"Incidents of professorial sexual abuse of students are rare in the US."
Moses,
Sexual abuse is still quite rampant on US campuses. Some cases are not reported officially. Many campuses try to conceal the statistics. Students, in some cases, do not report the abuse openly to avoid the public glare, or, from fear of the blame game, retaliation, peer response etc.
Sexual abuse is also rampant in the US military and prevalent in the media with recent high profile cases and accusations of abuse by senior administrators- including the President himself.
Vanderbilt and Michigan must be exceptions.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Professor of History
History Department
History Department
Central Connecticut State University
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora
8608322815 Phone
8608322804 Fax
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2017 4:41 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos,no. 1
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2017 4:41 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos,no. 1
I like the direction this discussion has taken lately. Gone is the denial and deflection. We now have a grudging acceptance of the problem and what looks like a genuine effort to grapple with it. Both Toyin and Olayinka have put some ideas and suggestions on the table. I have my own ideas, which I hope to outline, time permitting. It's not rocket science. Once you've acknowledged the problem, solving it is fairly easy if you have the stakeholders of consequence and power on board and they have the will to act. which is why I've been trying to get us to not just acknowledge the problem but its enormity.
-- Ken has told a personal story that contextualizes things. I too know a retired American professor who married someone who was a student in his class. It used to be okay for professors to date students. Not any more, with the ban. I personally think it is a good thing that Professor-Student relationships are now banned by a vast majority of American universities. Americans saw a slippery slope into abuse and professorial impunity in the future and took action to prevent it. However, I respect the views of those who disagree with the ban even while adhering to it, not that they have a choice unless they no longer cherish their job and/or their freedom. But here are the important facts:
1. The ban was introduced in the US because that was the only way you could stop professors from abusing their power, intimidating and harassing their students into sexual relationships, and or demanding sex as a condition for high grades.
2. This discussion has never been about consensual relationships between adults, but rather about sexual harassment, abuse by an authority figure, asymmetry in power relations, etc. It's been about the fact that consent is a problematic concept when you have an authority figure with control over grades and other evaluational resources and a vulnerable student. Unfortunately when you solve a problem such as this one, you're going to prevent some genuinely consensual relationships as well.
3. Incidents of professorial sexual abuse of students are rare in the US. Which is precisely why they are news when they occur. This contrasts with Nigerian universities in which sexual abuse is widespread and is not treated as a big deal.
4. Ken's story is very important because it illustrates the fact that even the US, which some people have inexplicably introduced into a discussion of sexual and other misconducts committed by academics in Nigerian universities, recognized the problem of abuse and/or the potential of abuse and solved it by taking drastic measures. Before the ban, the problem never even reached the proportion of what we have in Nigeria. But a few incidents that came to light were enough to spur action; they were scandalous enough for MOST stakeholders to recognize that there was a problem that needed to be solved. There was no debate about numbers, about how many people were involved, about how many incidents had occurred. There was no obsession with what was happening in other countries.
Even the egalitarian turn in US higher education, which effectively destroyed rigid hierarchies dividing professors from students, something that we now take for granted, is fairly recent, occurring only in the 1960s. Before then, the system was close to the one in Nigeria (at least in terms of relations between professors and students) where professors are demigods and students have little or no right.
5. Which brings me to the point I was trying to make in an earlier post. The Western reference and comparison is irrelevant and is solely based on the wrong assumption that that is one's frame of reference. One is not venerating a Western ideal of restraint or professorial self-control. Far from it. If the incidents of professorial misconduct are few in the West today, it is not because Westerners are inherently more morally upright than Africans or that they possess a greater will to resist temptations from students. As I said before and as Ken affirmed, it is simply because that infraction is now widely outlawed and is severely punished when it occurs. It is because it is outlawed explicitly, so even a defense of consensual coupling is not tenable. Not anymore. This is an important point to stress because the only difference between the West and Nigeria in this regard is that stakeholders in the US system acknowledged a problem (even before it reached Nigeria-esque proportions) and solved it with a drastic action while stakeholders in the Nigerian system are struggling to even acknowledge the problem, never mind solving it with measures of deterrence and punishment. In this US, explicit policies against sexual abuse and professor-student relationships preceded and occasioned an attitudinal change in professors, not the other way round. The human propensity for impunity and for leveraging authority for self-gratification resides in every society. The difference is the existence of organs that constrain human actions, institutions of deterrence. That is what engenders attitudinal change.
