Review: Christian Political Witness

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Christian Political WitnessWe were once told by a friend that she would not consider joining our church because it would mean she would have to change her political affiliation. Thankfully, if that ever was true, it is no longer. Yet when some hear the phrase “Christian political witness” it conjures up ideas of church support of a particular political agenda of one of the major political parties or an effort to gain political leverage to impose an agenda on a dissenting public. For many, that is alienating and smacks of the polarized politics so many of us detest.

I found that this volume, consisting of a collection of papers from the 2013 Wheaton Theology Conference, explores a very different, and much more nuanced political engagement. Stanley Hauerwas’ opening paper set a tone for the volume challenging the church to think of itself neither as allied with the state in some form of re-constituted Christendom nor simply a marginalized, privatized community in a secular culture but rather its own polis that exists as a public, material witness to the Lordship of Jesus over and against all other powers. The collection returns to this theme at the end as former Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Kenya, David Gitari, in his account of his own courageous witness confronting Daniel arap Moi, proposes an analogy between politics and fire. He writes,

“Our relationship with powers that be should be like our relationship with fire. If you get too close to the fire you get burnt, and if you go too far away you will freeze. Hence stay in a strategic place so that you can be of help. You can support the authority, but when they become corrupt you can criticize fearlessly.”

In between these “bookends” ten other scholars explored various aspects of this topic. Mark Noll looks at the antebellum use of scripture around the issue of slavery as a warning about our use of scripture in political witness, including an example of a more careful hermeneutic. Scot McKnight explores the idea of the kingdom and comes down against popular fashion in arguing that the presence of the kingdom is most visibly expressed through the church.  Timothy Gombis considers the political witness of Paul while George Kalantzis recounts the political engagement of the pre-Constantinian early church with Rome, particularly its refusal to engage in pagan sacrifice and of military service.

The following papers turned to more contemporary issues. Jana Marguerite Bennett suggests that the existence of the church challenges the public/private split and the relegation of family to the private sphere. William T. Cavanaugh explores the Citizens United decision that defines business corporations as persons. His objection to this decision is not the defining of corporations as “person” but the exclusive application of this to business, ignoring the long-standing idea of Christian communities seeing themselves as “bodies” in which individuals exist as part of a larger corporate whole. Peter Leithart turns to the often contested concerns about violence and God’s actions to destroy enemies, which he distinguishes from the unjust and sinful use of force, which he would define as violence.

The next two papers were, for me, the most thought-provoking. Daniel Bell gives us a fresh take on “just war” theory that moves beyond the “public policy checklist” approach to a “Christian discipleship” approach that considers the virtues the church nurtures related to just war criteria. Following this, Jennifer McBride challenges the triumphal and self-righteous approach often taken by churches with a repentance-based approach that acknowledges our own complicity in sin and invites others to join us in turning from it toward God.

The penultimate paper by David P. Gushee observes the absence in evangelicalism of a social teaching tradition similar to that found in Roman Catholicism or mainline Protestantism. He proposes a “social ethics of costly practical solidarity with the oppressed” and works out in brief form how this might apply to ten contemporary issues.

The question of how one engages or does not engage our political and power structures is unavoidable for any thoughtful citizen, believing or not. What ethic will inform that engagement? What ends will one pursue? The papers in this book provided helpful perspectives toward political engagements and structures that foster flourishing societies while resisting church or state tyranny and corruption.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Cars

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1961 Ford Galaxie from Ford ad

1961 Ford Galaxie from Ford ad

Dad let me go with him when he went to Baglier Ford to trade in his old Dodge for a sleek, dark blue 1961 Ford Galaxie. I remember the new car smell, the gleam of all that chrome, the front grille with low and high beam headlights side by side, the big round rear tailights and the hint of tailfins!

I think that was the day I fell in love with cars. That same year, my grandfather bought a 1961 Chevy Impala. I took lots of trips with my grandparents in that car. And the Ford-Chevy rivalry ran through our family. When I’d go for rides, I’d count Fords and Chevys. Chevys usually won.

That was the era of slot car race tracks. I had a big layout in my basement and everything from Ferraris to Buick Rivieras in my collection of cars. Later on, I would use some of the money I made cutting grass and delivering papers to go down to the Mahoning Pharmacy to buy the latest issue of Hot Rod or Road & Track. When I would walk to West Junior High, I would try to identify every car by year, make, and model. I was always on the lookout each fall to see examples of the new models.

