Over dinner with a speaker from England, he mentioned that King’s College, London was going through gut-wrenching budget cuts and that all sorts of humanities faculty were threatened with elimination. This sounded much worse than what is going on in University of Nevada, Reno, awful as those cuts are. I mentioned that I knew some German faculty at King’s College. He said they were probably at risk.
Imagine my surprise when upon googling the news, joining the Facebook page in protest to the cuts, reading through The Guardian on the matter, and finding a string of blogs that it turns out that the guy I knew from back in Berlin a few years ago was himself the professor/administrator held responsible for the cuts. According to an ocean of commentary, it seems that this German scholar has reached the height of professor, entered into an administrative appointment and is now administering the new budget plan upon the humanities.
One way to save German at universities—be the professor who works with the administration to reduce the humanities. I had never really thought of this strategy—rather than trying to save German language and culture instruction, one should ascend to the level where one administers the cuts to other departments as well as one’s own. This sounds almost like a brilliant John Le Carré plot. The administrator eliminating the humanities is actually working for the humanities. He’s a double agent.
Clearly more investigation is required, but the brutal truth remains, clever ironies or not—London is chopping down philosophy and the humanities in general. You, too, should look into the matter.
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