Finally, I want to thank Ken for telling his story about what he witnessed while teaching in a university in Cameroon, and for bringing a very clear, honest perspective to the discussion. Too often progressive white men and women do not tell the truth about their true observations of African society. They are afraid of being accused of racism or Othering, so they make patronizingly pretentious and relativist comments about foibles and problems they see on the continent. It takes courage for Ken to speak truthfully about this widespread, well known problem of sexual and other exploitations of students by academics. The truth is that every Nigerian I know know that the problem of professorial abuse of their authority (expressed in sexual ways or in the form of financial extortion in exchange for grades) is quite common in Nigerian universities. The demand for numbers and statistics is a disingenuous tactic of deflection, but I am happy to see that it has had very little purchase on this list and has now given way to a more truthful, constructive acknowledgement of the problem.
I will be back to offer my own thoughts on how to solve not just the sexual abuse issue but the other problems I have been harping on.
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--Thanks Ken for this illuminating piece.
Like in your case I know of a few professors who met their spouses at the university. Its no crime although other copy cats on the face value of what they see can indulge in indiscriminate affairs.
My own position is professors when single should be able to tell interested female students 'if you are really interested in ME and not your grades then when you are no longer on my course we will talk about it.' If its true love it must endure the course.
This is part of what I mean by no witch hunting.
I have got a childhood friend who willingly confessed to having a relationship with her professor. She enjoyed it . I was not judgmental. I know she was well brought up. She mentioned some other professor who came after her and she turned down. She had no serious emotional commitment at the time.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>Date: 30/07/2017 16:42 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos,no. 1
Dear allThe notion that faculty are significantly abusing their relations w students in the u.s. Academy strikes me as out of touch with reality. The heightened fears and penalties are quite pervasive. Cases that really signal faculty abuse are given enormous negative publicity. that's my sense of things.I want to add that I married a girl who had been a student in my class (more than 40 years ago), that I saw, and still see, nothing wrong with faculty actually dating students. I know it is now virtually banned throughout academe, but I don't agree. I no doubt stand alone, but my position is based on the belief that we all have agency, and have moral responsibility. Not law, to regulate our relations. However, that does not mean we condone abuse.Abuses of authority and position have to be severely punished, faculty fired for forcing themselves on students, blackmailing them to have sex. I agree with the punishments there; and I find it equally not credible that students are abusing this situation to blackmail faculty, though perhaps on rare occasion it probably arises.
That this happens in nigeria, or elsewhere in africa, is not a surprise to anyone who has taught in african universities.The extent of it must vary. When I taught in cameroon 40 years ago, the black cars were lined up after school at the highschools, and it was disgraceful that female students were virtually prostituting themselves, and that big men took advantage of themThis was, I repeat, common knowledge: not hidden, not sneakily done.It was also there in sembene's film Faat Kine. No one found it hard to believe in that film. Common knowledge.How to correct it? Moses is setting the standard, period. We shouldn't focus on how much, how many, but how to stop it
What I really wanted to state is that this is not an issue that is debated in the american academy: it was settled practice to stop it many years ago.What is debated, where the huge bonfire issue now exists, is the question of rape, of physical abuse of students, not so much by faculty but by other students. Especially athletes. If you are really interested in bringing the u.s. Campus into this discussion, you have to begin there. that is where the powers that be, the concerns, the fightingback to regain the night, etc, etc., is occuring. That is where the seachange in relations is being fought out.