1967 Pontiac Bonneville"BonnevilleLookRiverbendNOLA" by Infrogmation of New Orleans - Photo by Infrogmation. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

1967 Pontiac Bonneville – Photo by Infrogmation. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1967 my brother brought home a black 2 door Pontiac Bonneville coupe. It was the new definition of sleek with a sweeping roofline, stacked headlights and a 400 cubic inch V-8. I believe this was one of the cars styled by John DeLorean while he was still with GM. It came equipped with an 8-track tape deck and I couldn’t believe what Jefferson Airplane sounded like as Grace Slick sang “Want Somebody to Love.”

Not too long after, my dad bought a 67 Ford Galaxie — it also had that sweeping roofline and stacked headlights but was not quite as stylish. That was the car I learned to drive in and the car I was driving the first time I took out the girl who became my wife. I was working my way through and paying for college so borrowing the family car was the way we made ends meet.

1967 Ford Galaxie 500 By JohnBgon (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

1967 Ford Galaxie 500 By JohnBgon (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Youngstown is a car town. For years the steel manufactured in our mills supplied the auto industry. Then the auto industry came to town when GM opened a plant at nearby Lordstown in 1966 that became a new source of labor jobs and also a case study of labor troubles. Somehow, through all the ups and downs of the auto industry, GM has kept this plant open and it currently manufactures the Chevy Cruze.

I never owned a muscle car or a hot rod, despite my love affair with cars. But its funny how I still connect cars to different seasons of life. There was the Volvo I had my first year out of college that taught me about all the things that could go wrong with a car. Then there was the 77 Plymouth Volare’ (at least it had that sleek roofline like my brother’s Bonneville). That was the car we took on our honeymoon and later nicknamed the Plymouth Ruster. I associate our years in Cleveland with the silver Chevy Malibu that we bought second hand and ended up getting $1500 back from the state because the folks we bought it from had tampered with odometers. It was a good car we had for five years and ended up costing us just $1000.

Most of our time in Columbus was defined by Ford Taurus station wagons, the second of which we had for 17 years. That was the one my son learned to drive on. Now as empty nesters, we drive a Subaru Outback–good for hauling and the snowy winters we’ve had of late. It’s funny the things we associate with the times of our lives.

Are there cars you particularly remember or connect with a particular time of your life?

Want to read other posts in the Growing Up in Youngstown series? Just go to the “Growing Up in Youngstown” category on my homepage.

 

Connecting the Dots

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By User:Caesar (Edges traced in Inkscape using a self-taken photo.) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

By User:Caesar (Edges traced in Inkscape using a self-taken photo.) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I just created a Twitter account. I’ve already discovered that to an even greater degree than Facebook, one sees snippets of everything from local weather conditions to a celebrity plane crash to updates on China’s economy. One wonders whether it is possible out of all of this to have any coherent sense of the world.

This came up yesterday in a conversation with one of my grad students as we talked about the “faith formation” of people in a Bible discussion he facilitates. Each week they meet to discuss a different passage of scripture and gain a great deal from their interaction with the text as well as each other. They study “inductively” going from specific observations in the text to more general conclusions and applications of these conclusions to their own context. What we both noticed though was how easy it was for each week’s discussion to stand alone like a single “dot” on a paper without forming a bigger picture of, in this case, the Christian faith.

I was reminded then of a colleague who taught me a great deal about leading Bible discussions of a step he often included that he called “formulation.” We found that in studying a book of the Bible (or another piece of literature for that matter) the writers didn’t simply give us a series of disconnected stories but often traced and developed various themes or motifs through their work. For example, in Mark Jesus speaks of himself as “the son of man”, a term that could mean “a human being” or perhaps something more. Formulation might look at what we observe Jesus saying about “the son of man” throughout Mark. My friend is studying the book of Acts with his group and it contains a number of “sermons” by various figures (probably summaries because most could be read aloud in a minute or so and were probably longer). We talked about how one could develop an idea of these earliest believers grasp of the Christian message by looking for both unique and recurring elements in the sermons.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons I write book reviews. What I find I am trying to do is boil down works of 100,000 words or more to an 800 word or less summary that “connects the dots” of the main ideas of a work and my reaction to those ideas. I used to be daunted by this task as a grade school-er assigned a book review. I actually think all those Bible study experiences of formulation, of looking for patterns, has helped with that process.

