The Shifting Ground Beneath*
*These are my words…and no one else’s
One of my jobs as Faculty Fellow has been to write, to communicate with you, colleagues from all over the university, about what is new on the fifth floor of PC. I have failed you all. I have gone silent. Too much to say and yet – when push comes to shove – nothing at all. It has all been said and much more than once.
And, too, it is difficult to write about performance metrics, or my Faculty Ombudsman role, or even hope for the rise of Humanities in these times, at this very moment when the meaning of American democracy is shifting and a political landscape that up until recently would have been unimaginable, has become the new normal.
Our country has changed; extremists have taken charge of the institutions of this nation, the scaffolding that holds our democracy together; that racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia, etc., are all running rampant in Washington DC and well beyond. You do not need me to add to the echo chamber of analyses about how we are witnessing the rise of fascism as in 1930s Europe (just ask Yale Prof Tim Snyder http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/watch-a-yale-historian-explains-to-maher-how-trump-resembles-1930s-fascists-and-makes-the-russia-connection/) or the onset of authoritarianism à la Cuba in the 1960s (a comparison I understand less well…but is certainly in circulation in these parts). You know these things, you read the paper, you tweet on your twitter feeds, you post on your Facebook pages, and so on… No doubt you know all of this so well that it makes doing our jobs more urgent each day. For my money it helps to imagine we are part of a collective that has its eyes wide open and is resisting these new realities in every way that we can, whether from within our institution or from without, or both.
And so, with that in mind, allow me to use the next few words to raise some questions about what I see from the vantage point of the 5th floor of PC in these changing times. At the moment, I have in mind two things: performance funding/metrics and the recent visit of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, two subjects which are inevitably and intimately intertwined in a political web.
I am certain that each of you knows that Florida public universities are measured by a series of metrics – which they must meet and improve upon to accumulate points that earn institutions $$. And that these metrics are defined by the members of the Board of Governors in Tallahassee (each of whom is appointed by the Governor). And that this is a contest ala Hunger Games: there are winners and losers. That is the point. Faculty and Administrators at FIU, as each of you knows, under the leadership of the Provost and President, have been working tirelessly to position our institution to meet those measures and secure the much-needed funding to continue the excellent work that we do and more. The problem is that the game is rigged and we are on the losing end of that trickery. Each time we are able to make improvements in one of the measures, the measure gets changed, the goals shifted to benefit certain institutions of which FIU is not one. Within this environment, it is becoming increasingly impossible to win and the institutions which are not in the chosen group are left to see how badly they will lose.
Yet, at the same time that we are all needed to get BeyondPossible and work with a single purpose to improve in ways that Tallahassee tells us to, some faculty, it turns out, are uncomfortable in their own skin, they are scared, they are worried to express themselves. This brings me to a recent morning and the visit of Ms. Betsy DeVos.
On a recent beautiful Thursday morning, I descended the elevator in PC and made my way over to the AHC3 building to join a small but growing group of students who were standing and holding signs with words that said things such as “Education is not Just for Rich People”. There was a discussion going on with the campus police about where it was approved to stand, to protest, to voice the palpable outrage at the invitation of DeVos to our campus. I learned that there are a few spaces on campus that are deemed “protest spots”, where it is sanctioned for students and others to stand, hold signs and chant sayings like: “Students United Will Never be Defeated”. Today, though, they – and we – thought it better to be close to the action so that both DeVos and university officials would see the signs and the students (and few faculty members) expressing outrage, frustration and disappointment at the decision to invite Ms. DeVos to campus to meet with students and talk with our President of FIU. The group soon moved closer to where she was purported to likely come out of the nursing building, so that she would be forced to see the small but mighty group of protesters.
But then something funny happened: colleagues, one by one wandered by, asked what was going on, expressed solidarity and then moved along. When asked why they were moving on rather than joining in, answers did not vary much: they worried about the consequences for their place within the university, for their jobs; they did not wish to ‘get in trouble’; this included tenured professors, whose firing would take a lot more than standing in solidarity on this day. I mention this fear, because it is worrisome to imagine that it reflects something about the culture of our institution, an institution that I know each of us is proud of, whose students we are honored to teach and to mentor. Our jobs give us real satisfaction each day – and yet – some of us feel vulnerable in ways that faculty should not, in ways that our stature and tenure are meant to protect. Where have we – and our institutional culture – gone astray and how can we improve this?
What do you think?
Rebecca