DVD of my Ghent, Belgium performance now available

For anyone interested, a DVD version of the reading I gave in Ghent, Belgium along with K. Lorraine Graham is now available. The DVD was created by Svend Thomsen (shown by his equipment in the photo above) as part of his Trekanten Video Formidling (TVF) project. The quality of the DVD is impressively high, especially considering how so many literary reading films turn out. I’m grateful that on this particular film I don’t look like too much of a large, overbearing goon pretending to be a writer.

Anyone interested in obtaining a copy can write Svend directly at:

tvf@artvideo.tv

More information about other available TVF videos can be found on the tvf website:

www.artvideo.tv

This particular set is actually a two DVD set, the first (62 minutes) featuring Helen White’s introduction, my reading, and then K. Lorraine Graham’s reading.

The second DVD (45 minutes) features the reading and performance that followed our event featuring a variety of poets and performance artists who live in and near Ghent or were visiting at the time, including Olaf Risee, Leila Rasheed, Wouter De Bruycker, Eddy Debuf, N.N., Tine Moniek, Josef Hajas, Philip Meersman, Réné Mogensen, Xavier Roelens, and Jelle Meander.

I blogged earlier about the variety of work that I heard presented that night, an excellent cross-section of the kind of poetry being practiced in Ghent among several generations of writers and particularly among an active younger generation.

My reading on the DVD is a bit unlike other readings I’ve given, although it shared my usual tendency to try to present different kinds of work at a reading. I was aware that I was going to be reading to an audience of individuals with different degrees of fluency in English, although as Helen White had told me, everyone or nearly everyone in Ghent speaks at least some English. I thought that a variety of my more minimalist poetry might work better than denser, more overwhelming or linguistically disruptive material, although I presented enough challenges, I hope, to conventional notions of poetry.

Watching the DVD, I also came to the conclusion that this reading was one of the most consistently and directly political readings I’ve given. Politics and social issues are always a part of my work, but I tend to think of the most explicitly political elements of my writing as part of a more varied framework that tries to engage politics as only one element (although a significant one) of the social and linguistic concerns it explores. I tend to work with the political as one aspect of the fabric of experience and language, rather than either trying to purge the political or make it the whole point. Still, in this particular reading, because of choosing more minimal poems, a more direct politics and cultural criticism than usual seems to come out.

Lorraine’s reading looks and sounds good too, although the most minimal aspect of it is perhaps her understated use of the hoola hoop. Her pieces, many from her book Terminal Humming, constitute a kind of reportage about the various language styles of people in Washington, DC, from state department confuse-speak to the language of young women and men on the prowl for love, although the linguistic game playing and appropriation and sheer sonic invention she works with are much more than simply reportage.

By the way, Svend Thomsen has made it clear that he doesn’t discourage bootlegged versions of the TVF material he shoots, so if you’d rather contact me than him about the DVD, please feel free. But I doubt that he’ll ask for all that much money, so please do consider contacting him first.

California Public Higher Education: What's Happening to Students in the California State University System

The article I have linked to here does a good job of explaining some of the main problems facing students in California who are seeking a college degree at an affordable cost though the California State University system, which as the article points out is the largest university system in the U.S., one for which student applications admissions are continuing to grow rapidly.

I hope everyone will remember that though there are genuine financial issues involved, the changes that are happening in California public education are not inevitable but are happening because of specific political decisions. Those who want California's students to have affordable education in the future (and that would certainly include, I hope, those who have benefited from it in the past) can make a difference by supporting education awareness drives and, crucially, by supporting California politicians who believe in the value of public higher education.

Thanks to Lauren Mecucci for pointing the article out to me.

300: Contemporary Fascist Film-Making, American-Style

When I watched the movie 300 about two months ago, I was astounded, in the proverbial jaw-dropping way, to be seeing a film that struck me as one of the purest examples of a fascist aesthetic ever filmed, rivaling even a film like Triumph of the Will for the sheer promotional quality of its ideological implications, and in fact exploring more deeply than Triumph many aspects of fascist ideology. It’s amazing, in fact, that 300 makes Triumph of the Will look rather reticent regarding the ugliest parts of fascism. That a film this starkly fascist could have been made in the U.S. in 2006 and toured the usual run of suburban and urban multiplexes seems to me both intensely fascinating and horrifying. Whether it surprises me is something I’m still trying to figure out.

