… by one of his students.
[W]hen information technology was introduced at [the University of East Anglia], he refused to have a PC installed in his office. Sebald never wrote an email and if, to his dismay, he received one, it was printed out and delivered to him by “some clown from the Registry”, as he told me.
… [Sebald] predicted further continuing deterioration of academic culture in UK higher education as a result of increased bureaucracy, the imposition of profit-driven, short-term policies that aimed to turn universities into business operations, the introduction of benchmarks, the redefinition of students as customers, time-consuming quality assurance mechanisms and superfluous staff development training.
… Throughout his life, one has to conclude, it was Sebald’s desire to protect his waywardness and individual freedom from those who aimed to curtail it, be they university administrators or literary critics.
October 3rd, 2011 at 4:43PM
For a confirmation of Sebald’s predictions see Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and The Fall of Liberal Education (University of Toronto Press 2011) by sociology professors James Cote and Anton Allahar of the University of Western Ontario.
October 3rd, 2011 at 7:36PM
So, when I send an email, I’m curtailing individual freedom?
October 3rd, 2011 at 9:10PM
Well, I think Sebald was a bit over the top, Pete.
October 3rd, 2011 at 9:14PM
really wanted to like Sebald’s writing after reading Eric Santer’s lovely book On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald but couldn’t connect with him as an author, the work felt dated in the way that many european cities can, that said I’m finding him an appealing prophet of the implosion of higher ed.
October 4th, 2011 at 7:01AM
Being too lordly to use a computer (presumably some luckless secretary got to type all his syllabi, etc.) and having emails printed and delivered to you by hand isn’t much of a way to streamline bureaucracy, is it?
October 4th, 2011 at 7:08AM
No, Alan, it’s not. You’re right.
October 4th, 2011 at 1:57PM
Our former President Nutkicker used to insist that a brand new, top-of-the-line PC be purchased for his personal use every year. He liked the “Pipes” screensaver and a couple of the other ones. He did not otherwise use it. His secretaries did in fact print out all of his e-mails. He wrote his answers out longhand, and they dutifully typed his comments into the reply e-mail.
Strangely enough, in his next-to-last position before coming here he had been a director of institutional computing, although those were still the days of the mainframes and VAX.