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| Why Not Benson? |
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| Because he's not remotely qualified, that's why..... |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, February 13, 2008. There is scandal about the sole finalist for the Presidency of the University of Colorado. Bruce Benson was selected by a committee formed by the nine Regents, the elected governing board of the University. It was headed by Regent Steve Bosley, a conservative Republican who is often allowed political protection because he founded the popular Memorial Day footrace. The Bolder Boulder gives him undeserved cover when he does ill. Out of a world of possibility, Bosley’s committee selected, in secret, Bruce Benson, an oil magnate and highly partisan Republican Party member, once Chairman of the state GOP, failed gubernatorial candidate, and a founder of the borderline sleazy Trailhead group, which he leaves off his resume. Other supposed names mentioned included Lynn Cheney, the wife of our Vice President, and Condoleeza Rice, current Secretary of State. Rice would be totally qualified, but there is no actual indication she was remotely interested, or even if she were approached. It is also questionable if she would be the best possible choice. The less said about the mention of Cheney, the better. Bruce Benson has a less prestigious academic history than, say, Regent Cindy Carlisle who got her undergraduate and Masters from the Boulder campus. He’s only a BA, the same as me and less than a great deal of Boulder if Forbes magazine is any indication. But this is excused because - condescendingly chuckle the conservative shills and genuinely ignorant - the job of the University President is to raise money. And Benson has indeed been good at that for many charities and the University of Colorado in the past. But, before we go further, we need to inquire if that actually is the prime job of a University President, and ask if it is, rather, a corruption of the job, and whether, if true, it should remain so. The reason I ask is explained by continuing that train of thought to its end: the inevitability of a mere celebrity University President – say an Angelica Jolie or a Morgan Freeman – whose sole function is to spark the aging hormones of wealthy businessmen and widowed heiresses to cough out cash, and be the public face of negotiated deals. If that’s the foremost criteria for the presidency, why not? I can see it happening within the decade. There's far more to it, of course. Professional academics, who are often just as secular yet unworldly and clueless as anti-education conservatives claim, react as if it’s a personal insult that a University President has no advanced degree and harbors small insight to their recondite and cloistered world. They’re correct, it is an intended insult, because business virtues dictate that Universities be mere industrial research centers for the profits of major corporations, much like their football teams serve as training centers for the NFL, and indirectly or directly funded by regressive taxation, tuition, and fees. Business doesn’t want actual students so much as the free research they provide. They’re only interested in increasing the labor supply and downing the salaries of those whose skill they need. They have no interest in raising the overall education level of the nation, of increasing knowledge that doesn’t profit them. Despite their periodic pose as such, businesses cannot be viewed as citizens with common goals for the betterment of the commonweal, because that is often in contradiction of responsibility to the stockholder. Business virtues are hardly invalid. They do provide the cash and the incentives that spark research and they do get results. It is necessary to partner with them, but at the same time they have to be subservient to higher values of, say, pure science, where experimentation is done for no clearly seen immediate benefit. That’s the sort of project a profitable business would reject. They should also be subservient to skill in expression, termed communication or art or, at this point, being merely able to speak and write coherently at a basic level. It takes knowledge of history and the constructual distinctions between languages to understand why people think differently and react differently, both in the past and today. And it’s important to be able to converse knowledgeably on many different and recondite subjects with those that research and teach them. They have to have faith their boss has a devotion to actual knowledge and its dissemination. Not just product and profit. The irritation here is that there are assuredly lots of more qualified people than Bruce Benson for the job. It was Steve Bosley’s job to find them, entice them, nab them, but he seems to have had no interest beyond a powerful fellow Republican, and this for political reasons having nothing to do with the future of CU or its students. |
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