The Bureaucrats of Empire Gain Stronger Footing in Maxwell
The academic division that my department resides in recently announced the hiring of a new dean. The hiring process was highly contested and revealed deep divisions in this corner of the university. With the new hire, the school’s leadership has made it abundantly clear where they stand in these conflicts, and that is on the side of money, prestige, and establishment politics.
Three candidates to be the new dean were highly qualified with extensive academic and administrative backgrounds, and one candidate was a foreign policy bureaucrat in Washington, DC – what former head of the Geography department Don Mitchell would call a ‘bureaucrat of empire.’ Our university has chosen the bureaucrat. It appears as if the transition from center of higher learning to dogmatic extension of the national security/surveillance state, already well underway before this hiring process, has just been accelerated greatly.
While it is unlikely that our new dean will be here for more than three or four years – as a colleague pointed out to me, a university dean position in upstate NY is probably not this gentleman’s ultimate career goal – I still find it important to revisit Don’s comments from several years prior, when he addressed some of the future bureaucrats of empire who were then graduating from their training here. I urge you to read Don’s remarks. His ‘practical advice’ remains more important than ever not only here in the ivory tower, but in the broader realm of American politics as well.
Good to see you still writing. Don’s points are well-taken. Just remember when it all goes to hell, you’ve got a place to stay out in the middle of nowhere!