Another memory: my aunt was a student in the class, at medical school, of a man who became her husband. That was somewhere around the 1930s. No one condemned them for falling in love and marrying, the prof and his student. As for myself, well, I didn't date liz till a year after she had been in my class. I was lucky she had been my student…. And lucky the university then did not prevent a prof from falling in love with his student!Ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
Michigan State University
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Date: Sunday, 30 July 2017 at 14:31
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Cc: Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos,no. 1
--'Gordon (not actual name) has a crush on a smart girl in the literature class auditorium.
He tried to ask her out but the word got stuck.
He settled for KFC crochets while he worked on his chat up line'
This is the paraphrase for a radio jingle advert for KFC currently airing on a British station Capital Radio capital.co.uk.
If the malaise we both condemn in Nigerian academics is so rare in the American academy how come it forms the theme of an advert jingle exported to the UK with a distinctive American accent complete with the unique alveola-palatal flutter American drawl 'r'?
Any interested forumite can verify this by logging in to the radio online.
But again this justifies nothing on either side of the Atlantic.
What we are both aiming at are effective institutional checks and I personally welcome more ideas.
I dont know the current structure of checks but it seems to me that the best form would involve both student bodies and university officials.
The coordinating organ should be national ASUU which must have standing local chapter student/teacher ethics committee with whom it must constantly be in touch on a monthly basis.
This local committee must liaise with representatives of student bodies with which it should meet on weekly basis and from which it should collect data on student complaints and suspicions needing discrete investigations. Students must be encouraged to report to such student bodies.
The national body must collect this statistics in a monthly basis even if all such statistics say is everything is 'cleared for this month'.
The national body must provide this statistics to every university Council and Senate concerned on a monthly basis keeping a copy to assist in the recruitment, retention and promotion exercise nationwide just like the credit scoring system in the West.
On recruitment the ASUU national ethics committee must serve each university teaching staff a code of its student/teacher relationship as you suggested (I never got this in the US but that does not mean I dont know what is and is not acceptable.)
There should be no retroactive witch hunt but it should serve as the premise of a new more morally binding accountable beginning.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>Date: 28/07/2017 00:04 (GMT+00:00)Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos,no. 1
"the low esteem in which they are held by colleagues ought to be the greatest deterrent and sanction litigations aside."
I cannot believe I read this from you, Yinka. Wow, just wow. So for abusing their powers, preying sexually on their female students and financially exploiting their male students, betraying the trust of parents and society, and bringing disrepute to a respected profession and their colleagues, they should only be subjected to the scorn of colleagues, "sanctions litigations aside." Scorn as deterrence? Now I've heard it all.
Obviously I do not have any statistics to indicate the number of Nigerian lecturers engaged in sexual or other misconducts or those who neglect teaching or mentorship. I have not conducted a study, nor would a study reveal the extent of the problem as most students, as you said, don't come forward to report and most reported cases are buried, never to be mentioned again.
But you self-appointed defenders of the honor of Nigerian lecturers do not have any statistics either, yet you insist that the offenders are a minority and that the majority is upright. How exactly do you know that? Where is the study you conducted? At least I am modest and honest enough to admit the absence of precise numbers. If I say MANY Nigerian lecturers are culpable, that takes care of the absence of statistics. So let us agree that you do not have any statistics to show that the offenders are a minority and that I do not have any to show that they are a majority. Going off of that, and going by the preponderance of cases, scandals, and the private and public testimonies of victims and colleagues, we can conclude that too many lecturers are implicated. How many is too many depends on one's moral perspective. If you don't think the offenders are many or too many, that is your own judgment. Go an conduct a study to prove that only a minority are engaged in the practice. But keep in mind that even if you were to prove that, it would not mitigate the outrage, nor would it exculpate the majority who enable the offenders by tolerating, shielding, and in some cases defending them.
Again, the problem is the absence of deterrence and punishment when students come forward. In most cases the students are even further and victimized by the authorities of the institution and by supposedly upright colleagues of the perpetrator who are fond of blaming the victims.