The more challenging task for me, at least, is to do the same thing with life. It’s easy for life to simply feel like a jumble of “experience dots” on a piece of paper. A steady stream of emails, texts, tweets, and posts on news feeds only accentuates this. Periodically I take retreat days. Sometimes I use the practice of examen to review the day. As a Christian I describe my aspiration in life as “following Jesus.” I have to admit that it is not always clear every day where that is taking me. Sometimes these practices of looking back seem crucial to begin to “connect the dots”. I begin to trace some of the patterns of the unique ways Christ is working in my life while other things still seem murky. It doesn’t all make sense, but this reflection gives me enough to see that there is One who is making sense of my life as I go forward.

Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Steve Jobs said something similar in his Stanford Commencement address in 2005:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.”

As a Christian, I think that “something” is the Jesus I follow and that it is a life lived pursuing him that “connects the dots”into something that is not a chaotic jumble. Those times of looking back teach me to trust him as a good guide as well as deepening my self-understanding. But each day faces me afresh with the choice to venture forth into the unknown trusting that it is one more dot in the picture.

Review: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

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The Everything StoreIt is probably no exaggeration that hardly a day goes by without me having some contact with Amazon. If nothing else, there are usually a few e-mails from them in my inbox. When I’m writing about books, I sometimes link to their listing of the book. I have a library of e-books, many from Amazon on my Amazon Kindle. I’ve ordered everything from books to batteries for my car keys to rice cookers from their website. I guess I’m something of a poster child for “the everything store”.

Brad Stone, a Bloomberg Businessweek writer covered Amazon from its beginnings and gives us a fascinating narrative of both the company and its founder based on insider interviews as well as his long relationship with Jeff Bezos.

The story begins with a child prodigy who never knew his biological father until a few years ago. Years later we meet him working as a highly successful hedge fund analyst for D. E. Shaw as he conceives the idea of an online everything store at the dawn of the internet. He left in 1994 and ended up a year later writing to a former associate to come join him in Seattle to help with a start up he was calling Amazon.com. The rest is history. Tumultuous history.

By Steve Jurvetson (Flickr: Bezos’ Iconic Laugh) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By Steve Jurvetson (Flickr: Bezos’ Iconic Laugh) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Much of the tumultuousness lies with Jeff Bezos himself who was relentlessly focused on one thing: delivering a great customer experience while scaling up product categories from books to music to toys to most anything imaginable. Stone recounts the harrowing struggles to build an infrastructure capable of providing the service to which Bezos was fanatically committed–from website to fulfillment centers to shipping. Bezos found the investors to buy him the space to trade operating losses for market share, giving him the leverage to relentlessly negotiate the lowest prices from suppliers (a tactic he learned from Walmart). He described his mindset as a cheetah hunting sickly gazelles.

Bezos, like counterparts Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, was known for his legendary temper and withering “Jeffisms” but also his honking laugh. He demanded total dedication from his executives and most found it both exhilarating and exhausting to the point of burnout. A forward of a customer e-mail from Bezos with a question mark would bring everything to a halt while a satisfactory resolution was made. Instead of PowerPoints, Bezos demands six page narratives from executives in business meetings, believing that much gets obscured between the bullet points.

He sought to define Amazon not as a retailer but as a technology leader. The creation of Amazon Web Services led to the advent of cloud computing as Amazon realized that its server capacity could become a profit center. And he had the courage to creatively disrupt the core of his business, bookselling, through the Fiona project to develop an e-reader and to pressure publishers to provide 100,000 titles in e-format by the launch date of the first Kindle. Others had attempted to develop e-readers. Amazon figured out how to use cellular service to instantly deliver titles to those e-readers and to provide a selection that made it a viable product that would change the way we read.

While driving companies like Circuit City and Borders into bankruptcy, Bezos wrestled to define the company in “missionary” rather than “mercenary” terms. And his own struggle perhaps explains why so many of us have a love-hate affair with Amazon as well. We love the flawless ease of downloading a book to a Kindle or other device before going on a trip and the wonder of ordering a last minute gift and having it at your door in two days (for free with Prime). Yet we hate that apparent competitive ruthlessness reminiscent of the robber barons that has contributed to the demise of big booksellers like Borders and some of the smaller indie stores as well. And perhaps we don’t like to admit to ourselves that convenience and sometimes price trump principle and aesthetics in our own purchasing habits. Yet we find ourselves fascinated with the person whose genius and relentless drive built this sprawling enterprise out of a website and very limited warehouse space in Seattle.

