Links
Archives
Friday, May 12, 2006
|
Clash of the Status Titans Okay, so Tom Wolfe overplays it; but it must be said that the search for status explains quite a lot in the world. Certainly in the world of academia. So, for instance, in attempting to understand a rather fuzzy news story out of Boston University, it makes sense, I think, to invoke status consciousness as the prime motivator of both combatants currently attracting attention to the College of Communication. They are Renata Adler, New Yorker writer and faculty member, and John J. Schulz , dean of the College of Communication. From the outset of her teaching gig there, Adler’s vanity took a hit, as Inside Higher Ed explains: When she started, she expected to be paid for her services within the University Professors Program, “an interdisciplinary program for gifted students,” and to teach one or two courses in the journalism department, which is part of BU’s College of Communication. Much to her surprise, and dismay, she quickly learned that she was an employee of the communications division. We already know from an earlier story covered here at University Diaries that real journalism professors speet on hackocentric Colleges of Communication (though, status hierarchy being what it is, real professors speet on journalists who think they’re real professors, etc., etc.) IHE, citing a Boston Globe story, writes that “Adler ha[s] recently begun raising questions about the résumé of Schulz, in e-mails she [has] sent to the dean and several other professors.” Virtually all of Schulz’s purported bad behavior involves the self-puffery of status anxiety -- in his case, the status anxiety that comes from having an academic position but not really being an academic. Schulz is in fact many impressive things, but he hasn’t written essays for Foreign Affairs or lectured at the Sorbonne or anything. He’s a hard-bitten hard news journalist with an impressive military past, which should be enough for him, and is certainly enough for an outfit like BU’s College of Communication. But Schulz craves intellectual respectability, so he claims to have written books and earned extremely elite degrees and all. Yet it’s unclear that Schulz actually made these claims (they appear in student publications, where Schulz says he was misquoted); it’s also pretty clear that Adler’s making false claims against him. [Adler’s] most serious allegation against Schulz is that he exaggerated his heroism in Vietnam in a 2003 interview with the student paper. Schulz described how, as an Air Force F-100 fighter pilot, he would continue on his missions even when he ran out of ammunition, to distract the enemy. Adler, like some other professors at BU, doesn’t like Schulz’s “autocratic and self-aggrandizing” ways -- but he is a military man, not a lily-livered academic, and he’s always going to look rough in the context of pale neurotic lifers. Colleagues at BU are scandalized that Schulz once spoke roughly to a faculty member at a meeting; they are outraged that he dismissed BU student journalists as “just kids.” But there’s nothing wrong with this behavior or this sort of comment. Only when when it takes place in the hyper-touchy precincts of universities does everyone get out their hankies. As is often the case in stories like this one, neither Adler nor Schulz is the sort of specimen you’d want to share a meal with. But UD suspects that Adler’s campaign is going to fail, and fail badly. |