AAC&U 2024 Recap
It's that time again: the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in Washington.
For me, conference travel always seems to come at the most inopportune time. If you read my last newsletter, you know that Joni is struggling with some serious health issues. (Don’t worry, she’s in great hands with my in-home dog-sitter Katie.) And you know that some difficult decisions will have to be made in the coming weeks, or even days.
Something dire and unpleasant always seems to come up right as I am slated to fly to an expensive academic conference somewhere with a passel of commitments in tow.
In 2014, just days before I headed to Philadelphia to present at AERA (American Educational Research Association), with Peter McLaren as respondent (!), my first wife decided to leave me. (That was fun, let me tell you.)
In fairness, I think she had decided much earlier. She just waited to impart that information to me mere days before my departure.
In 2023, the week after Kaylin and I decided to split up, I was due in Boston to lead a pre-conference workshop on mis- and disinformation at CLDE (Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement). I was also on the steering committee for that conference.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Dude, what’s the matter with you? Just cancel. There’s no way people can expect you to show up and perform under those circumstances.”
Yeah, maybe. But…
I don’t like letting people down, and I don’t like to renege on commitments—especially professional commitments. This is something that was sort of drilled into me as a kid and, clearly, it stuck.
Unless I am too sick to get out of bed or injured to the point of hospitalization (or immobility), I don’t flake.
In fact, if I could be allowed a moment of old man soapboxing, I feel like too many people flake out for what are ultimately not very compelling reasons.
“I need a mental health day.”
“One of my kids is sick.”
“When I went to start my car it made a funny noise.”
“I feel a tickle in my throat.”
“My doctor diagnosed me with an allergy to Zoom meetings.”
Look, it’s fine. In some ways, it makes me happy that workplaces and society in general seem to have loosened up a bit about people flaking on prior commitments. (I don’t remember things being quite so loosey-goosey when I was in my teens and twenties.) As far as it goes, I think we are trending in the right direction.
My own approach, however, and one that took me an embarrassingly long time to get to, is this: 99.998% of the time, it’s actually easier to just get up and do the thing than it is to try to come up with a way to get out of it without losing face.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not out here tryna say that people don’t have good reasons to call off commitments and/or flake, if that’s even the right word for it. People struggle with anxiety and all sorts of other mental health issues, and I get that these sorts of challenges can’t necessarily be overcome with a stiff upper lip and a stout pep talk to yourself.
People get sick, bad things happen, darkness descends. I get it.
And I also get that I am totally white and male and privileged and mostly healthy and that that’s what enables me to say such things in the first place (yada yada yada).
Now that the necessary caveats are out of the way, all of that is to say that I’m glad I made it out this week despite a rough start to the trip (massive, multiple flight delays into Reagan that I won’t bore you with, but that resulted in me getting to my hotel around 3:30am Wednesday morning and losing my first class upgrade) and having to leave a sick old dog back at home in Indianapolis.
Day 1
The week began with an all-day curriculum building workshop at the AASCU (American Association of State Colleges and Universities) offices on Wednesday morning, where I got to meet some really terrific leaders in higher education, including Jon Alger, President of James Madison University, and Ron Rochon, President of the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville.
Our task on Wednesday was to begin what will be a months-long curriculum building effort to design and develop modules for university presidents, chancellors, and provosts on cultivating democracy and democratic citizens on their campuses.
The conversations were incredibly energizing. This was important because I was running on about 4 hours of sleep. I am excited for the task ahead, and honored to be among such an esteemed group of academic leaders.
Day 2
On Thursday morning, I presented a panel at AAC&U alongside my colleagues Byron Craig (Illinois State University), Cathy Copeland (of the American Democracy Project), and Erin O’Hanlon (Stockton University in New Jersey). Our panel, entitled “Daring to Diversify: The Rhetoric of Higher Education in a Post-Affirmative Action World,” explored the official responses of institutions of higher education to the Supreme Court's historic decision in June 2023 to ban affirmative action in admissions.
We had roughly 20 people in the room, and were able to spark some terrific back and forth. One of our primary goals was to create a space for participants to interact and share their own experiences, so we included a “four corners” activity that got people up and moving about the room, talking about their own institutional responses (or lack thereof), and analyzing what they might mean.
