To point out the obvious:

• Katehi, you were the one who called in the dogs.  Not “we.”  You.
• Katehi, you knew damned well what would happen when you called in the cops.  Don’t act so naive.
• Katehi, what do you mean by “serious health and safety concerns”?  Be a bit more specific — these are the sorts of generalized claims that get my students C-minuses on their essays.
• Katehi, you may not want to admit this, but you had some choices.  You could have just let the protestors be.  Or, if you were so concerned about “health and safety,” how about using the rent-a-cop money to help the protestors take care of their own health and safety, instead of imperiling their health and safety?  Riddle me this: how does pepper spray improve a person’s health and safety?  Unless I’m wrong, pepper spray is actually bad for someone’s health.  I think that’s the whole point of pepper spray — to hurt someone.
• Katehi, you should probably quit.  Really — just go.  And while you’re at it, take as much of the bloated UC administrative system with you as possible.  We don’t need it.

See and smell Katehi’s bullshit below:

November 18, 2011

To UC Davis Campus Community,

I am writing to tell you about events that occurred Friday afternoon at UC Davis relating to a group of protestors who chose to set up an encampment on the quad Thursday as part of a week of peaceful demonstrations on our campus that coincided with many other occupy movements at universities throughout the country.

The group did not respond to requests from administration and campus police to comply with campus rules that exist to protect the health and safety of our campus community.  The group was informed in writing this morning that the encampment violated regulations designed to protect the health and safety of students, staff and faculty.  The group was further informed that if they did not dismantle the encampment, it would have to be removed.

Following our requests, several of the group chose to dismantle their tents this afternoon and we are grateful for their actions.  However a number of protestors refused our warning, offering us no option but to ask the police to assist in their removal.  We are saddened to report that during this activity, 10 protestors were arrested and pepper spray was used.  We will be reviewing the details of the incident.

We appreciate and strongly defend the rights of all our students, faculty and staff to robust and respectful dialogue as a fundamental tenet of our great academic institution.  At the same time, we have a responsibility to our entire campus community, including the parents who have entrusted their students to us, to ensure that all can live, learn and work in a safe and secure environment.  We were aware that some of those involved in the recent demonstrations on campus were not members of the UC Davis community and this required us to be even more vigilant about the safety of our students, faculty and staff. We take this responsibility very seriously.

While we have appreciated the peaceful and respectful tone of the demonstrations during the week, the encampment raised serious health and safety concerns, and the resources required to supervise this encampment could not be sustained, especially in these very tight economic times when our resources must support our core academic mission.

We deeply regret that many of the protestors today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested.  We are even more saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal.

We appreciate the substantive dialogue the students have begun here on campus as part of this week.s activities, and we want to offer appropriate opportunities to express opinions, advance the discussion and suggest solutions as part of the time-honored university tradition.  We invite our entire campus community to consider the topics related to the occupy movement you would like to discuss and we pledge to work with you to develop a series of discussion forums throughout our campus.

I ask all members of the campus community for their support in ensuring a safe environment for all members of our campus community.  We hope you will actively support us in accomplishing this objective.

Linda P.B. Katehi
Chancellor

But here’s the thing: I really like college football and basketball.  If it weren’t for our new shorty, I’d probably spend most autumn Saturdays on the couch watching football, and all of March obsessing over the NCAA tournament.  And while I’m often amazed by the quality of play, I’m more attracted to college sports because of the enthusiasm of both the players and the student-fans.  For many players, especially those from small schools, this is it — these college games are the last time they’re going to play, and they lay it all on the line.  That’s what I love about March Madness; in the early rounds especially, you’re watching college kids who will never have this chance again, and they know it, and so they play with an energy and passion that is unmatched in the pros.  Same goes with the fans.  The difference between a college basketball game and a pro basketball game is night and day.  The combination of youth, pent-up energy from studying, and probably alcohol creates an absolute frenzy in the student section, which often infects the alumni/public sections and makes these games something more than entertainment.  It’s a community event.  Again, I’ve seen this first-hand; even as I spat at the name of Aaron Brooks the student, I loved standing in the student section at Mac Court, yelling my head off when that kid drove the lane.  I’ll also make an academic case for college sports, because some of the athletes (I won’t hazard a percentage) get a real sense of focus and determination from their extracurricular activities that also informs their classroom work.  I think of another Oregon basketball player, whose name I can’t remember (because he was a third-stringer, probably), who worked his ass off in class and kept a detailed schedule to make sure he was on top of his work; not the brightest guy, but one of the most determined students I’ve ever worked with.