Finally, let me shock you by saying that I never get defensive about pastors engaged in misconduct. I don't hold my tongue either; I am a big critic of pastoral misconduct, which is now widespread in modern Christianity, especially in Pentecostal circles. It is not only Suleiman; many other scandals have broken publicly or quietly. I cannot be a pastor because I simply cannot live up to the moral demands of the job. Which begs the question, if you do not have the capacity to live up to the moral and ethical demands of a profession, why get into that profession in the first place or remain in it? I would pose exactly the same question to my colleagues in Nigerian universities who prey on, exploit, and terrorize students. I would advise them to go do something else, to have a career change, or to conform to the moral and ethical expectations of the job.
Sent from my iPad--I havent implied 'not having armoury to resist' is a legitimate defence. I agree such people as in pastors taking advantage of parishioners on both sides of the Atlantic (the case of Suleiman is still fresh) are guilty most grievously of a serious breach of trust (people wont on acount of pastor Suleiman be right in condemming all pentecostals or generalize would they?).
For me in the case of errant professors the low esteem in which they are held by colleagues ought to be the greatest deterrent and sanction litigations aside.
I know that in spite of the handbook you speak of breaches happen more regularly than you might know in the West but that is not a defence either. In the West if there is no complaint it is treated as agreement between consenting adults. I know in Africa particularly when the student is young it is socially viewed (rightly) as you viewed it as abominable.
All Im saying is unless you can produce statistics to prove an overwhelming practice sweeping generalizations damage the reputations of both the good and bad as outsiders cant tell who is who and treat all as suspicious as my personal example I cited demonstrates. You know how suspicious westerners are by nature dont you?
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>Date: 26/07/2017 04:22 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos,no. 1
--"but it is the DUTY of the teacher to resist. Not all teachers have the armoury to resist."
Yinka,
The first sentence above answers your own specious rhetorical questions. Student-teacher seduction happens both ways in all climes, but it is, as you said, the duty of the teacher to resist, being that he/she is in a position of authority over the student. Isn't that why it's called sexual harassment and is outlawed by universities in the West?
If I didn't personally know you, I'd say that your second sentence above was an attempt to justify the epidemic of rape and sexual exploitation in Nigerian higher institutions. Because I know you, I'll chalk it up to defensiveness and a facile attempt to defend our colleagues in Nigeria. For goodness sake, being an academic comes with responsibilities. It is not for everyone. It's okay if you do not have the "armoury to resist" (we all have our weaknesses), but have the decency to get out of the profession and go and do something else, preferably something in which you can seduce and allow yourself to be seduced to your heart's content without breaching any ethical or legal lines. Do not remain in the profession and exploit people's daughters and wives entrusted to you to educate. It is a heinous crime. It is rape and it is an egregious betrayal of trust and the responsibility of your calling as an educator and mentor.
I guess you did not read Falola's statement that grasping to point out equivalences in the West is an outrageously escapist way to respond to criticism of malfeasance in Nigeria. It is the very definition of defensive racism and relativism. It is a very dangerous enterprise. So what if occasionally one hears of sexual harassment cases in the US? Who the heck is talking about the US? We are talking about Nigeria, and you predictably invoke the West to avoid having to deal with Nigerian problems on their terms. Let me tell you something. Even before I came to the West, when I was an undergraduate in Nigeria, I seethed with rage against the misconducts, sexual and otherwise, of Nigerian academics, some of whom where my teachers. So, please do not assume that I am always engaging with these topics from a Western frame of reference. I am a Nigerian who is grated about Nigerian problems. Let Westerners deal with the problems of their own society.
Bit since you've invoked the West, let me say this. Professorial sexual harassment does not occur often in the US academy because there is deterrence and it is punished and results in incalculable personal losses to the harasser. Nigerian universities are sexual crime scenes. I say this advisedly and I am not exaggerating. Perhaps you have been away from Nigeria for too long or have not kept pace with the state of affairs in Nigerian universities. How many Nigerian lecturers have been punished for their sexual crimes against students? I personally witnessed many of them get away with full blown rape on my undergraduate campus in Nigeria. Nothing happened to them. Some of them were serial rapists. And guess what? The morally upright lecturers you speak of feed are the ones who feed you with stories of these misconducts and are happy when a spotlight is shone on the problem precisely because the sexual harassers (who may very well be in the majority, although you cannot investigate the number) reflect badly on the non-harassers. They are happy with me for highlighting the problem, and they are as outraged as I am, if not more so.