What is yet more fascinating is the personal dream Bezos’ Amazon wealth helps to fund–a venture called Blue Origin, aiming to develop commercial space flight from a 290,000 acre ranch in Texas. Brad Stone gives us a narrative of a man with no small ambitions, a razor-sharp intellect, and a relentless focus on the person who will consume his product, whether purchased at Amazon.com or read in his recently acquired Washington Post. I came away from this narrative with a deeper understanding of the incredibly fine line Bezos and his company walk between genius and hubris. The question I wonder about is whether Bezos will be able to sustain walking in that tension and living on that edge.

Bob on Books is Now on Twitter @bobonbooks

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twitter logoYou can now follow Bob on Books on Twitter @bobonbooks. I won’t be tweeting about everything I do and everywhere I go, but this can be a handy way to find out when a new post goes up (and share it with your followers if you like it!). If this is your preferred way to stay connected on social media, you can now find my thoughts on books, reading and life @bobonbooks.

Review: College Unbound

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College UnboundWhat will be the return on a $50, $100, $200,000 investment in an undergraduate college degree? That is the question parents and students are increasingly facing. Is this worth taking on student loan debt that could exceed $100,000? And how does one evaluate the education on offer beyond the attractive brochures and tours of campus?

These are questions Jeffrey Selingo addresses. As a writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education he is well-positioned to help parents and students to understand the landscape of higher education.

Selingo begins by describing the vigorous competition among institutions to provide what is perceived as the gateway credential to an upwardly mobile economic life, With that, he describes the efforts of colleges to woo students with everything from luxury dorms to climbing walls. He also explores the growing crisis of student loan debt (“the trillion-dollar problem”) as well as the shaky balance sheets of some colleges. Desperate for “full tuition paying” students, universities are increasingly marketing themselves to affluent or government-supported internationals from other countries.

This leads to a discussion of forces that are disrupting and changing the higher ed landscape. Much of this focuses on the game-changing advent of online technology and how this is changing the student learning experience and how people put a degree together. “Nimble” institutions will address these issues and provide ways for undergraduates to combine physical classroom experience, online resources and course credits from other institutions into a degree.

The third part of his book focuses on the future. Selingo starts with the issues of how college choices are made and the need to ask harder questions about graduation rates, particularly for students in one’s economic bracket. He contends that reputation does matter, not only in return on investment but also, in many cases, in retention and graduation rates. He also argues that it is important to look at curriculum, that developing critical thinking skills matters more than majors and that collaborative work experiences, study abroad, and capstone projects position students not only for their first jobs but subsequent ones.

The book concludes with a collection of vignettes of creative programs and a checklist for parents and students as they engage the college search process.

It seems to me that Selingo’s book is very helpful reading for students and parents as they enter the college search. It is also important in naming some of the elephants in the room in higher education discussions. He identifies questions and resources that help parents go into the college search with eyes wide open.

What I find less helpful is the acceptance of the value of college primarily or almost exclusively in terms of career preparation. I think this is the big concern of most parents and students but it represents a shift in thinking about the mission of higher education that goes unacknowledged. Selingo certainly describes instances of students finding a “calling” through their university experiences but it is disturbing to find one more instance of an approach to college education that largely portrays both colleges and the students who go through them as cogs in our economic machinery. It seems to me that this is neither what colleges nor people exist for.

The Month in Reviews: February 2015

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February is always a short month. It was also a “full court press” month in my work with travel and several major events. Somehow I managed to finish nine books this month ranging from another John Scalzi novel to The Bully Pulpit to a fascinating book on the value of vulnerability and a thought-provoking treatment on the idea of revelation (not the book but the concept) by a young Catholic theologian. Here’s the list with links to the full reviews:

1. Paul and Judaism Revisited: A Study of Divine and Human Agency in Salvation by Preston Sprinkle. Sprinkle thinks a more nuanced view is needed of the continuity between Judaism and Paul than is proposed by “New Perspective” theologians.

