T. S. Eliot coined the phrase “dissociation of sensibility.” That phrase is especially applicable today in light of Columbia University's three deans who were suspended because of their insensitive and dismissive exchanges during a meeting concerning antisemitism on campus. *
Roots of Insensibility and Insensitivity
Is our species as much wired for indifference as it is wired for empathy and compassion? Wired more so for insensitivity? Is sensitivity innate or learned?
As I have repeatedly argued, that which is not personal is meaningless. If we are wired for sensibility and sensitivity, are we from our births not connected to the source the way a new home has wiring but no electricity until the homeowner joins the public utility? Is it the public connection that infuses the wires with feeling and compassion? Or, similarly, are our wires sometimes connected to public source of insensitivity and insensibility?
Apparently, the three deans feel they have no "skin in the game.” That is, they seem not to have been personally affected by the heartache and anxiety of Jewish students persecuted on campus by rabid antisemites. There was little empathy in their wires, indicating that they had decided to “go off grid” rather than connect to the public history running to the power plant at Auschwitz and an historical Holocaust.
Such is the protected, unconnected class of Ivy League elites who fancy they dwell in a dimension void of nitty-gritty ordinary human concerns. They are like EV owners who think electricity starts at the electric wall outlet.
Is their indifference mired in pretension and hubris because they are shielded from accountability and reality by lucrative tenured jobs? Is it because inflated Ivy League endowments swollen in part by wealthy Jewish alumni have driven the deans to the apex of narcissism?
Intellectual vs Emotional Understanding
T. S. Eliot’s phrase centers on the separation that he saw between intellect and emotion in English poetry, particularly in the pre-Romantics of the Enlightenment. Think of cold, rational thought as opposed to passion. Make sense? Well, if not, here’s a non-poetic example that makes the point:
Two nuns were in a rowboat on a lake when the boat began to leak. One nun, seeing a growing puddle engulf her feet, said dispassionately, “Oh! Our shoes.” The other nun screamed for help.
That dissociation of sensibility expressed by “Oh! Our shoes” is a rather neutral attitude in comparison with the smugness of Columbia’s three suspended deans. They exhibited the same indifference to the lives of Jewish students that Germans showed to Jews during WWII. So, how did we get to this dissociation in academia?
It’s Aways Been like This
I hazard this hypothesis: In a time trip to Bologna shortly after the founding of the first university there, we would encounter the same hubris and self-importance in those first academicians that we encounter at Columbia today. Academia is for professors a source of apotheosis, the ivy-covered towers serving as Olympian realms of esoteric communication buried in a special vocabulary spoken only by the elite denizens.
Simple: Academia is given to a sense of power and elitism born in isolation from everyday concerns. Professors wield absolute authority over their immature, malleable and mostly ignorant charges. They can speak with uncontested authority in classrooms and coffee shops. Like popular entertainers they garner fans who idolize them, and the idolizing just goes to their heads.
For Whom the Campus Carillon Tolls
Has the recent campus turmoil rung the bell of accountability? Has it sounded the alarm that not only are the insensitive elites coming, but that they have already arrived—nay, been living among our young since Bologna’s founding in 1088, and maybe even since the founding of Morocco’s al-Qarawiyyin in the ninth century. Has society made the mistake of designating faculties “in loco parentis” without actual parental oversight? **
The potential for all organizations is to burgeon bureaucratically. Universities are protected from economic downturns by ever-renewing freshmen classes that bring an influx of new money that, in turn, builds a treasure provided by outgoing devoted alumni. Flush with funds, these institutions have invented jobs that have little or nothing to do with educating the young: Thus, the plethora of deans and other managers we see on campuses today, with people paid lucratively in managerial jobs like DEI Director, Dean of This, and Dean of That.
Is the suspension of the three Columbia deans a knell of change? I doubt it. Look at the titles of the three deans who mocked the plight of the Jews on their campus:
Matthew Pataschnick, Columbia’s associate dean for student and family support
Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life
Susan Chang-Kim, Columbia College’s vice dean and chief administrative officer
(“Vice Dean”? Is that a dean’s dean? Do both dean and vice dean have staffs of secretaries and student workers at their command?)
