from examining the truth—just because it is controversial.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Power Corrupts

A few weeks ago, my wife and I attended the annual meeting of the Georgia Sociological Association.  One of the presenters there was a political scientist from Armstrong-Atlantic.  He posed an interesting question.  Can a Marxist or a neo-Marxist government avoid becoming tyrannical?

This professor did not fully answer the question, yet he, and we in the audience, were aware that Communist Russia, Red China, North Korea, Eastern Europe, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Fidel’s Cuba had all fallen into this trap.  Each proclaimed its noble aspirations, then proceeded to snuff out any vestiges of democracy.

Was there something about a collectivist ideology that produced this result?  While we at the meeting did not come to a final conclusion, there was a rough consensus that concentrating too much power in the hands of a few leaders probably had something to do with the usual outcome.

Marxism, communism, socialism, and even to some degree social democracy all advocate that the state must protect people from social unfairness.  The government is supposed to see to it that no one gets a better break than anyone else.  Under Marxism there is to be a dictatorship of the proletariat, whereas under socialism the state is to own the means of production.

Social democracy does not go this far.  It merely demands that the government regulate virtually all economic transactions, as well as protect individuals from their own foolish choices.

Barack Obama is a social democrat.  Not quite a socialist, he wants the government to oversee and regulate virtually all medical interventions, all financial transactions, and every potential environmental incursion.  He also wants to increase transfer payments from the rich to the poor, usually by raising taxes and increasing welfare benefits.

These activities are undertaken in the name of the people.  The best and the brightest, which is to say the liberals, are to implement the equivalent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s General Will.  They are to provide what the people really want—even if the people themselves do not know it.

The trouble is that all such programs must be put into practice by actual human beings and that we humans are corruptible.  As Lord Acton warned, power tends to go to the heads of people who attain too much of it.  Liberals understand that this is true for business tycoons; they fail to recognize that it is also true for politicians and bureaucrats.

The Obamacare debacle is a prime example.  Politicians infatuated with their compassionate instincts bit off more than they could chew.  Utterly incompetent when it came to organizing so immense an enterprise, they jumped into it feet first anyway.

So far the Internet run-out has proved a complete fiasco.  Much too expensive, crony-ridden, ill-conceived, and subject to the usual cover-ups, it forecasts what is likely to be the equally inept execution of the program itself.

Mark my words.  Obamacare is sure to be rifled with favoritism, multiple hands in the cookie jar, fraud, dishonest evaluations of performance, broken promises, and budget over-runs that would make a convict blush.

While I am sure that some of the people involved in this mess really do have good intentions, imbuing them with so much power is an invitation to arrogance and duplicity.  People who imagine themselves to be Gods on Earth somehow find a way to rationalize their mistakes and to overreach their abilities.

Power is a potent narcotic.  It distorts the way people under its influence perceive reality and seduces them into over-estimating their capacities.  From their perspective they are merely doing good when they send counter-revolutionaries to the Gulag or impose the medical insurance policies citizens must buy.

James Madison understood the temptations inherent in power.  He realized that we humans are not angels and that we must be restrained from going overboard.  That is why he gave us a constitution in which powers are balanced by competing powers.  We would do well to remember why he did.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University