When I posted a brief Facebook (where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately) comment about the fascism of 300, a friend of mine wrote back to challenge me to define what I meant by “fascist aesthetic.” So, thanks to John, I put together the list below.

This list doesn’t for the most part describe my individual take on fascist art. I consider it just more or less a description of the main elements of fascist art work as it was defined by Hitler and other artist-fascists at work in the Nazi regime and elsewhere. If you would like my personal take on fascist art though, I’m happy to offer it: I don’t like it. Now there’s a surprise. Fascist art works through an avoidance of history and any actual material conditions of the world. It offers a violent mythology and epic cartoon designed to blur and hide anything resembling actual history.

As Michael Theune pointed out in his response to me on Facebook, another thing that 300 illustrates is that a fascist aesthetic can indeed result in a boring film, not to mention an absolutely preposterous one. Still, by watching the film with the sound off and my own alternative soundtrack blaring, as well as with a generous serving of long commercial breaks courtesy of TNT (you don’t think I rented the damn thing, do you?), I was able to watch 300 in compact snippets that really highlighted the film’s affects and goals.

Of course, an argument can be made that the Spartans, the subject of the film, really were the world’s first main proto-fascists. Still, nothing about 300 is designed to be historically accurate, so claiming that historical accuracy was the reason behind taking such an approach obviously won’t wash.

And now my list of the basic characteristics of fascist art:

1) Belief in the moral corruption and physical and mental inferiority of dark-skinned people, homosexuals, and the physically disabled (all of which groups are, in fact, more or less interchangeable, in some degree).

2) Belief that the only true calling for a man is that of soldier, and that there is no greater honor than to die for one's country.

3) A promotion of the muscled male physique in a standardized, glorified way.

4) Belief that governments and democracy are corrupt hindrances to the activities of great moral soldier-leaders, who deserve the right to make decisions for all without the input of corrupt, morally and physically weak others.

5) A monumental, cleanly lined architecture whose goal is to emphasize physical strength both of building and of human physique.

6) Obfuscations about freedom and conformity; all free men must look, think, and act alike.

7) A sense of being a small, embattled moral elite in a world of corruption and decadence.

8) As that small, embattled elite, the group must finally die in defense of its values. Oddly, in fascist art, success is less beautiful and emotionally fulfilling than death.

9) A mythological landscape on which the fascist drama can be played out, one that describes even the environment of the world as a pure function of fascist values. No actual material messiness is allowed in the details.

This list may not be complete, but I hope it’s at least a good start. Of course, many of these values can be found in other art that is by no means fascist. It's the total combination of these characteristics that makes for fascist art, and that also makes 300 such a significant and unexpected new addition to the genre.

And have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Listen Up, Student Applicants: Let’s Talk MFA in Creative Writing

It’s that time of year when students applying to graduate programs are putting together lists of schools and portfolios and asking for recommendations. U.S. professional culture now has full-blown Recommendation Mania but I’ll save the details of my critique of that for another time.

Over the last few weeks, there have been some extended and quite useful blog discussions of the problems and possibilities of the MFA in Creative Writing. I’m gathering a few relevant links here for people wanting to read more.

I hope especially that students in the process of applying for MFA’s will check out these discussions. And that includes all of you who have been stopping by my office to talk about graduate school applications.

A significant discussion of the political, social, and economic problems that MFA programs both suffer from and promote can be found at Rachel Zolf’s Tolerance Project blog. Both Rachel’s initial post and the many responses are all well worth considering in detail:

http://thetoleranceproject.blogspot.com/2009/10/statement-to-mfa-workshop-october-13.html

A discussion of an entirely different tone and topic, regarding MFA Program Rankings and their value and why the very idea of such rankings makes many writers purple-faced with rage, took place over at Elisa Gabbert’s blog:

http://thefrenchexit.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-people-dont-like-mfa-program.html

And, partly in response to the conversation on Rachel Zolf’s blog, K. Lorraine Graham posts the following thoughts about her own MFA experiences and desires, and some of the contradictions and complexities she has found:

http://terminalhumming.blogspot.com/2009/11/pauvre-pierrot.html

What follows in the rest of this post are some of my own thoughts on getting graduate degrees in creative writing. Take them or leave them, as you will.

