The University of OZ

            Back when no one was paying attention– the course of higher education in this country changed into a. green-screen version of Oz. Not the Oz of the classic film’s over-the-rainbow wishes-about -to-come-true Emerald City, but the bewitched Oz, first seen as a city under an evil spell. That spell under which the Wizard projected his fake towering screen image – is akin to A.I. fakery, which is everywhere. Imagine a university president speaking but signifying nothing, directing attention away from – what? Hidden corporate lawyers, always behind the front-facing image, just like the Guy Behind the Curtain.

            Imagine the weird curse of those multiplying H.R. administrators in academia. Then think of the Oz’s. torchlit palace guards, that scary lockstep march of flying monkeys circling the Oz inner sanctum on foot, intoning in rhythmic singsong, “H.R. we are! We are H.R!”

            And it seems inevitable that the Wicked Witch of the West, warty and cackling, is Corporate U itself – the private equity evil that ate up Education, swallowing it whole. Over the witch’s door are the words: “Under New Management -- Ex-U now Corp U.” “They” have cast a fatal spell on the campus, which not that long ago was a center of free thought and debate -- now appears a fortress, a moated castle of cliche and ka-ching.

            The populations of Oz/Corp U are the formerly-self-governing professors, morphed into changeling employees, intimidated into silence by the surveilling monkeys and the H.R. handbook of evil spells (read Due Process denials.)

            The Wicked Witch of Corp U works a crystal ball monitoring everything everywhere all at once. As the Eye spies, the monkeys fly – swooping down drone-like on teachers who speak out – or on books that have not been read, yet demand censoring. Books are banished and teachers shrink fast into self-censorship. The monkeys range far and wide – endlessly dropping from the sky, landing on educators from elementary to graduate school.

            There is more questionable magic about casting a spell on words themselves – turning vocabulary definitions into euphemisms and creative writing into word-engineering. “Fat” is transformed into “large in size” – and prison inmates into those who have something to do with criminal justice. “Field” and “brave” must sport buffer-wear like any other word that might trigger a trigger. (Brava, btw, for Cornell’s President standing up for free speech and against trigger warnings!)

            It's tempting to go on with the Oz eeriness factor. But real life Oz outdistances further fantasy. In the last few years, universities have abandoned their educational mandate, drafting new by-laws announcing that “SoCalled U is a corporation that may refer to itself as a university.” If a university suddenly transforms into a corporation -- it is free to slither away from First Amendment rights and freedoms and the doctrine of moral and just consciousness, a tradition on which both experiential and aesthetic learning are based.

            If a university is now a corporation it is also free to erase its administrative scandals and any glimpse of accountability. And it is free to deflect its own “guilt” onto faculty – a strategy that requires cooperation of students, who are re-invented as consumers. In a reversal of tradition, student consumers are given authority over their instructors, whose “conduct” and conduct-related complaints get reported over social media, immediately taken as credible and acted on in interrogation and sanctioning – via this hot line from hell.

            But to return to Oz – its fallen world was saved and the curse lifted by Glinda the Good Witch. But it wasn’t just the glittering red shoes or the hot air balloon that freed Dorothy. It was education itself – its transformative power a form of insight magic. The Scarecrow wants a brain, the Tin Man wants a heart, and the Cowardly Lion wants courage. (And Dorothy, of course, wants to go home with Toto.)

            All the characters are given their wishes – but each is taught a lesson in receiving the gift. To learn to be human, to understand one’s own intellect, heart and bravery of character can only happen through the great mediation that is education. And imagination. Through reading books, the imagination is kindled, the self invented and inspired through knowledge. The banning and burning of books is a sacrilege so grave it goes against humanity itself.

            So the point is to not follow the yellow brick road if it leads to Yellow Brick Road, Incorporated. Take a detour away from Oz if Oz is faking it. Take the road less travelled - with books in your backpack. Just take your time and keep your eye out for the flying monkeys.