Letter: ‘Flagship’ must be protected

The LSU main campus in Baton Rouge claimed title to “flagship” of higher education in the state in the course of conversation with Jim Wharton in his office while he was chancellor. Coined casually in passing, the term caught on and is widely used. I was there when the conversation occurred.

“Flagship” means that the core university, its faculty and students, constitute the best of higher learning in our state. We show the way in multiple disciplines from engineering and biology to history, English, political science, geography-anthropology, and to such specialized fields as library science on one hand and to mathematics and the range of natural sciences on the other.

Devotion to the “higher learning” means that the chief business of LSU is study, research and communication of findings in the classrooms and through publications and other media. LSU is not like Exxon, which produces products for sale, or even Price LeBlanc Toyota, which sells tangibles for profit. It also is not a trade school or a community college.

It has some practical applications, but its stature and unique character derive primarily from the intellectual work of individual scholars and teachers who compose “the university.” It is a place where books are studied and science is done as aspects of its unique role and calling of discovering and communicating knowledge.

All of this work is done at the departmental level, let it be stressed. Thus, upper administration is a superstructure intended to facilitate (not impede) the work of the departments and the individual faculty members composing them — above all, it is not a sinecure for careerists attracted by the big bucks nor a haven for an expansive idle bureaucracy making ever-greater demands for reports and paperwork. Economies can be made here rather than in mindless faculty pay cuts, for instance, which now fairly bid destruction of decades of development at a university plainly in crisis.

I would fervently hope that the talented task force now engaged in their very difficult task of fostering in hard times the flagship as an institution and vital activity will be humbly attentive to the unique nature of the enterprise they are charged with preserving, rescuing and protecting for the citizens of Louisiana.

Ellis Sandoz

professor of political science

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by bourbon-soda - 29/01/2013

Maybe the answer is to demand the same competitive outcome from professors as from coaches. Get your department rankings up or be fired. There are lots of hungry young adjuncts and other PhDs out there. Let's give them a shot at it.

2) Comment by Chucky - 29/01/2013

bourbon-soda -My younger sister has a PhD and teaches at an university, So not all that impressed by the letters after a name.

3) Comment by bourbon-soda - 29/01/2013

@Chucky - they spend half their time witching that the taxpayer is more interested in football than in the academic side, and the other half ridiculing taxpayers who express any opinion about the academic side.

4) Comment by bourbon-soda - 29/01/2013

@Bouncer - thanks for great demonstration of academic gnosticism.

5) Comment by Chucky - 29/01/2013

Well Bouncer - , you did not mention football also, so what is a commit by any professor but an informed opinion open for us lower beings to think on and maybe commit on ?

6) Comment by Bouncer - 29/01/2013

The feigned intellectualism, jealousy, bitterness, and animosity toward higher education displayed by some people leaving comments never cease to amaze me. Incidentally, Googling someone's name does not qualify as "research." And unless you, too, are a Professor of Political Science, you lack the credentials and the necessary knowledge to make any sort of assessment regarding the relative value of a corpus of scholarly work. Instead of making your usual pretense at erudition, just go have another drink. Better yet, get to a clinic somewhere and dry out.

7) Comment by dashwood - 29/01/2013

Kudos to Professor Sandoz for this well-stated argument.

8) Comment by bourbon-soda - 29/01/2013

After a little research on Professor Sandoz, I think his position here is entirely consistent with his published work. My reference was to the liberal arts professoriate as an aggregate. Apologies to Professor Sandoz.

9) Comment by [e-mail] - 29/01/2013

I'm agree with bourbon-soda, equivocation ad finitum, ad nauseum. We are in extremis and something draconian has to be done. Anyway baseball is coming up, and we're looking good.

10) Comment by bourbon-soda - 29/01/2013

Egalitarianism for everyone else, elitism for me.

11) Comment by Chucky - 29/01/2013

Not one word about football.