There’s no doubt that MFA programs participate in, and benefit from, a situation in which there’s a lack of satisfying career options in the U.S. for people who are in the process of becoming writers or deciding whether to become writers. Too many people enter MFA programs because there isn’t anything else they can find worth doing while still trying to develop their writing. In some instances, I suppose, that’s caused by lack of imagination on the part of the person applying, but in many (and I would say probably most) others, it’s closer just to being a social fact of life in the U.S.A. One, by the way, that needs to change.

MFA programs also therefore participate in university exploitation of labor. An MFA may help someone become prepared to teach, but most of those teaching options are not great. Adjunct teaching at low wages and with no job security is not automatically or even usually a stepping stone to a successful career as a professor. It can be such a stepping stone (and beware professors who too smugly say “There are no jobs for professors” and appear to be taking pride in their own success at the impossible) but isn’t always or even often one.

It is worth noting that many people who get an MFA or even an academic Ph.D. and who don’t end up working in universities are not automatically doomed. In fact, many who take such a degree and then leave academic institutions for other careers (or work in those institutions at jobs other than teaching) do better, at least financially, than some people who continue working as teachers. Despite cliches about English majors, most people getting literary degrees are quite capable of surviving once they leave their academic programs. Imagine that.

In terms of actual academic jobs teaching creative writing, the less prestigious a university is, the more likely it is to require that professors of creative writing have an MFA or Ph.D. More prestigious universities (Ivy League universities, for instance, and some similar others) will more often hire writers simply for their achievement as writers, although that approach may be increasingly disappearing at all but the most elite U.S. institutions.

What that means is that at most U.S. universities, just being a publishing writer isn’t considered a good enough background for teaching creative writing. You have to have both the degree and publish. Many writers have been critical of this fact, and rightly so in most instances, since having an MFA doesn’t mean that someone is automatically going to move forward as a writer or that their writing is any good. Still, right now that’s how most U.S. universities and colleges operate.

This problem is also tied to the issue of how universities consider the importance of teaching and writing when it comes to being a professor. The less prestigious the school, the less likely its administrations are to really want to see its professors publish that much. That’s a sad fact. For instance, as several of my very helpful academic colleagues pointed out in letters they wrote supporting my application for tenure, the fact that I’ve published a lot didn’t actively hurt my ability to be a good creative writing professor. I’m not criticizing my colleagues in saying this; it was a good practical tactic. The point though is that too many administrators at too many institutions see publication as getting in the way of good teaching.

Students who enter an MFA program are probably best off when they know what MFA programs offer and what they can’t. Such programs give people a few years to read and write and learn and to have further chances to create a community of others who share their interests. They give people a professional credential that has some potential career and earning value, but by no means necessarily much. Therefore by no means do MFA programs necessarily solve the problem of anyone’s future work life, and of course most last only two years. They end fast.

The students who are especially best off in MFA programs are the ones who enter an MFA while either developing or already having developed other possible options for their future work lives. Remember the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” I myself worked as a professional journalist for many years, on and off, while getting my own academic degrees.

And remember, crucially, that getting an MFA degree doesn’t make anyone a writer. Only continuing to write will actually do that, and many people do that just as well without an MFA. And entering graduate school is not the only way to develop a connection to other writers or to become part of a community of them. Another approach is to move to a city where many writers already live and become part of the literary activities in that place.

One final irony here: having a developed social critique of MFA programs is helpful regarding knowing what you’re getting into, but is much less helpful than having other actual options.

I hope anyone with further thoughts or questions about MFAs will respond in the comments section.

Joseph Thomas and Mark Wallace reading at Agitprop this Saturday, November 7

The Agitprop Reading Series Presents:



Joseph Thomas and Mark Wallace



Saturday, November 7, 7 p.m.


A libertine of unimpeachable taste, Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. is an assistant professor of English at San Diego State University’s National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. He is the author of two books, Poetry’s Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children’s Poetry (Wayne State UP, 2007) and Strong Measures (Make Now Press, 2007). Poetry’s Playground was named a 2009 honor book by the Children’s Literature Association.


Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a short story collection, Walking Dreams (2007), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). Forthcoming in early 2011 is his second novel, The Quarry and The Lot. He teaches at California State University San Marcos.


