Open letter to the president of University Canada West

To be sure, every generation suffers from what Daniel Pauly identified as the shifting baseline syndrome (1). In the 1990s, universities shifted from being cultural institutions to being big businesses. Students from being students to being customers. Academic standards from being informed by intellectual rigour to being at the mercy of administrative expediency (2). Publications from being contributions to the shared knowledge of humankind to being vehicles in the rat race to tenure and promotion. Most academics today are millennials. They have never experienced any other condition. That is their baseline.

I usually don't care what the clowns are doing when the day is long. It is not my responsibility. Unfortunately, when they start making collective decisions that undermine the Academy, I am forced to respond. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uV7KnN1Zgk-87YOJQRiriCIdr7F2y5Qi

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) D. Pauly (1995), Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10: 430.

(2) F. Furedi (2004), Where have all the intellectuals gone?