Academic catfight!

Apparently the world is going to shit, because Mark Slouka was denied tenure. I thought this article was a blast to read, not for anything it said, but because it illustrates how a writer can - while making assertions that are, for all I know, totally accurate - expose himself so thoroughly as a pompous jackass. And in a few hundred words! I also find it rather amusing that a professor who accuses students of being barely literate is such a terrible writer. This isn't immediately apparent, because bad writers with degrees can usually manage to imitate the rhythms of decent prose while saying nothing. But let's take a closer look.

Now, the first thing that Slouka wants to make sure we realize is that he is NOT writing this because of bitterness; sure he was denied tenure; sure the process was rife with procedural irregularities - I mean, really, he's not going to dwell on it, but there was even a cavalier disregard (so much cheekier, you know, than garden variety disregard) for the university's own rules. But seriously, no need to waste more time on this issue with anything like, say, an actual example of an irregularity. Let's move on his thesis, which Slouka, of course, only presents out of his love for Columbia, and its tradition of excellence that he "holds dearly [sic]".

Despite the presence of a small minority of talented and committed faculty members and an equally small core of serious, gifted students, what prevails at the writing division in the School of the Arts, and to some extent at the School of the Arts as a whole, is an institutionalized and self-perpetuating culture of mediocrity so out of step with the general climate of excellence for which Columbia is rightly known that most would be shocked to be apprised of the details.

That's right, shocked. Don't worry, most people, Slouka will not alarm you by actually presenting any of these horrifying details. But he will provide a thumbnail sketch from an unnamed "senior colleague," who has apparently been hanging out a lot in the 17th century: "How I wish I could believe there will be some surcease, some righting of the ship in the foreseeable [future]. Alas, I fear it will not be so." My stars, will there be no surcease? Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth - O, Gods, blame me not if I no more can write!

Leaving his distraught colleague, Slouka moves on to hs argument - slowly. He loves to open every other paragraph with an unnecessary phrase or rhetorical question: "There's no point in being coy." (There isn't? That's good to know.) "Allow me to elaborate." (No, please, go right ahead.) He then proceeds to give us a "short list of documentable facts." At first I thought that this meant he would provide actual documentation: if you're going to write a bitchy letter that tars the entire department, and you have a plum position at UChicago, why not name names? Give an example of a lousy thesis that was passed, a professor that hired an unqualified friend. But no, what Slouka means is that these things could be documented if anyone so desired. Someone should really get on that.

Slouka then presents his theoretically documentable facts. He says that he is going to proceed from minor to major issues. I had a hard time following his progression, but the minor issue appears to be that terrible, "virtually illiterate" theses are being published; the major issue is that unqualified professors are being hired.

He is, of course, exaggerating, which - when you wish to make a case and not produce a piece of satire - is essentially the same thing as lying: no one that gets into the Columbia MFA program is going to produce anything that is "virtually illiterate"; this is an insult to the many people who actually can't read and write. He also says that students "often have more experience and more publications than their professors" - I really doubt that this happens frequently at all, but Slouka provides no examples, and uses one of the laziest words in the language - "often" - which can be anywhere from two students in the history of the program to all of them.

Let me single out one sentence to demonstrate what I said earlier about bad writers with degrees imitating the rhythms of good prose:

I mention this not only because it is unethical to charge students $35,000 a year to be taught by writers who don’t actually write, can’t conduct a seminar, or, even more absurdly, teach classes on the teaching of writing—though they themselves do not write—to students who have not yet learned how to write, but because this climate, tacitly supported by the administration, has already harmed the University’s ability to hire and retain qualified junior candidates

The first trick is to always have three items in a list, and set off the last one with some sort of adverbial clause: "even more absurdly." But look at those three items. This practice, Slouka maintains, is unethical because classes in the writing school are being taught by: a) teachers who don't actually write b) who can't conduct a seminar, and finally, the most absurd part is that... c) um, these teachers teach classes in writing... but they don't write, and they teach writing to students who are learning to write. Yes, read it slowly and it is clear that there is no additional content in that third clause - nothing to make it "more absurd" - it is just there to keep the sentence chugging along.

There is no reason, incidentally, for all of this to be a single sentence, other than that wonderful "not only...but also" construction that I once sprinkled throughout my awful term papers to give them an air of scholarship. Any decent writer could cut that paragraph down to two simple sentences. Sadly, like modern classical music, you have to read stuff like this a bunch of times to determine whether or not it's any good, because there is a chance that you're just missing something. At least bad popular writing stands up and announces itself, instead of trying to ape the style of its betters, like one of those damn McDonald's Premium sandwiches, which incidentally will still make you sick.

Plainly written, however, it would be easier to see that this argument about ethics is silly. Every student at Columbia decided to pay the tuition; they explored the program and the faculty and knew what they were getting. Clearly, they thought it was worth it. (I have a friend there who has expressed no regrets.) If Slouka really thinks that the program is a "financial udder" for other parts of the university (and you thought it was just a cash cow!) then he needs to provide evidence that the department's budget is smaller than the money it brings in. This simple calculation is apparently too much trouble for our gentleman scholar. Who knows, maybe Columbia is going downhill after all, but denying this guy tenure definitely did not contribute to the slide. I want to know what the hell is happening at the University of Chicago, though. Maybe I should send a letter to their board.