Subject: All the best in the coming New Year!!!

From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 02:36:37 -0500 (EST)

Dear CCL subscribers,
This is your coordinator speaking... (no... it is not about you
helping CCL, this will be my next message {:-)} -- BTW I am not kidding).

The New Year is coming soon... Yes... I did not post my traditional
"Holiday Tree" in many languages, since I want to be politically
correct. With the Globe looking like a powder keg, this is probably
a sensible pragmatic approach, though obviously an opportunistic one.

But the New Year is less "political" (or religious, as one may say).

   SO, PLEASE ACCEPT MY BEST WISHES FOR THE COMING YEAR!!!.

Of course, there are different calendars, but for convenience, we seem
to have agreed that the coming secular year is 2003 and it starts in
a few days.

For many of you the 2002 was a hard one. Even if we were lucky enough
to hold to our jobs, and even if we had some personal or professional
successes of our own, we hear around about the tragic victims of the economic
recession. But this time recession is different... It is not the merciless
but predictable economic cycle. It is something more frightening...
The basic assumptions that at some level of management or leadership
people just do it for fun of being "the influential and powerful" are
no longer valid. Yes, the big (and small) corporations for ages were
using all the dirty tricks, exerting pressure and influence with money
or threat. But the "corporations" did it for themselves, for "corporations".
But now, rules changed: many "leaders" are driven by their
personal greed. It is no longer about having a bust in the Board room,
it is about jumping from one company to another scooping as much
as possible, and demoralizing the management below them. Today a CEO of
a car company, tomorrow a great leader of the chemical company, and
next maybe a leader of some big shopping chain, for example. Not only
it is difficult to expect that people with such "wide interests" will
stay on the job long, it is hard to assume that they will be able
to create long term vision, beside the short term gimmicks based on
nice plots and diagrams produced on their laptops by software which
considers R and D an expenditure on the same level as lobbying
expenses or waste disposal charges.

How much of this mentality is now a part of Academia. Without quantifying,
it is safe to say that the model of "dying at the place where you got
your tenure" is quite outdated. It is nice to move from endowment to
endowment, and this is not a sin. At the same time, scientists are quite
conservative (or just not flexible enough) and still most of us probably
believe that we are the core of institutions which employ us and we are the
most important for their reputation. But it is sometimes hard to
confront this point of view with reality. In the US, and elsewhere,
the support for education at academia is diminishing at a scary pace.
Many Universities in the US (and situation is even worse in many
other countries), in the past 10-15 years lost up to a HALF of their
support for education from the state. At the same time, they grew
an army of "administrators" who were supposed to offset these losses
by other income, like federal and corporate contracts, patents,
licenses, technology transfer (i.e., commercial spin-offs), investments,
aggressive fund raising, etc., etc., With time the academic faculty
(or technical people in the industrial or government R and D) is/are not
the leading force shaping the institutions. The sources of revenue are...
And the public is happy... The basic education is slowly converted into
educament ("school has to be fun"), and the scientists are finally doing
something what we need, rather then wasting time on stuff which nobody
understands. And beside, more voters have kids in elementary school
than in college.

The money is the most important for the survival of the Universities
and research organizations. Reputation is not necessarily the most important
thing, and, quite frankly, may be at odds with the flexibility and utility
of these organizations, i.e., their ability to raise money. Who wants those
morons who give so many preconditions and are so picky? In the old times,
the scientists were looking for money to support what they wanted to do,
now they look for work which will bring some money so they can afford the
grad student. But it works, and as an effect of this approach, some
universities are doing pretty well, and their "overall research budget
in real dollars" grows. Great... But should they still be called Universities?

The myth of the better, the prestigious, the "Research" university is that
"top notch" scientists "doing important things" (i.e., doing stuff for
which they get money), can educate the students with "the latest
greatest", and of "practical importance", and for "critical sectors
of national economy". In fact, the people who bring big money, seldom
teach, and have even less time to advise their graduate students.
Essentially, it often looks like consultants/contractors are renting
a space and auxilary services at the University in exhange for overhead.
Of course, as always, there are exceptions, which as a rule are bought with
a 4 hours-a-day of sleep. How much more good things they could do if they
did not have to chase money bandwagon? To "motivate" faculty to bring "money"
there is a constant pressure to dismantle the tenure system (in some
states, the tenure is essentially an empty name). The professors'
productivity will be evaluated. If they do something useful, that
obviously, someone wants to give them money for it. The tenure system
was designed to give faculty a guarantee that even if there is nobody
else who agrees with them, they still have a chance to be stubborn.
The idea mostly forgotten nowadays, since faculty interests and
convictions are not really relevant or important in the academic environment.
They are expected to make a magical act of being objective, and work for
hire at the same time. But it cannot work. This comes after marginalizing
the "Free Press" and "Media" which no longer sell newspapers/news,
but sell ads for their corporate or political customers. The Catholic
Church (and not only) goes through terrible spasms of scandals, sexual
(and earlier business and banking ones), and while we still can find
individuals whom we can trust, we have doubts in the institutions.
The "Olympic" spirit is a joke. And your family doctor will get a cut
> from your prescriptions and lab tests. And the porn is the largest
business on the Internet. And when you ask kids what they want to
do when they grow up, the answer is: "make big money".

Maybe it was always like this, and we just pretended that we did not
see it. On the other hand,  "O tempora, o mores" was spoken in 63 BC.
We need some hope that respect, rather than money/respect_for_money
is the most important aspect of science, political life, human interactions
and cultural life. And my great wish to all of us is that we will find
this respect to our institutions, to our peers, to those above and below us,
and to ourselves in this coming 2003...

Have the best...  (Even if you do not agree with me {;-)})

Jan Labanowski
CCL Coordinator