How many Nigerian universities have a faculty conduct handbook or a coherent policy on sexual harassment? Here in the West, when you're appointed you're given a handbook that tells you all dos and don'ts regarding interactions with students. And violations will cost you not just your job but your freedom if you're handed over to the police in egregiously criminal cases. Good luck telling your employers and/or the police that you don't have the "armoury to resist.
--
On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 7:45 PM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
I have noted at least on two occasions Moses listing sexual predation as one of his grouses against Nigerian academics in a manner suggestive that it does not occur in the West. Nothing can be further from the truth.
I was pub crawling with a Marketing lecturer in one of North London universities when on learning I was a university teacher he asked for my views on SFG. I said I didnt do it having adopted a policy of not mixing business with pleasure from the time I was an 18 year old single intern; not even with my fellow interns till they started thinking something was wrong with me somewhere.
He narrated how a Polish female student came into his office and was seated in a suggestive posture that bared all for him to see.
He said he confronted her with the statement 'Do you want to fxxx? He refused to oblige her. He had two wives in Afghanistan.
He said students were sent to the university not because they knew anything but because they knew nothing.
There was another publicised incident in the papers of a 40 something lecturer from the University of East Anglia a couple of years before that caught in a liaison with one of his students.
And yours truly was the subject of baits in the US in similar incidents to the Anglian lecturer which were all resisted.
As an undergraduate student in Nigeria I was witness to one of my female classmates who did the running for one of our lecturers succeeded and the only reason I knew was when he came to drop her off at the female hostel the following morning. I knew several of the ladies at the time wanted to achieve what she did because of their comments in class.
I have gone to all these length just to show that in many cases and not just in Africa contrary to Moses's stereotyping denigration it is not just the teacher who is doing the harrassing but the female students; but it is the DUTY of the teacher to resist. Not all teachers have the armoury to resist.
Again I have gone to these length to show that it is such steteotyping by Moses that leads to westerners humiliating African academics without any justifications as when I wanted to teach a group of youngsters and the teaching coordinator was making insulting insinuations that I could see that these were only kids implying that I should make no advances on them! I felt so humiliated and insulted because they were only a few years older than my own children.
It is for this reason that Im asking Moses to apologise to the majority of the hard working and morally upright Nigerian academics he may have insulted by his comments. People dont get morally upright simply because they teach in the American academy. Not all that teach in America are morally upright. It is not in all cases that academics sexually harrass students; sometimes students do the harrassing in all climes.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>Date: 25/07/2017 01:33 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos,no. 1
Oga Falola,
I really have no problem with the idea of celebrating exceptions, nor do I disagree about the moral and philosophical power of exceptionality. Exceptions demonstrate possibilities, and possibilities are what drive initiatives and hopes for improvement and progress. I get all that. But focusing on the exception can be quite misleading and it can exculpate and/or provide undeserved solace to the culpable.
Moreover, personal integrity and ethics are just one aspect of my contention. My main argument has to do with administrative capacity, commitment to students and faculty, nepotism, rigidity, outmodedness, and a general inability to grapple with the challenges of running a university in the twenty first century and doing right by students, the reason why universities exist.
On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 5:46 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Moses:I do not want to get involved with this aspect, having just co-host a successful conference on higher education with over a dozen Vice Chancellors, with three reports already posted on this list.The major thing that caught my eye is that you don't want to have exceptions. Theoretically, we should not encourage this. Practically, we should promote the culture of exceptions. Morally, it is good to point to good people so that society can have direction.
So, what would you say, if I were to tell you that one former VC is owing me money as we speak….he is on this list. It is not a big sum of money, to be sure, but he does not have it.So, what would you say, if I were to say that one that I know very well is yet to finish his first and only house? He is so broke that when I saw him at Ondo, I promised to help.So, what would you say if I were to tell you about Tamuno and Akinkugbe and Ayandele? Two of them are dead and one is alive, but I know their houses and their worth. If anyone were to say that Professor Tamuno stole a cent as VC at Ibadan, that person must be dead crazy.