Paul & JudaismBully PulpitDaring Greatly2. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin. A magnificent work that introduced me to the lesser know figures of William Taft and the muckraking journalists like Ida Tarbell who set a high bar for investigative journalism. Of course, there was also a fascinating portrait of Teddy Roosevelt, as well as the complicated relationship between him and Taft.

3. Daring Greatly by Brene’ Brown. Brown explores how the courage to be vulnerable leads us to personal wholeness, human connection, better parenting, and more effective organizational life.

4. 30 Events that Shaped the Church by Alton Gansky. Gansky gives us a highly readable narrative of key events throughout church history. I would have wished for more from outside the western world and more about the African-American church’s contribution, particularly around civil rights.

Essential EschatologyRevelation30 events5. Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation: The Mediation of the Gospel Through Church and Scripture by Matthew Levering. Levering is a Catholic theologian publishing with an evangelical publisher who both upholds a high view of the inspiration and authority of the Bible while also arguing for the important role of the church in its councils, liturgy and leadership for mediating a clear and unified understanding of that revelation.

6. Essential Eschatology: Our Present and Future Hope by John E. Phelen, Jr. Hope is a theme of this book that explores how our future hope may shape our present lives.

7. The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi. The second in “The Old Man’s War” series which explores the ethical landscape of enhanced human clones grown specifically to become Special Forces troops in the midst of a riveting plot.

Ghost BrigadesProtegeShepherding God's Flock8. Protege’: Developing Your Next Generation of Church Leaders by Steve Saccone with Cheri Saccone. The Saccones outline five key elements of their leadership development work: Character, Relationships, Communication, Mission, and Entrepreneurial Leadership.

9. Shepherding God’s Flock: Biblical Leadership in the New Testament and Beyond edited by Benjamin Merkle and Thomas Schreiner. The contributors to this volume do just what the title proposes, albeit from a common, shared Southern Baptist perspective.

I thought this month I might start including my “best book” recommendation, and “best quote” simply for your enjoyment!

Best Book: Hands down, it had to be The Bully Pulpit for its exploration of presidential influence, the role of the press, and the fascinating portraits of Roosevelt, Taft, and the muckraking team of journalists that gathered around McClures.

Best quote:  Consistent with my best book recommendation, but cited from Daring Greatly is this quote from Theodore Roosevelt in a speech at the Sorbonne in 1910:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Previews for March: A collection of essays on Christian political witness, a book exploring the future of higher education, a mystery by Michael Innes, a narrative on the rise of Amazon, and her founder, Jeff Bezos, and the place of paradox in our spiritual journey.

All “The Month in Reviews” post may be accessed from “The Month in Reviews” category on my home page. And if you don’t want to wait a month to see my reviews, consider following the blog for reviews as well as thoughts on reading, the world of books, and life.

 

Review: Shepherding God’s Flock

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Shepherding God's FlockI’ve always found it interesting that scripture likens the people of God to a flock of sheep. Sheep are defenseless, are not very intelligent and easily panicked. If well-cared for by shepherds who protect, nourish, and do not abuse them, they turn grass into massive quantities of wool. I could spend time on the ways God’s people are like sheep, but for the purpose of this review, the more important question is how those who lead God’s people are to be like shepherds. Indeed, the term pastor is derived from a term meaning “shepherd”.

This book, edited by Benjamin Merkle and Thomas Schreiner, is a collection of articles exploring this question, considering not only the character of those who “shepherd” God’s flock but also the structures of leadership that most closely reflect biblical teaching. And it is here that I should give a caveat. It is not apparent either on the cover material or in descriptions of this book, that it is written from a Southern Baptist perspective. All the contributors are either theologians or pastors associated with Southern Baptist institutions and so the book reflects the polity and theological convictions of the Convention, although advocating strongly for plural eldership, which is not necessarily the practice of many Southern Baptist churches which have a single pastor-elder. In particular, all teaching roles are limited to men, while diaconal roles which do not involve teaching are also open to women.

