Ive been saddened to witness the slow dissolution of the Episcopal seminaries even in just the last ten years for reasons that, Im sorry to say, appear to me might have been preventable with better stewardship and management. The church needs great scholars and teachers, and institutions that protect and grow them. The faculty is the one thing that makes General an institution of higher education. How can it possibly afford to part with them? The historian Anthony Grafton wrote compellingly about the growing tendency of higher education administrations to treat professors as commodities. Might be interesting to think about General in that context: nybooks/blogs/nyrblog/2010/mar/09/britain-the-disgrace-of-the-universities/ I love this from Grafton because it is a truth so seldom presented so transparently: Universities exist to discover and transmit knowledge. Scholars and teachers provide those services. Administrators protect and nurture the scholars and teachers: give them the security, the resources, and the possibilities of camaraderie and debate that make serious work possible. Firing excellent faculty members is not a clever tactical disinvestment, it’s a catastrophic failure. Blessings to the professors, students and alumni. Im so glad I was able to take a few courses at General before it was completely hollowed out.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 01:12:58 +0000