Reading Location:
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Avenue in North Park
(Entrance on Utah St., behind Glenn's Market)
San Diego, CA 92104
For more information, call 619.384.7989

The Agitprop Reading Series is currently hosted by James Meetze, but this event will feature special guest host Steve Willard.

Summer Reading: Theory and Criticism

Adam Roberts, The History of Science Fiction. Although it discusses a lot of fascinating books (and is great for compiling a reading list), Roberts’ account of the commonly accepted history of science fiction (essentially from Shelley and Poe forward) doesn’t add that much new and exciting, and The Cambridge Companion of Science Fiction is still a better book for that general overview. And Roberts’ understanding of gender and science fiction is somewhat weak in comparison to the Cambridge. What’s great about this book though is the convincing case it makes for exploding the belief that science fiction didn’t begin until the 19th century. The survey of science fiction among the ancient Greeks, the disappearance of it during the ascendence of Catholicism, and re-emergence in the 17th century was fascinating and informative. I also felt convinced by his detailed argument about how science fiction re-emerges in the tension between Catholicism and Protestantism, which is not exactly the same as the tension between belief in the heavens as metaphor and belief that outer space is a real material reality, althought the two tendencies are undoubtedly closely related.


T. J. Clark, Farewell To An Idea. There were a lot of things I loved about this book, especially its thoughtful detailing of painting as aesthetic practice that’s also always tied to cultural and political history. I found theoretically persuasive (partly because I’ve long believed it myself) Clark’s claim that painting always struggles both with a relationship to the world and a relationship to the fact of its own manipulable materials (that is, in both cases, the unavoidable problem of the representational status of any constructed art work). For Clark, there’s no such thing as a painting that’s solely about painting or that can unproblematically picture the rest of the world. The historical context he brought to bear on various painters was also fascinating and insightful. The best chapters were the earliest ones on Jacques-Louis David, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cezanne. The chapter on El Lizzitsky and Malevich and the development of Russian communism was also brilliant. Diminishing returns for me started in the chapter on Cubism and grew larger in the chapters first on Pollack then on Abstract Expressionism more generally. What in the earlier chapters had been fascinating re-visiting of the significance of these painters became increasingly tendentious, more determined by the biases of his (genuinely complex) Marxist theoretical perspective. Clark is ultimately not quite capable of developing a convincing case regarding the history of 20th attempts to move beyond conventional representation, tending to see them as isolated moments that end up being dead ends, rather than as part of a whole history of such paintings, one that far from being dead continues to be ongoing. The idea, by the way, that’s being said farewell to in the book’s title is the idea that (fine) art has an important role to play in politics and social change. According to Clark, modernism emerges in the tension between art, politics and culture but also often finds itself saying goodbye to actual stakes in social change while simultaneously reflecting a nostalgic belief that there was a historical moment when it lost this power. Modernism according to Clark is thus often about its own defeated attempt to become socially relevant, and by relevant I mean something that forms a significant partnership with actually political practice and actually foments social change. I did find fascinating the idea that Modernism always dreams of a (past) time when art mattered, but I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced by it. I also got a kick out of the fact that Clark tries to re-write the value of Abstract Expression by describing it in ways that, to me, make it out to be a kind of proto-flarf. Clark argues that what makes AE still fascinating is not its ideas about representation but its cheap, gaudy vulgarity that thumbs its nose at the tasteful. Convincing, I don’t know, but eye-opening, sure.