What’s the solution?  It probably involves the creation of real semi-pro leagues for the top football and basketball players, kids who are more interested in playing ball that in studying and who probably have more ability in the former than the latter.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that universities have to give up their football and basketball programs; they would instead transform into something like college baseball, which still exists, but isn’t the only route to the majors (as I understand the system).  We fans would have to accept a lower level of talent, but I’m okay with that.  This “solution” probably has a lot of problems and is certainly a long ways off.  And so I have to figure out what I’m going to do, personally.  Not sure about that.  I’ll probably continue to rail against college sports even as I tune in for my favorite teams.  Oh, the hypocrisy!

First, the list of the op-eds:

Matthew Lassiter, “Populism and the Silent Majority” (3 Nov 2011)
Douglas Brinkley, “The Grand Canyon and Mining” (31 Oct 2011)
James Livingston, “It’s Consumer Spending, Stupid” (26 Oct 2011)
Randall J. Stephens, “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason” (18 Oct 2011)
Jill Lepore, “Here’s the Guy Who Invented Populism” (16 Oct 2011)
Jeremi Suri, “America the Overcommitted” (14 Oct 2011)
Louis Hyman, “Wal-Mart’s Layaway Plan” (12 Oct 2011)

And now, the rules:

1. Write within your field of expertise, making connections to present-day phenomena.  Duh.
2. Use an innovative interpretation of the past to make sense of the present.  See Lassiter.
3. Find interesting individuals from the past and draw (tenuous) connections to the present.  See Brinkley and Lepore.
4. Identify something really weird and apparently unexplainable in the present, and use the past to make sense of said bizzare thing.  See Hyman, Stephens, Lassiter, Lepore, and Brinkely.
5. Provide some sort of policy advice or corrective.  See Suri, Livingston, Brinkley.
6. Be famous, like Brinkley or Lepore.  Note that this does not mean you have to be a serious or rigorous scholar.  Just famous.

BAM.  That’s how you do it.  Get to work.

* Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not a perfect sample.  Go read your statistics textbook, nerds.

But here’s the thing: at this point in my career, I have absolutely nothing to offer these people.  I have no influence, no power, no nothing.  I’m not smart or witty enough to keep around for interesting conversation, and I bring no ancillary benefits, like knowing how to fix plumbing problems or something.  You scratch my back, and I’ll…ask you scratch it again in a few days.  And so I constantly rely on the kindness of others, hoping two things.  First, that the people of whom I ask favors understand this situation.  Surely they’ve been in it before, and now it’s their turn to pass it forward.  Second, I hope they feel like me when someone asks me for a favor: a little bit flattered.  When an undergraduate asks me to write a letter, I usually blush a little — “Aww, shucks, you want help from li’l ol’ me?”  It not only feels good to help someone out, but there’s a certain realization of power; the request for a favor reminds me that I do have some influence, however small.  And that sensation — of power? — can go a long way, at least for me.

Step One: After seeing the job announcement, a combination of excitement, curiosity, and anxiety rushes over me.  “What a great job!…right?  Where is this school, anyway?  Do I actually qualify for this position?”

Step Two: Terror strikes.  “I am absolutely not qualified for this job.  There are so many better candidates out there.  What are they looking for, anyway?  Surely not me.  There is no way I’m getting this job.  I should just bag this letter and go play video games.”

Step Three: Confidence builds.  “They might actually be interested in my research, if I frame it in this way.  Their course catalog has a few holes in it; I’m pretty sure I could help them on that.  This might work out.”

Step Four: Hubris appears.  “Ooo, I just thought of a great line — they’re going to eat this up!  No one in their department is doing anything like me; there are gaping holes in their curriculum and scholarship.  And I’m pretty sure I know someone in the department.  Yup, I’ll get an interview.  Or maybe they’ll just call up and offer me the job right away.  But then again: do I want this job?  Am I too good for it?”

Step Five: Doubt sinks in; constant revisions begin.  “Hmm, I don’t like that sentence.  Neither will they.  Am I pigeonholing myself?  Or does this make me look too much like a generalist — someone who knows a little about a lot, but not a lot about anything.  Maybe that’s what they want?  What do they want, anyway?  Do I fit those qualifications?  Probably not.  Maybe I’ll get an interview and can pick up the pieces then.  I should be so lucky.”

Step Six: Exhaustion, relief, and spite upon sending the damn thing.  “Nothing more I can do now.  Just wait.  And you know what?  Fuck them if they don’t like me.”

I’m pretty sure this isn’t healthy, but it’s worked this way for every letter I’ve sent in.  Currently, I’m in between steps five and six with a few letters, including one for a job I really, really, really want.  And I can’t wait for the process to be over.

* This is a very small number.  A friend of mine is applying to about fifty.  Crazy.

