Office Vacation
Office Vacation
I remember the day, fourteen years ago, when I vacated my office. The university had given me a short deadline to get this done, so I requested an extension. They denied my request (without explanation) and told me they would charge me for every day I went over the announced date. I therefore recruited the head of department (Harvey Siegel) to assist with the work, along with my wife and a handyman we were employing at the time (he had a truck and handyman’s hands). We showed up one day soon after and carried out in boxes my many books and papers; it wasn’t light work. Given the urgency of the deadline, it wasn’t possible to take all the books (the truck was too small for one thing and the workers were getting tired). I therefore left many books in a big pile on my office floor. I instructed the departmental assistant to let any graduate students help themselves to my erstwhile library, which apparently they did. This was just one incident out of many, but it has a special poignancy.
I’m sorry about that..
and did angels armed with fiery swords guard your office emptied perhaps like a void?
It almost sounds like an eviction from an apartment for lack of rent or like some firing in the white collar world as if you were some grad student who had failed in your coursework as if these administrators were somehow your superiors in what sense I do not know.
What their psychology was I don’t know. No reasons were given. No reasons are given for why I am banned from campus. We can only guess.
Here’s my hypothesis, it involves making certain people feel unsafe and a cold bureaucracy in which all offenders whether crimes or misdemeaners, are persona non grata. The gravest sin is misogyny or offense against women broadly denoted, all forms of offense no matter how trivial are considered equally serious, whatever you allegedly did is as bad as Jeffrey Epstein just because institutional logic is clumsy and crude. You made some people feel unsafe, we’re all equal before the law, even if you are a brilliant philosopher as you are, that makes it worse, you will be an example that even the most brilliant philosopher can’t get away with whatever minor (but nothing is minor) offense (even though it wasn’t exactly specified) and you were given no due process at all. I apologize for being the fool to your Lear- that is probably what happened
I am not legally permitted to comment on the people involved or the merits of the case, so I will say nothing. I can only say that such incidents leave their mark.
I recall my day of cleaning out my office. I wasn’t canceled, though; I walked away by choice from the “adjunct zone.” This was a few weeks following a lengthy conversation with “my” departmental chair about how I’d run out of collectable vinyl records to sell on eBay, how an investment had gone sideways, how roughly half my salary was going just to cover rent, etc., etc. I told him I needed more money if I was going to stay there, and that was all there was to it. He turned me down flat, told me “we” were the most poorly funded department in the university. Looking around, with over half of recent hires adjuncts, many of us covering four classes for shit-starvation wages, I was inclined to believe him.
Three months later, I was living in Chile.
The benefits of living in a foreign country are plenty, and not just because the cost of living here is around half what it is in the U.S. One realizes that most of his past education was superficial at best (“boutique multiculturalism” was Stanley Fish’s colorful term: no substance, all performance). One interacts with a far wider variety of people than one will find on any college or university campus, including speakers of other languages (I’ve met people fluent in Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Yiddish, etc.). My philosophical conclusion about the nature of a language: its a system of somewhat fluid conventions, fluid in the sense that it responds to demands placed on it by ambient circumstances, and there’s not much more you can say about it “foundationally.” We don’t need, e.g., “theories” of reference; words and names refer because that’s what we use them to do.
FWIW women aren’t as culturally programmed by feminism to be suspicious of men like they are in the U.S. LOL, I had more dates my first year living in Santiago, Chile’s capitol, than I’d had the previous five years in the U.S. I met my wife here. She’s Chilean, obviously. Challenging, because there have been some cultural barriers, but it’s been worth it, and not simply because had I stayed in the U.S. I would probably be on the street by now.
I’d certainly recommend at least visiting foreign countries if it’s financially feasible, to gain a real world (as opposed to an academic) perspective on how other peoples think and act and live. In the case of Chile, at least minimal fluency is Spanish is a definite plus. Maybe 5% of Chileans are fluent in English beyond basic greetings. Another plus is patience with bureaucracy … this is a low-trust culture, its legal system based on Roman law instead of English common law. But since trust appears to have dropped like a rock everywhere including the U.S., that shouldn’t be too big of a deal.
P.S. My wife and I spent a couple of months in Miami-Dade Co. back in the summer of 22. She hated it! Too hot and humid, too many unfriendly (sometimes hostile) people including “our” psycho Airbnb host. Not to mention: *far* too expensive. First time in my life I paid $30 for a fricking pizza! So it goes….
Most of the people I now know are Latin, including women. I agree about American women.