Michael Azzerad, Our Band Could Be Your Life. Much more than a fan account, although it’s that too, Azzerad’s book is best at being a cultural history of the 1980s American underground punk/post punk bands that are now called Indie Rock (but were not at the time), beginning with Black Flag and going up through the alt-lifestyle revolution heralded by Beat Happening. The historical moment where the book ends is just prior to the commercial explosion of Nirvana, the creation of the concept of alternative rock, and a new world in which anti-mainstream alternative bands really could make big bucks in a way that had been unthinkable for bands like The Minutemen: a world, that is, in which the idea of “mainstream” and “alternative” became intermingled. Azzerad’s work covers that earlier decade when everybody thought they knew the difference. I was particularly fascinated by the story of what happens when communities create themselves in the hope of being genuine alternatives to the political and cultural repression of mainstream America. Not all the bands discussed here who were part of the environment shared that idea of community; some just wanted to take drugs, get drunk, and play music that ripped apart notions of the acceptable, not to mention more than one eardrum. There’s a lot to be learned here about the possibilities and limitations of imagining such social alternatives and really trying to put them into practice. The book suggests that the pitfalls are many, while also seeing real value in the kinds of communities created by bands like Fugazi who, as in many other accounts, are described here as genuine counterculture heroes as well as sometimes perhaps overly straitlaced moral preachers. Azzerad describes an era I lived through intimately, during the time when I was first publishing my own writing, record reviews in on campus and beyond campus publications in Washington, DC. I realized again how formative for me many of these bands were on the subject of how (and how not to) write about history, culture, and politics. In fact I’m tempted to say that it’s the lessons of this era that make my consciousness (and that of many writers I know) about politics one that seems so at odds with those writers whose came of age in and just after the 60s.

When University Presidents Can't Think: Hamid Shirvani

The gentleman writing the editorial below, Hamid Shirvani (pictured above), is a president of a university in the California State University system where I teach.

I'm amazed, if sadly not surprised, by any number of things in the editorial: the writer’s disdain for graduate schools and academic scholarship generally. The idea that students and professors are not "working" for what we have, and the incredible paternalism of his metaphor: yes, it’s true, faculty and students are children who need mature administrators to tell them when they can and can't have "ice cream." His notion that "privilege enters the conversation" instead of acknowledging that he's the one calling it that. The idea that smaller classes are not necessarily better for students and that they exist just because faculty and students "prefer" them. The idea that faculty are not "productive"--does he or does he not have standards for promotion at his university, and don't faculty have to "produce" in order to meet them? I'm especially amazed by the idea that the "teacher-scholar model" may not lead to "thinkers and makers"--is his implication that people who do not have time to think, and who don't make anything, will be better able to teach others to think and make?

In short, it's an article so full of blatant logical errors, weak metaphors, and unexamined thinking that I doubt very much that it would qualify as "B" level work in most classes I teach that require argumentative writing.

I do think those of us in California need to face a series of hard facts though, and one is, that top level administrators in the CSU system have disdain for critical thinking and the necessity of supporting evidence. They simply believe what they wish to believe and invent supporting evidence. Of course, one excellent model for this behavior is the previous president of the U.S. And with leadership this poor, we wonder why our state, and our country, is having a financial crisis?

And by the way? Your tuition dollars and California taxes are paying him a nice fat salary.

Will a Culture of Entitlement Bankrupt Higher Education?
Chronicle of Higher Education of 10/18/09
By Hamid Shirvani

In the wake of our nation’s economic crisis, previous levels of government support for colleges and universities can no longer be maintained—regardless of how much we in higher education may wish otherwise. States are appropriating less money to higher education not because legislators and the people whom they represent value us less, but because they can afford less. Practical realities will drive what is possible for colleges and universities in the coming years.

The economy has suffered changes so deep and fundamental that institutions cannot just hunker down to weather the storm. The time has come for creative reconstruction. We must summon the courage and will to re-engineer education in ways founded on shared responsibility, demanding hard work and a willingness on the part of everyone involved to let go of “the way it’s always been.”

Much has been written in recent months comparing the problems of higher education with those of the auto industry, and many of the comparisons are apt. Resistance to change in academe has helped create inflexible, unsustainable organizations, just as automobile manufacturers wedded to gas-guzzling models have been unprepared for the demand for smaller, more eco-friendly cars.

Yet American auto manufacturers are no more alone in creating their disastrous present than colleges are in attempting to stare down the budget cuts and dwindling revenues they now face. In both instances, inflated consumer demand has created an expectation of elements once considered “extras”: MP3 players and GPS navigation systems in new cars, country-club-quality recreational facilities and multitudes of majors and minors, however narrow, at colleges. People feel entitled to things that were once considered luxuries. And that sense of entitlement—among students, parents, faculty members, and administrators—has driven expansion in higher education beyond what is reasonable or necessary.

Coupled with such growing demands has come an expectation that, as the costs of education rise, government should absorb them. That is no longer possible or desirable. We are moving into an era in which all participants must help bear the costs, direct and indirect, of the privilege of higher education.