• My partner and I produced a baby a few weeks ago.  It turns out this is very time consuming.
• I’ve been applying for jobs like crazy.  Also very time consuming.
• Teaching = time consuming.
• All things in life = time consuming.

But I do miss writing for the dozen or so people who stop by The Bench, and so I’ll get back to it.  Hell, if two tenured professors and a fellow ABD job-seeker can do it, I should certainly be able to.

Things Grafton and Grossman get right:

• The dearth of tenure-track jobs can not be blamed on the current economy.  Instead, there are two villains: state legislators who defund higher education, and deans and administrators who hire cheap temporary workers (aka adjuncts like me) instead of tenure track workers.
• Graduate programs don’t consistently train students for careers outside of academia. The best you’ll get is a couple of brown-bag lunch meetings on the subject.

Things Grafton and Grossman get wrong:

• They try to let administrators off the hook for hiring cheap temps because “university budgets…lead administrators to opt for flexible, contingent positions,” and there’s some truth to that.  But it doesn’t account for the decisions that lead to ballooning administrative budgets at the expense of faculty budgets.  In other words: stop hiring managers and building fancy computer labs, and you’ll have more money for teachers.  It’s about priorities.
• The problem with getting a job outside the academy isn’t that there is some sort of negative stigma attached to such positions.  It’s that these jobs do not exist in the quantity that Grafton and Grossman would lead us to believe.  They mention “Chief of Staff of the Army, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief of Staff to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, museum curators, archivists, historians in national parks, investment bankers, international business consultants, high school teachers, community college teachers, foundation officers, editors, journalists, policy analysts at think tanks.”  Two sub-thoughts about that list.  First: investment bankers and international business consultants?  Yeah, I’m sure some of these types have history PhDs, but they probably have MBAs, too; the history PhD is incidental.  Which brings me to sub-thought number two: you don’t need a history PhD for any of these other jobs.  They say a “doctorate is a vital asset” — asset, yes, vital, no. For most of those positions, you’d probably be better served with some other degree: politics, for instance, or archival studies.  If you have a history PhD, it’s not just you and your mentor who expect you to get a teaching job; it’s pretty much every other potential employer.
• If graduate programs are going to train students for non-teaching jobs, they also need to push for those other jobs to appear.  It’s all well and good to train me how “conceptualizing relationships between structure, agency, and culture” will get me a job as an investment banker (ha!), but if investment banks aren’t looking for people to do such things and aren’t thinking of history PhDs as top candidates for these jobs, all that extra training won’t help.
• They cop out on one of the things departments can do right away: stop admitting so many damn graduate students.  Or, more specifically, don’t admit any graduate students that you can’t pay for.  This is one of the greatest crimes in the academy, and it must stop.  Plenty of schools do it; I, for instance, was admitted to USC without any funding.  The lovely acceptance letter proposed that I pay more than $20,000 a year for the privilege of working my ass off for a few years, after which I would have found few job opportunities and massive debt.  This is so transparently greedy — sure, kid, come on in; we’d love your tuition dollars! — that it would be hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous to these students (burdened with debt) and to the job market (now a massive pool of reserve labor, including some souls desperate to do anything — like take a series of adjunct positions for which there should actually be a tenure track job — to pay back their debt).

• “We must recognize that — in order to react now –we need to use something given to us in the past: flesh, bones, intelligence, heart.  Therefore, although the force for building the future lies within the energy, the imaginativeness, the courage of the present, the richness of the present comes from the past” (83).
• “Because even as the human person is one, so too is history, and the force of the present undertaking lies in all that has preceded it” (83).

Which brought to mind another quote from someone else that I carry with me:

• “…[T]o be without history is to be trapped in a present where oppressive social relations appear natural and inevitable. Knowledge of history is knowledge that things have changed and do change.” From Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race And The Postmodern World by Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon

Both Jordan/Weedon and Giussani advocate for knowledge of history, but for different reasons: Giussani values the traditions from the past, while Jordan/Weedon value its revolutionary potential.  Giussani loves continuity; Jordan/Weedon love change.  And that, of course, is history: the stories we tell about change and continuity in the past.  We need both, and I think these quotes get at something fundamentally important about the value of the past.  From Giussani, we get a sense of the reservoir of experiences, practices, traditions, and examples offered to us by the past.  “The richness of the present comes from the past” that has established, through experimentation and trial-and-error, certain forms of wisdom.  From Jordan/Weedon, we see the possibilities of the future suggested by the past — the “knowledge that things have changed and do change” is empowering; if change has come before, it can certainly come again.  I think part of my job as a historian is to weave together those strands of change and continuity and demonstrate their empowering value.