*Chris Nesi. NY Post. “Three Columbia deans placed on leave over disparaging text exchange during antisemitism panel.” Online at https://nypost.com/2024/06/21/us-news/three-columbia-deans-placed-on-leave-over-disparaging-text-exchange-during-antisemitism-panel/
**”In place of the parent”
Roots of Insensibility and Insensitivity
Is our species as much wired for indifference as it is wired for empathy and compassion? Wired more so for insensitivity? Is sensitivity innate or learned?
As I have repeatedly argued, that which is not personal is meaningless. If we are wired for sensibility and sensitivity, are we from our births not connected to the source the way a new home has wiring but no electricity until the homeowner joins the public utility? Is it the public connection that infuses the wires with feeling and compassion? Or, similarly, are our wires sometimes connected to public source of insensitivity and insensibility?
Apparently, the three deans feel they have no "skin in the game.” That is, they seem not to have been personally affected by the heartache and anxiety of Jewish students persecuted on campus by rabid antisemites. There was little empathy in their wires, indicating that they had decided to “go off grid” rather than connect to the public history running to the power plant at Auschwitz and an historical Holocaust.
Such is the protected, unconnected class of Ivy League elites who fancy they dwell in a dimension void of nitty-gritty ordinary human concerns. They are like EV owners who think electricity starts at the electric wall outlet.
Is their indifference mired in pretension and hubris because they are shielded from accountability and reality by lucrative tenured jobs? Is it because inflated Ivy League endowments swollen in part by wealthy Jewish alumni have driven the deans to the apex of narcissism?
Intellectual vs Emotional Understanding
T. S. Eliot’s phrase centers on the separation that he saw between intellect and emotion in English poetry, particularly in the pre-Romantics of the Enlightenment. Think of cold, rational thought as opposed to passion. Make sense? Well, if not, here’s a non-poetic example that makes the point:
Two nuns were in a rowboat on a lake when the boat began to leak. One nun, seeing a growing puddle engulf her feet, said dispassionately, “Oh! Our shoes.” The other nun screamed for help.
That dissociation of sensibility expressed by “Oh! Our shoes” is a rather neutral attitude in comparison with the smugness of Columbia’s three suspended deans. They exhibited the same indifference to the lives of Jewish students that Germans showed to Jews during WWII. So, how did we get to this dissociation in academia?
It’s Aways Been like This
I hazard this hypothesis: In a time trip to Bologna shortly after the founding of the first university there, we would encounter the same hubris and self-importance in those first academicians that we encounter at Columbia today. Academia is for professors a source of apotheosis, the ivy-covered towers serving as Olympian realms of esoteric communication buried in a special vocabulary spoken only by the elite denizens.
Simple: Academia is given to a sense of power and elitism born in isolation from everyday concerns. Professors wield absolute authority over their immature, malleable and mostly ignorant charges. They can speak with uncontested authority in classrooms and coffee shops. Like popular entertainers they garner fans who idolize them, and the idolizing just goes to their heads.
For Whom the Campus Carillon Tolls
Has the recent campus turmoil rung the bell of accountability? Has it sounded the alarm that not only are the insensitive elites coming, but that they have already arrived—nay, been living among our young since Bologna’s founding in 1088, and maybe even since the founding of Morocco’s al-Qarawiyyin in the ninth century. Has society made the mistake of designating faculties “in loco parentis” without actual parental oversight? **
The potential for all organizations is to burgeon bureaucratically. Universities are protected from economic downturns by ever-renewing freshmen classes that bring an influx of new money that, in turn, builds a treasure provided by outgoing devoted alumni. Flush with funds, these institutions have invented jobs that have little or nothing to do with educating the young: Thus, the plethora of deans and other managers we see on campuses today, with people paid lucratively in managerial jobs like DEI Director, Dean of This, and Dean of That.
Is the suspension of the three Columbia deans a knell of change? I doubt it. Look at the titles of the three deans who mocked the plight of the Jews on their campus:
Matthew Pataschnick, Columbia’s associate dean for student and family support
Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life
Susan Chang-Kim, Columbia College’s vice dean and chief administrative officer
(“Vice Dean”? Is that a dean’s dean? Do both dean and vice dean have staffs of secretaries and student workers at their command?)
*Chris Nesi. NY Post. “Three Columbia deans placed on leave over disparaging text exchange during antisemitism panel.” Online at https://nypost.com/2024/06/21/us-news/three-columbia-deans-placed-on-leave-over-disparaging-text-exchange-during-antisemitism-panel/
**”In place of the parent”
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