As soon as the word “privilege” enters the conversation, people bring up the subject of access, with the implication that if something is a privilege, only privileged people will enjoy it. But in America, access to higher education is unparalleled. No other country has so many fully accredited colleges or has provided such widespread access to student financial aid.

Instead, we should view the privilege of a higher education much as we did the privileges that we enjoyed as children. We knew we couldn’t get ice cream if we didn’t help wash the dishes—we worked for the privileges that we enjoyed, and we shared in the responsibility of earning them. Those special activities were available to us, but we did not enjoy them as a “right.” We were expected to contribute.

We can only hope that today’s harsh economic realities have finally broken the stranglehold of the sense of entitlement about higher education and brought people back down to earth. The reality is that higher education is expensive, and students and their families will be asked to pay an ever-larger share of the costs. Although annual increases in tuition have diminished recently, tuition is still rising faster than inflation.

But the issues are complex and, again, the notion of shared responsibility comes sharply into focus. While students and their families will have to pay more, administrators and faculty members must also work together to offer affordable, effectively delivered educational products and services. With budgets being cut and staff members being laid off or facing a reduced number of workdays, employees in higher education must become more productive.

Cutting costs is not enough. We need to break down expectations based on entitlement and focus on educational productivity and outcomes. Institutions should review redundancies, rethink staffing models, and streamline business practices. Productivity measures should be applied in all areas. In the same way that secondary schools are being challenged to consider longer school days and an extended academic year, we in higher education need to revisit basic assumptions about how we deliver higher education to students. We should not be tied to any one model or structure.

For example, we should re-evaluate the notion that large classes are inherently pedagogically unsound. What both students and faculty members tend to prefer—small classes—is not the only educationally effective approach. Although no one would advocate for large classes in every discipline or instance, we should review what we do in light of new financial contingencies, while keeping an eye on what students learn.

Similarly, at many institutions, it may make more sense for professors to teach more and do less governance and committee work. Faculty members must make education more productive, even if it means sacrificing work in other areas, which, while important, are not central to our primary educational mission.

Colleges and universities should focus more on degree completion, not just on how many students enroll. That does not mean “teaching to the test,” but rather paying more attention to student success and seeking more and better ways that faculty members can support and guide students inside and outside the classroom.

Indeed, in light of the growing demand for a better-prepared work force, we need to revisit undergraduate education as a whole. We should re-examine the teacher/scholar model, for instance. Is it appropriate for every institution? Does that model really produce what it is supposed to: thinkers and makers, learned and professionally skilled graduates?

In addition, we should re-evaluate the relationship and the balance between graduate and undergraduate education. It is too easy to overlook the ever-increasing specialization of graduate programs, in which professors happily replicate students in their own, often narrow, interests, focusing on limited knowledge. Particularly in the graduate arena, not every program is sacred.

We in higher education must determine what we do best and what is reasonable and possible. We should separate legitimate aspirations and a drive toward excellence from the costly and often fruitless pursuit of higher status—which may feed egos but is beyond the reasonable prospects of many institutions. Not every college can be on a top-20 list. Not every college or university can be a Research I institution. Not every regional institution should aspire to national status.

In an era when pragmatism must prevail, those of us in higher education must come to grips with the idea that we can opt out of college rankings and national recognition without doing damage to the fundamental value of the education that we offer to the students whom we serve.

Government, of course, needs to be a part of this process, and taxpayers must be reminded of their shared responsibility for public education. But the only way that we can persuade them to invest in higher education is to demonstrate our commitment to efficiency, openness, and accountability.

Every constituency involved in our educational enterprise bears responsibility for earning the privileges that access to higher education in this country offers. For students, that means the hard work of studying to be prepared for college. For faculty members, that means the hard work of teaching more to enjoy the benefits of the academic life. For administrators, that means the hard work of reconsidering our educational models and structures in order to enjoy the privileges of being engaged in our noble profession.

In an era of less government support and fewer family resources, colleges will emerge stronger and more nimble—ready to provide an accessible and excellent education to those who are prepared to take advantage of that privilege—only if we all embrace the notion of true transformation. Shared responsibility means that we must take a harder look at what education needs to accomplish for society as a whole and then rise above our own special interests for the greater good.

Hamid Shirvani is president of California State University-Stanislaus.