Finding Footing in a Storm
I have mentioned that this newsletter was originally going to be something else, and hopefully one day will be: more focused on the academic humanities, more personal, more blissfully boring. Of course, events have tripped up my plans for this project, and my position in university governance has made looking away from all that is happening to higher education impossible.
Occasionally you will notice that posts dated earlier will be dropped into the timeline of the newsletter. I have so many drafts from before things burst into flames, and many more in the days and weeks immediately after when I was too overwhelmed to trust my own prose. I want to preserve the timeline of the thoughts and concerns as best I can whenever appropriate, and so will backdate entries that speak to the moment of their gestation.
I also know I will change my mind on many things as things continue to unfold, and I will own it always when I do. I am temperamentally someone who arrives at conviction only after long periods of research, doubt, and the kaleidoscopic vision that comes from trying to see a problem from multiple perspectives at once. Do I contradict myself? Oh yes—not because I contain multitudes, but because doubt and ambivalence is my default mode. As Susan Sontag said in a 1979 interview, "The very nature of thinking is 'but.' Things are complicated. It’s and, but, either — it’s all those things."
You will find a lot of "buts," "on the other hands," and other grammatical pirouettes by which I will strain to remain balanced on the tightrope without tipping over into a conviction that might forestall my ability to hear or imagine other answers or perspectives.
All of this had made me a disappointment to many colleagues, especially post-October 7. But these are qualities that have made me, I hope, a good teacher and secretary of the university senate. And hopefully they will contribute to my serving here as a thoughtful chronicler of this moment in higher education.
I am still new to this platform, so do be patient with me while I figure out the logistics. "Subscriptions" are free and allow you to comment on the posts. I think they also send new posts to you via email, which is part of why I wanted to explain the flurry of asynchronous posts you might see in these opening weeks. If you have questions about the platform (a relatively nazi-free open-source relative of Substack), let me know and I will track down the answers.
OK. Let's see where this waking nightmare takes us. This being the 21st century, at least it's not our first rodeo.
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