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"Some college administrators seem so distracted with fund raising, academic infighting, and community initiatives that they set up their emergency communications departments very poorly. Training is poor to nonexistent, secretaries are pressed into service with tremendous responsibilities for running 'notification systems' 24/7 and on weekends because no one else knows how to do it and the administration won’t pay for additional staff. Procedures are seat-of-the-pants and dependent on HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion), except when something like Virginia Tech happens and there is some sort of scramble to do something different." --Donna
Most Colleges Avoid Risk Management, Report Says
Jill Biden Shines a Global Spotlight on American Community Colleges
Speaking at a Unesco conference in Paris, the vice president’s wife stressed the importance of two-year institutions to the nation’s educational goals.
Connecticut Public Colleges Lose 200 Professors to Early Retirement
Administrators are scrambling to plug holes in their course schedules for fall, with most expecting to do so by hiring more adjuncts or increasing class sizes.
U. of Georgia Paid 2 Fraternities $2.4-Million to Relocate, Contracts Show
The two were among five with houses on property where the university plans to build new academic facilities.
New Allegations in Admissions Controversy at U. of Illinois Suggest Ex-Provost Played a Role
Linda P.B. Katehi, the incoming chancellor of the University of California at Davis, has insisted she knew nothing of the admission of politically connected applicants at Illinois.
Sonoma State U. Foundation May Lose $350,000 on Loan to Former Board Member
The foundation will be forced to issue fewer scholarships in the 2010-11 academic year because of a diminished endowment, a university official said.
College Suspends Student for Working in Gay Pornography | 58
President Obama's Visit to Notre Dame Carries Barely a Hint of Controversy That Preceded It | 58
Drug Sting Nabs 21 Students at U. of Illinois | 57
Faculty Members and Union Protest Staff Layoffs at Temple U. as 'Cruel' | 57
North Dakota Board's Vote Puts 'Fighting Sioux' Mascot on Thinner Ice | 57
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July 4, 2006
Philip Rieff, Sociologist and Critic of Academe, Dies at 83
The sociologist Philip Rieff died on Saturday at the age of 83, The New York Times reported today.
Mr. Rieff, who was best known for his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (Harper & Row, 1966), was a severe critic of contemporary academic culture. In Fellow Teachers: Of Culture and Its Second Death (University of Chicago, 1973), he excoriated his colleagues for failing to embody what he considered authentic authority and intellect, writing:
“Less and less is taught by more and more managers of the false knowledge industry, or by gurus of experimental Life, who help nothing by their preachings. These intellectual nullities, whatever side they are on in the passing political show, have disclosed their real problem: authority in the classroom. They have no idea of authority and therefore everything interdictory appears too simple to match their scientific data or literary experience.”
In a conversation last fall (The Chronicle, November 11, 2005), Mr. Rieff said that he “fell in love with the idea of the university” when he arrived at the University of Chicago as a student, but that he “soon lost all illusions about the purity of academic life.”
Gordon Marino, a professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College, studied with Mr. Rieff at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1980s. In November, Mr. Marino told The Chronicle that Mr. Rieff “took his vocation as a professor seriously, in a way that was very powerful. ... He gave me a better respect for the civilizing function of authority. Most teachers won’t tell you the things that you really need to hear.”
For a long period after 1973, Mr. Rieff published very little. Recently, however, with the help of several of his former students, he assembled four new books for publication. In January, the University of Virginia Press published My Life Among the Deathworks, Volume 1 of the trilogy Sacred Order/Social Order. And in February 2007, Pantheon Books will publish Mr. Rieff’s long-rumored book Charisma: The Gift of Grace, and How It Has Been Taken Away From Us.
Posted on Tuesday July 4, 2006 | Permalink |
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