June 10, 2019

Noticed in the university news that our dazzlingly out-of-her-depth former acting Provost has accepted another prestigious job. Marked before that once you’re in the administrative caste, achievement becomes irrelevant. The most incompetent, the most widely damaging administrators go on to other, sometimes better, positions. Actual performance counts for nothing. They’re like the police, protecting and fostering their own according to criteria mysterious to the rest of the world. Also realized that the perfect academic world for the current generation of administrators would be if the student paid his money upon entering and got his diploma four years later upon exiting, without having had contact with the messy and issue-introducing faculty. The faculty is an irritation to the administration, who want to be proprietors of a store, in which the customer is always right and nothing really matters but the sale. Or so it stands here. Now.

TONY watching party at Jack’s. Didn’t really care about any of it, except glad that Elaine May got a prize. Drive home in the rain. Wake this morning in the rain, go to the Racquet Club for a pretty good weights session.