Our analysis grouped the institutional responses into four broad categories:
Alignment with mission and values.
Organizations and system-level statements.
Legalistic and neutral statements.
Non-responses / celebrations of the response.
You can read more about each category and how we conducted our rhetorical analysis in our Adobe Express presentation, which also contains a multitude of useful links and resources.
Despite the cold, I was able to get out early every morning except for Wednesday for a nice run. Washington had a nice snow Thursday night into Friday morning, so my early morning run featured some beautiful snowy vistas that I chronicled on my TikTok.
On Thursday afternoon, I attended a book talk with Cathy N. Davidson and Christina Katopodis on their award-winning book The New College Classroom. Winner of the Frederic W. Ness book award, The New College Classroom grounds its blueprint for innovative and inclusive college teaching in a claim that I explore in the final chapter of my own manuscript: namely, that teaching and learning in higher education in the year 2024 is stuck in the nineteenth century.
We are still committed to Taylorist conceptions of time-on-task and work that could not be further from how modern people learn and work and thrive (assuming they ever really did), and it is to our great detriment as higher education professionals that we remain committed to such principles and practices. The pandemic should have been a massive wake up call—and it was, in some respects—but most of us still just aren’t getting it.
Take the credit hour, for example. It’s a relic, a holdover from a time when the dominant mode of working (and conceptualizing work) was the factory floor and timetable. The basic idea was that time on task could be quantified and, thus, commodified. Of course, we know now that people don’t work best under these conditions, and what Davidson and Katopodis argue is that students don’t learn best under these conditions. (Others have argued this, too, including Levine and Van Pelt in The Great Upheaval, a book about the past, present, and future of higher education that everyone should read.)
Another issue is faculty’s commitments to imparting disciplinary knowledge above all else. As Davidson put it, and I am paraphrasing here, “we are still teaching as though our students are going to be college professors, when in actuality, very very few (if any) of them will be.” In other words, we are still committed to teaching in such a way that ensures the reproduction of disciplinary knowledge and dispositions, rather than preparing students for a postdigital knowledge economy that will be forever transformed by AI.
Thinking of ourselves as disciplinary knowledge producers/relay points first and foremost is the wrong way to go about it, folks.
Now I just need to sharpen this up and include it in the final chapter of my book.
Day 3
On Friday, I did an early morning run around the Capitol and it was brilliant. I was out before just about anybody else was, so I got to see the fresh snowfall on the Mall and around the Washington Monument.
The rest of the day was spent in and out of panels, some good, some less than stellar, but all in all the conference was fun and enlightening. The last time I was at AAC&U was in early 2022, so it was good to get back there this year.
And now, let’s take short break to enjoy this picture of shrimp alambre—my Friday night dinner at Marisco’s 1133 on Logan Circle.
Other updates
Joni’s cough has improved, and she even gave a few good tail wags over the weekend when I got back home. We had a bit of a scare while I was stuck in the Atlanta airport late Tuesday night, but she seems to be feeling better, even if she’s not necessarily getting better. Still and all, she is nearly 14 years old and has a combo of degenerative conditions. Some difficult decisions will need to be made sooner rather than later. I can’t bear the thought of saying goodbye to someone I have been living with since I was 31 years old, but I also don’t want to needlessly prolong her life.
I have hired an editor to help me copyedit the completed chapters of my book. I was able to finagle a bit of an extension, so the completed manuscript is now due on March 1, 2024. I will get something submitted by that point, I don’t care if it harelips everybody on Bear Creek.
Later this week, we are supposed to get highs in the low 50s, but sheets of rain. Go figure. That’s winter in Indiana for you.
Oh, and speaking of winter, the dang intake valve on my dishwasher froze up and cracked open (again!). This literally happens every time it gets below 0 outside. Luckily, it’s a $13 part on Amazon, and I have become something of an expert in repairing leaks on these Samsung dishwashers.
Perhaps the takeaway here is that academic conferences lead to divorce... or divorce leads to academic conferences. It's all a rich tapestry.