Or more broadly, if people say that Nigerians are corrupt, I can say that for every Nigeria you accuse of corruption, I will bring 9 Nigerians who are not corrupt. I can say that Professor Gloria Chuku, a current head of her dept, if she sees a brief case of money on the street, will not take it. Or I can say Gloria Emeagwali will never steal anyone's money.
I am not turning exceptions into rule, but to say that society needs those people to make a moral point. Otherwise, society creates a void.TF
Toyin FalolaDepartment of HistoryThe University of Texas at Austin104 Inner Campus DriveAustin, TX 78712-0220USA512 475 7224512 475 7222 (fax)
From: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com > on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com >
Date: Monday, July 24, 2017 at 3:22 PM
To: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com >
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos, no. 1
Malami,
I couldn't agree more about the VCs.... please don't even get me started on them. The processes by which VCs are picked are so corrupt and so riddled with nepotism, politics, and ethno-religious considerations that one would be naive to expect the chosen ones to be anything other than thoroughly politicized appointees with no commitment to faculty and students. As I write this in July 2017, in the twenty first century after the death of Jesus Christ (Prophet Isa), there are VC's in the Nigerian university system who have no email accounts, cannot surf the web even if their lives depended on it, and are functionally computer illiterate---or at least they were before their appointment. I know this for a fact. Go figure.
Most of their allegiances lay not on campus but elsewhere in the political world. Even the problem of recruitment and retention that looms large over any discussion of faculty mediocrity and misconduct is largely the doing of VCs who force departments and units to hire unqualified minions or kinsmen of theirs, pseudo-academics who have zero interest in teaching, research, mentorship, and service and instead see their positions as platforms to earn salaries and benefits from a federal resource pool that nobody's father supposedly owns. If people like you talk they'll ask you: is it your father's money?
So, yes, VC's are responsible for a big chunk of the problem. They are mediocrity personified, and they enable and reward mediocrity among the professoriate. I have a dinner with the wife, so please let me not ruin my appetite by talking about the VCs, a despicable lot indeed. And please let no one come here to tell me that there are exceptions. Of course there are. But the one who was recently convicted of embezzling more than a billion Naira from Southwestern federal university (google it) is not one of them.--
On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 1:22 PM, 'Malami buba' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > wrote:
Dear Moses,The raw nerve here is 'battles and results', and I'll be very surprised to hear of any 'modest' achiever whose battles with institutional malaise are not greater than their results. And you need to widen the scope of your 'call outs' to include rogue VCs and their corrupting mentorship practices. In my experience, unaccountable VCs are at the centre of every unethical practice in our univeristies. The worst cases relate to students, who 'steal' water from tanks meant for toilets and use tiny torches in classrooms for revision at night! Without water and electricity for students on campus, no one can escape your 'modest' and indicting manifesto! It's modest, because you seem to underestimate the harmful effect of so many university VCs on the well being of students and the few good men and women who are struggling to do no harm as 'best option' under the tyranny of the 'big man'. Despicable sorts!!
I may be right!
MalamiExcellent points, Moses.The lost sheep parable by Jesus was all about this.
Anyone with three kids will spend more time and resources on the bad one than the two good ones!!!We just have to do more work, unfortunately.More workMore workMore workUntil we are tired.TF
Sent from my iPhone--Oga Falola,When I make these critical assessments, I deliberately generalize. That should be obvious to those who know my rhetorical gestures on this topic already. I omit the usual caveats and qualifiers. Of course, there are some exceptions to the picture I am painting---serious, committed scholars. teachers, and mentors in the Nigerian higher education system (some of them are my friends and collaborators). But that is precisely the problem. They are the exception. We need a critical mass of people who are committed to these ideals. That should begin with admitting that many of those who are teaching and mentoring our young people today have absolutely no business being in the academy. And there are way too many of them. If you got a PhD in history and became a professor of history without ever having to go to an archive, how the heck can you mentor a budding historian? How can you teach them how to navigate and make sense of an archive?