Given that, the contributors nevertheless provide an accessible account of biblical teaching and subsequent church practice around leadership. Whether one agrees with the perspective of the contributors or not, there is much of worth in this volume. It begins by exploring the question of the degree to which the church derived its leadership structures from the synagogue structure of Judaism. While noting the carry-over of elders, it argues that the church usage focuses on spiritual rather than a larger civic role. The next three chapters explore the New Testament teaching on leadership. Particularly in Acts and the Epistles, it argues that the terms “bishop” (or overseer), “elder”, and “pastor” all refer to the same person, where elder is the office and pastor and overseer describe the functions of this office. It also notes the precursor to the diaconal role in Acts 6 and the teaching on deacons in the pastorals. And these also substantiate the local rule of congregations with a connectional association, particularly with the Jerusalem church.

Two succeeding chapters provide a history of the papacy, that while not favoring this structure, was more descriptive than critical. Similar treatments follow of Presbyterian, and Anglican forms of church government, each with some critique at the end of the chapters.  Then the case is made for the Baptist form of church government, allowing that plural teaching (but not ruling) elders best conforms to scripture, that congregational rule is most biblical, and against any church hierarchy. Bruce Ware then gives a summary theology of church leadership from this perspective followed by a pastoral exhortation by Andrew Davis on the practice of church leadership in today’s world.

I found the book helpful for its review of the biblical material and its discussion of church leadership vis a vis the Jewish context out of which the church sprang. The review of leadership through church history was informative and much of the material on the contemporary practice of leadership challenging to live up to, regardless of the context in which one practices leadership–particularly the emphasis on being scripturally informed, patient and yet bold in leadership, and protecting God’s flock against attack. This all is a healthy corrective to the excessive attention to business models of leadership given in many church leadership texts.

I do not think the contributors adequately dealt with the argument that church leadership structures were still in formative stages during the period when the New Testament texts were written, or the contention that things written to particular local situations are prescriptive for all time. Nor do they deal with how structures beyond the local congregation played a critical role in articulating and regulating orthodoxy and orthopraxy throughout the church.

This book will be most helpful for those from Baptist-related polities or those who wish to better understand Baptist theology and practice around church leadership. Others can profit from the biblical and historical discussions keeping in mind the bias of the contributors.

_____________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — WHOT

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WHOT Good Guys

Classic “Gangster” Poster of the WHOT Good Guys

“Yes indeedie-doodie-daddy.”

You know you grew up in Youngstown in the 60’s or the 70’s if you recognize that classic greeting by disc jockey Boots Bell on WHOT, the home of rock and roll in Youngstown during those years. Boots Bell not only was popular on the radio and at local dances but was also a communications professor at Youngstown State during the years we were in college.

Boots Bell was part of a team of disc jockeys collectively known as “the Good Guys” and included at various points Johnny Kay, Jerry Starr, Allen Scott, Johnny Ryan, “Big Al” Knight (the “all night” disc jockey), Dick Thompson and Smoochie Causey among others during this period.

Early mornings I would get up to Johnny Kay reading school lunch menus and shave and wash up to the upbeat tunes coming over my transistor radio. My wife remembers her mother turning him on just in time to play the Monkees “Day Dream Believer” at full volume with the line, “cheer up sleepy Jeannie” (her middle name is Jean and this was mom’s way to try to get her out of bed!).

Many of us would go to bed at night listening to “Nights in White Satin” with those haunting closing lines “breathe deep the gathering gloom”. In between, during the day, we would listen for the “cash call” amounts and try to be the right caller to win the jackpot. We would listen for the top 40 tunes each week and the top 100 countdown at the end of each year that seemed to take a good part of the day.

WHOT Days Ticket courtesy of my wife

WHOT Days Ticket courtesy of my wife

The Good Guys were fixtures in the Youngstown community, taking there turns appearing at dances all over the area. I remember watching them play basketball against the teachers at Chaney High School. One of the most remembered community involvements of this group was at WHOT Days at Idora park, where there was a special admission to the park for the day and they broadcast live.

Youngstown was a rock and roll town with a garage band in every neighborhood. WHOT captured and magnified our love for this music during what many of us think was the greatest era of rock and roll–from Buddy Holly and the Drifters in the 50s through the Beatles and the British invasion to the psychedelic music of the Doors and Cream in the late 60s. I listened to all of these late at night with a headphone plugged into my transistor radio so that my folks would think I was sleeping (and indeed they learned to check because I usually fell asleep with the radio on and the earphone still playing).

