Is there any greater oxymoron in the English language than “honorable politician”? Because I’m finding it hard to think of two words that are more opposite in meaning.
Politics, as I learned very well during my 20 years as an administrator of one sort or another, is all about self-interest. It’s about power. Politicians may give you what you want, but only because they calculate that doing so will enable them, in the long run, to get what they want. If you can’t help them reach their personal goals, they aren’t interested in you. And if they perceive that you are somehow in their way, watch out. They will brush you aside like so much dandruff off their suit coats.
Honor, meanwhile, isn’t something that’s talked about much anymore. Instead, we focus on concepts like honesty, integrity, and ethics. Of course honor includes all of those, but it also contains something more: an element of self-effacement, of putting other people’s needs before one’s own, of helping those who aren’t in a position to help themselves simply because it’s the right thing to do. Essentially, it is the antithesis of politics.
Yet in our culture, not only do we rarely speak of honor, but we elevate the politician. We praise someone for his or her ability to “navigate the political waters,” forgetting that in doing so that person is merely pursuing his or her own self-interest, often at the expense of others.
You might think I’m talking about the President or Congress or the people vying for the Republican nomination. Or maybe our nation’s business leaders, whose ethics have certainly been called into question over the past few years. And what about educational leaders, several of whom have been the subject of high-profile scandals recently? Surely, I’m talking about them.
Not really. I’m sure what I’ve said about politicians could be applied, to varying degrees, to many of those on the above list. But I’m not really talking about them. They don’t affect my life directly, on a daily basis. No, the worst examples of politics — and of the absence of honor — that I’ve encountered over my 26 years of professional life have been among faculty members and mid-level administrators.
I’m reminded of some of the bosses I’ve had, like the one whose favorite saying was “C.Y.A.” (cover your ass) — something at which, I observed, he was particularly adept. Or the one I used to duck into the men’s room to avoid because I never once encountered her, however casually, when I did not come away with some new make-work project, always designed to enhance her own résumé.
I also recall the turf wars that I witnessed when I became a department head and later a campus administrator myself. In those battles over resource allocation, I did occasionally witness honorable acts, as some area leaders placed the needs of the college above their own priorities. Others, however, just wanted whatever they could get for their departments or campuses, and to hell with everyone else.
But mostly I think about the faculty. If ever any group of individuals should pull together, it would be college faculty in today’s unsettled (and unsettling) political landscape. Sadly, I’ve witnessed more dishonorable behavior in a single committee meeting than I’ve seen on a week’s worth of CNN news shows. When it comes to protecting their turf — their discipline, their textbook, their pet project — an alarming number of faculty members will lie, cheat, bear false witness, shout down, and intimidate their opponents. I’m not saying all faculty members are like that, or even most, but far too many fit that description.
If higher education is going to survive the current climate of budgetary “austerity” and cultural warfare, we’re going to have to rediscover, as a profession, the concept of honor. And when I talk about the profession, I mean from the top down: from presidents and chancellors to the lowliest classroom instructor. Because if we continue behaving the way we have, our narrow-mindedness and cut-throatedness, our in-fighting and self-aggrandizement — in short, our politicking — may ultimately do more damage to our cause than any external threat.
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