You and I get an ear full whenever we interact with colleagues in Nigerian universities about how deep and hopeless the problem is. Some people from this side who wanted to go and help have been forced back; they had to relocate back to the West, giving up because the committed scholars you mentioned are too few and far between to make a difference. Zeleza and Amutabi seem to be doing well, although I have no detail of their battles and their results. You and I have had several conversations on this topic and we're on the same page. We go to these institutions and see things. You have told me numerous stories that I was not even aware of, stories that are even more scandalous than the ones I saw or experienced myself. Not only that, people within the system bring us the details of the rot and dysfunction. I informally mentor several Nigerian graduate students and you'd cry if you heard their stories. They are being let down by a corrupt and inhumane system and by clueless academics. Some of them who cross over to this side struggle immensely because they had been shortchanged by those who should have prepared them for higher academic challenges. You and I differ only in one sense: you seem to believe that praising people when they do not deserve it and giving effort grades will encourage change in the system. I believe otherwise. I believe that such false praise enables more dysfunction and encourages more impunity. I believe though that what both of us are doing are necessary. Someone needs to constantly call out the culprits of the rot beyond the hackneyed cry of funding. Professorial culprits need to be called out and shamed. At the same time, helping with collaborations, visits, donations, etc is also important, as is acknowledging the effort of those who are seeking to rise above the rot or live out the ideals of the profession. It is not an either/or situation, which is why I give you credit for your efforts. My critique is a systemic one.
By the way, Jennifer, who is a friend, has been in touch about her new AUN gig. She will do well there. AUN is being run on a different model. There is no ASUU there, and recruitment and retention are strictly on merit. Rewards are commensurate with measurable commitments to the ideals of teaching, research, and mentorship, not determined by a blanket national system of remuneration that does not reward or punish individual efforts. Zeleza's institution is also run on a similar model as AUN.--
On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 10:21 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Moses:
These ideas of commitment to higher education—teaching, research and mentorship—are there, from Malami Buba in Sokoto, Onwuka Njoku in Nsukka, Sati in Jos, Adeshina at Ibadan, Imbua at Calabar, Zeleza in Nairobi, Amutabi as Vice Chancellor, etc. etc. etc. that we have no choice but to empower them. My co-editor of African Economic History, Jennifer, has just moved to become the VC of American University in Yola, Nigeria, leaving her job here in the US. We must empower her. A catalog of bad things can be compiled, but where does this leave us? How many people will pack their luggage in Austin and move to Yola? I was approached for this same position and I turned it down.
How do we empower them, as a question, is what makes me sleepless. We must empower them, even minimally by words of encouragement.
We must cumulate what we do, you and I and others.
TFToyin FalolaDepartment of HistoryThe University of Texas at Austin104 Inner Campus DriveAustin, TX 78712-0220USA512 475 7224512 475 7222 (fax)
From: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com > on behalf of moses <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com >
Date: Monday, July 24, 2017 at 9:33 AM
To: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com >
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos, no. 1
Gloria,
In this particular case, I wish the glass of beer was half-full. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no beer in the glass. The answer to your question is yes. I answer yes because I want to link it to an argument that Ibram Kendi makes in his award winning book on the history of racist ideas, which is that the discourse of black moral perfection as a prerequisite for equality, which several black intellectuals, including Du Bois for a time, bought into, is a kind of racism, a kind of bigotry. He calls it uplift suasion. He argues and I agree that black folks who internalize this discourse of black moral perfection as a precondition for them obtaining what their humanity entitles them to, and who do not stop to ask why no such perfection is required of white folk, are guilty of benign racism. You could call it soft bigotry.
However, what one is advocating is not perfection in Nigerian higher education. We want a modest commitment to the ideals of higher education--teaching, research, and mentorship. Crude relativism is not a productive retort to this advocacy because it is, once again, the soft bigotry of low expectations.--
On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
The next time I meet Profs. Falola and Ochonu, I plan to hand eachof them a glass of beer, and find out whether they each find the glass in hand, half-full, or conversely, half- empty. Each glass will be identical, contain the same amount of beer, and will be 50% of total capacity.