Most of us grew up listening to WHOT on the AM dial at 1330. Later they had an FM station at 101.1 (still known as Hot 101 in Youngstown). Eventually the AM station moved to 1390, which later became WNIO.  But back in the day, all of us had our transistor radios or car radios tuned to 1330, which was the voice of rock and roll in Youngstown.

What were your memories of WHOT?

 

 

College Whys

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Nassau Hall, Princeton "Nassau Hall, Princeton" by Smallbones, cropped by Inabluemn - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nassau_Hall_Princeton.JPG. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nassau_Hall,_Princeton.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Nassau_Hall,_Princeton.jpg

Nassau Hall, Princeton “Nassau Hall, Princeton” by Smallbones, cropped by Inabluemn –  Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons –

Inside Higher Ed, an online website of news, articles, op-eds, and position postings, has an amusing post today on 50 Questions About Higher Education all of which begin with “why”. You will get a chuckle out of many of them, and if you work at all around the higher education world, you will say “yep”.

One that probably evokes a chuckle but also masks what I think is a serious issue is:

Why don’t we conclude that if it takes 10 months to fill an important administrative vacancy and the place doesn’t fold in the meantime, then perhaps we could do without it?

The issue that this masks is the explosive growth of administrative positions at most universities that far exceeds the growth of full-time faculty positions on these campuses. One study shows that between 1976 and 2011, employees in the full-time non-faculty professional role grew by a whopping 369 percent while the number of full-time tenured and tenure track faculty grew by a mere 23 percent. Student enrollment in this same period grew by 52.3 percent according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

What’s going on here? Some of this reflects a trend toward “student services” which includes everything from enhanced academic advising to state of the art recreation centers with a variety of student “wellness” professionals to address both the physical and psychological wellness of students. A good part of this also reflects a growing number of deans, associate deans and a variety of other administrative levels between faculty and university presidents. Another article pointed out that the central administration of the California State University system has a larger budget than three of its twenty-three campuses.

Plainly, the bulk of rising university costs are have nothing to do with the academic mission of the university. In fact to control these costs (remember the 23 percent growth of faculty vs. 52 percent growth in students?), we have seen a 286 percent increase in part-time faculty and a 259 percent increase in full-time, non-tenured faculty. What is most troubling are the extremely low wages and lack of benefits many of these people receive, earning $2500 to $4000 per course and often having to cover any health care plan they are on out of these wages.

Another of the questions asked in this article was:

Why do adjuncts adjunct under such conditions?

I think the reason most do is that these people both love their subject area and love teaching. Many really care about students but often are more or less invisible within their own departments. One adjunct I know meets students at a local Panera. Many have nothing more than a shared office. Most of these adjuncts hold Ph.D’s in their field and aspire to tenure track positions, which may be one reason they don’t give up on teaching in universities. But as adjuncts or lecturers it is very difficult to continue to do the research and writing necessary to compete for these few positions. This week, for the first time, adjuncts staged a National Adjunct Walkout Day to protest these conditions.

Very simply, I would argue that American higher education is a broken and unjust system. What strikes me is that the most powerful, those in top administration in universities, while saying they are controlling costs, are protecting the privilege of high salaries among their own kind. Sadly, cost-cutting in higher education has tended to be at the expense of research funding and the hiring of the best of our crop of Ph.D’s to teach our children.

What is to be done? I do not consider myself an expert in these things but it seems several things follow:

1. State boards of regents and the university boards of trustees must tackle this problem and figure out how academic bureaucracies may be streamlined while hiring more full-time tenure-track faculty (while rigorously monitoring excellence in teaching). If we do not do this, we risk losing the best minds in this country from higher education and research.

2. If I were considering grad school in an academic field, I would seriously consider not entering this crazy and exploitative system until it gets its house in order. If one still decides to go to grad school, I would have an alternative plan for work other than adjuncting after graduation if you do try to pursue one of the scarce tenure track positions. The fewer people out there “enabling” this unjust system, the more it will be forced to change.

3. To some degree, universities and colleges are consumer-driven and this bureaucratic bloat reflects to some degree a sense of what students and parents “want”. Students and parents should realize that a significant portion of their ballooning debt loads have nothing to do with quality academic training in the student’s chosen field.

We have had one of the top university systems in the world. But other countries are rapidly gaining and other models are arising that do not indulge in this administrative “bloat”. Since it is time, and past time to address these questions, my concluding question is “why don’t we?”