The Height of Cynicism

This is about the worst thing I've seen in the past week. The title is

"A Violation of Trust..."

and this title closely echoes that of another very recent article about the same institution

"An Appalling Breach of Faith..."

The article I link to, though, takes the opposite perspective, though seeming to be balanced. It speaks of the president of this university as transformative, but not all transformations are good ones. He just fired faculty who pointed out things he had said.

The writer of this essay is head of an ethics institute. Almost all the comments blast her. Apparently the breach of faith was simply telling others that the president had said "drown the bunnies" as a colorful metaphor for what they should do with struggling freshman. The other colorful metaphor was "put a glock to their heads." I understand that that is some sort of firearm.

It's great to bring transformational business leaders into academia (not). I have a radical idea: let's have academics lead institutions of higher learning. Many academics have become deans and worked there way up from their, and are competent in public relations, in budgeting, in fund-raising. They move from deans to provosts or vice-provosts, learning as they go. They might do things faculty don't like, having switched to the other side too entirely, but this is not the same as someone with zero understanding of academia.