One more question: Is there such a thing as the bigotry ofhyper -high expectations?
Professor Gloria EmeagwaliGloria Emeagwali's Documentaries onAfrica and the African Diaspora8608322815 Phone8608322804 Fax
From:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2017 5:12 AM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos, no. 1Well, this is THE question, what can we do. I admire toyin's efforts at supporting the scholarship of junior african colleagues. His conference, the subsidiary conferences and conferences he has promoted over the years, give people a place to present their work and to bolster the cv. Offers to help in publication are the most important in our profession. that's what we do: research and publish. Any help, mentoring, suggestions of where to place articles or books, etc., is probably the most valuable thing we can do to advance the careers of african academics here.All of that work translates into supporting academics in africa as well, although the conditions are radically different.I also do believe supporting a publication, just to get it published, is meaningless. Supporting a publication so as to get a scholar's work out there, is meaningful. This is a real distinction. I would hope my simple ideas of mentoring and promoting scholarship—not pro forma, not just to put it on a cv or get promoted—but to join in the scholarly discussions we all try to share, that is what we should be doing. In large, like toyin, or in small, like reading a junior colleagues work and offering criticism. Not just to get it published, but to get it up to speed, to get it interesting. To believe in the value of the work, and to make it meaningful.I believe in the value of this work. If we help those entering into the profession, if we regard it as our duty, the actions should follow.
kenKenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
Michigan State University
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Date: Saturday, 22 July 2017 at 16:06
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos State University in Photos, no. 1
--A tiny question:What concrete things can we do? It is that concrete things that all of us must reflect upon.
Sent from my iPhoneBeautiful pictures from a beautiful campus. However, your over-the-top positive assessment of the university based on a brief visit, while consistent with your well known ideological project of showcasing the positive side of Africa, is tantamount to what Bill Maher calls the soft bigotry of low expectation. How many of these staff you speak of are committed to research and teaching? And how is LASU exempt from the widespread problems of poor research and teaching ethics, professorial impunity, ASUU tyranny, etc? And is LASU and UNILAG not the epicenters of "sorting." Are they free from the scourge of sexual harassment and sexual transactions in exchange for grades?
I realize that you're invested in a project of not criticizing or putting down African/Nigerian institutions and colleagues. That is understandable, given your extensive collaborations in multiple African universities. Some of us do not have such entanglements and the anxieties that come with them and are, moreover, past the point of caring about people's feelings.
A whole generation of Nigeria's young men is being shortchanged and the country's future is being damaged and we must call culpable people out and criticize those deserving of criticism. We should not whitewash the mess or offer false or exaggerated praise in a patronizing manner. We diaspora Nigerians take offense when white people do that to us; we shouldn't do that to our continental institutions. Southern Nigerian universities do marginally better than northern ones, but they are riddled with the same problems that plague others. Nigerian universities have become incestuous national cake institutions where intellectual in-breeding, nepotism, ethno-religious insularity, and academic self-cloning reign and innovative thinking and interdisciplinary works are discouraged by academics wedded to formulaic, outmoded disciplinary templates.
We will tell the truth and refuse to be complicit in the ongoing collapse of public higher education in Nigeria. We're accountable to our conscience. This accountability is superior to any affinity we may have with colleagues and institutions back home.--
On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 6:46 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
--In over 300 photos, I will bring to you the impressive campus of Lagos State University, Nigeria. The Departments are all well staffed, and the students are incredibly talented and energetic. The millions of African young men and women represent our future, and their abilities at imaginations and inventions are so extraordinary that we may not even know that we are witnessing a revolutionary moment. To those who speak ill of these young men and women, they should check their thinking processes.
Toyin FalolaDepartment of HistoryThe University of Texas at Austin104 Inner Campus DriveAustin, TX 78712-0220USA512 475 7224512 475 7222 (fax)
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