Having watched The Chair in a single sitting, I suppose I should say something. But I don’t have much to say. For one thing, I haven’t been in a classroom in 35 years, so I have little way to gauge student activism beyond what I see reported here and there. I did read an interesting series of discussions of the program in The Chronicle of Higher Education; the discussants are all current academics. Someone remarked that, whatever its deficiencies as a representation of campus life and politics, it does seem to be a reasonable depicture of public anxieties about higher education – a reasonable remark.
Some quick remarks
Beyond those preliminaries:
1. It was better than I’d expected. A low bar, I suppose, but worth something.
2. Having been at three schools that started in the 19th century (Johns Hopkins, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, State University of New York at Buffalo; see a link in Further readings) I recognize the architecture, especially the paneled rooms.
3. It was unfortunate to see old male faculty depicted as doddering incompetents, but then, as a 73 year old, I’m biased. I was no more pleased to see that self-involved jack-ass of a middle-aged “star”, as I have little love for academic stardom. Are they really that ridiculous? Perhaps so, see my working papers on Avital Ronell and Houston A. Baker, Jr. But the guy was good with the Ju Ju (daughter of Ji-Yoon Kim, the titular chair) and that’s something.
4. The student protest seemed way too superficial to me, even allowing for my skepticism about so-called cancel culture. The discussants at The Chronicle seem to agree on that.
5. Research had very little presence in the series. But then how do you dramatize an activity that takes place mostly in the mind and on paper? Criminal forensics, from Sherlock Holmes to the various CSI-type shows, seems to be the primary fictional vehicle for depicting abstract thought. Oh, and there’s the mad scientist.
Dan Everett on University Life
The linguist Daniel Everett has been department chair, dean, and acting provost. He’s made some remarks at Facebook about academic life.
Composition of the faculty
The gender composition of the faculty was one of the show’s central issues. Though I didn’t count, the English Department appeared to have about a dozen members, only three of which were women. Two of those were people of color, one East Asian (Korean) and one African-American.
As I will explain shortly, that proportion is higher than what I experienced at Johns Hopkins, but I believe that things have improved since then. Still, one in four seems low. As I said, though, I haven’t been on campus in years and I don’t follow statistics on these things.
But, to answer the question in my title, the English Department at Johns Hopkins had about 15 members in the mid-1960s; none of them were women. As far as I know, the entire faculty at Johns Hopkins had only five women, and I took courses with three of them. In particular, I took an introduction to developmental psychology and did an independent study with Mary Ainsworth. She is one of the founders of attachment theory and that was the topic of my independant study. The undergraduate student body was still all male, though there were women as graduate students. Women were admitted to the undergraduate school in 1970. Male faculty would openly date female graduate students. I know of two marriages resulting from such dating.
As for POC on the faculty, I'm sure the math department had at least one man of East Asian descent, Jun-ichi Igusa; a roommate of mine studied algebra with him. The philosophy department had a young guy named Edward Lee; I took two courses with him. I don't believe there were any African-Americans on the faculty. One joined the undergraduate student body in, I believe, 1969. The Humanities Center brought in Frank Moorer as a graduate student in the early 1970s; he remains there on the faculty.
And then there's the English Department at SUNY Buffalo, where I got my PhD (73-78). It was a large department, 70+. I can think of women who were on the faculty when I arrived, Diane Christian (who'd been a graduate student at Hopkins), and Mili Clark (a medievalist). One woman was hired while I was there, Claire Kahane. There were no African-Americans on the faculty (nor do I remember any graduate students, but there were many of us and I certainly didn’t know them all), but both Ishmael Reed and Chip Delany held visiting appointments during that era, though not when I was there. Male faculty openly dated female graduate students.
I had my first and only faculty post at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an engineering school. I was in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication (LL&C), which encompassed English literature, composition and technical writing, French and German languages, and communication (as a social science discipline). The faculty had, perhaps, 20 or so members. There was one woman when I arrived in the fall of 1978. Three were hired while I was there; I believe one of them replaced another, and then she left as well. There were no people of color. There were women in both the undergraduate and graduate student bodies. I was unaware of any male faculty dating female graduate students in the department.
Further commentary on the academy
Old School: Torpor and Stupor at Johns Hopkins, 3 Quarks Daily, Nov, 13, 2017, https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2017/11/old-school-torpor-and-stupor-at-johns-hopkins.html. This is about the literary society at Johns Hopkins.
“It got adults off your back” • Richard Macksey remembered (2019), 7 pp., https://www.academia.edu/40040691/_It_got_adults_off_your_back_Richard_Macksey_remembered. This is about a highly regarded humanist at Johns Hopkins who was very important to me.
The Hunt for Genius, Part 5: Three Elite Schools [RIP #RichardAMacksey], July 23, 2019, https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-hunt-for-genius-part-5-three-elite.html?fbclid=IwAR0BnJkdB69TmaQ0Kt6kI0qswPkyEnW0dq_1K-KZYhocpwqTAJk2LYXy92Y. Quick sketches of the three schools I went to, Johns Hopkins, SUNY Buffalo, and RPI.
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