The Silence of the Thought Leaders

The Silence of the Thought Leaders
(an email sent February 5, 2024 to certain members of the administration at the University at Albany (SUNY))
February 27, 2024

Dear Pres. Rodríguez,

I am an alumnus of UAlbany, having graduated with a PhD in 2020. My dissertation was on a complex systems approach to fundamental physics. Doubtless and fortunately, my dissertation will not have much effect on humanity, but facility with complex systems science can be leveraged to make useful contributions across a wide range of fields, as you know. Since I left UAlbany in July of 2020, I have essayed to improve the survival prospects of our global technological civilization. I’d like to inform you, Mr. President, of my recent findings that I judge could be of great use to the university.

Mr. President, you are a leader of thought leaders. The thought leaders you lead are sorely needed to explain to the public that all of humanity is in grave danger from the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the water crisis, the soil crisis, the nuclear arms crisis, and so on, each individually and, of far greater import, the several together as a complex, or polycrisis, in which the individual crises are mutually reinforcing. Nevertheless, the thought leaders at UAlbany, like those at so many institutions, hide in their labs, creating scholarship that, in a few cases, may have relevance to human survival, but failing to communicate their fever-pitched alarm at the state of our civilization and the ecology of which it is a part. The public, understandably, concludes that not much can be all that amiss if only a few scientists are gluing their hands to buildings. Whence the silence of the terrified thought leaders?

I know from personal experience that one reaction to blind terror is freezing. This tactic can work in some situations but not when action is required, as is now the case.

Still, I think that more is behind this silence of the thought leaders. I invite you, Mr. President, to read my latest blog post [below, on this page], entitled "Babbittry in Zenith," in which I discuss clear messages being sent by aesthetics and scheduling at UAlbany, messages that promote conformity and exalt commerce at a time when inadequately restrained commerce, with its consequent excessive resource consumption and pollution output, is joined to rapidly intensifying interconnectedness between and within human societies to supply the underlying cause of the existential nature of the threat to global civilization arising from the polycrisis, according to the Cascade Institute (https://cascadeinstitute.org/technical-paper/global-polycrisis-the-causal-mechanisms-of-crisis-entanglement/, bottom of page 10 of the download).

The leadership of UAlbany has made the situation worse in recent years. The disgraceful treatment of Prof. Carpenter can only have discouraged public speech by professors (https://www.timesunion.com/state/article/renowned-ualbany-pcb-researcher-alternate-17759855.php). Your institution is not the only one in which risk aversion seems to have ceded decision-making to university counsel. I refer you, Mr. President, to the career-ending performances before Congress of the presidents of Penn and Harvard. The blind pursuit of safety is extremely dangerous and can magnify risk into existential threat. Wars of choice are examples of this blind pursuit (https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Commentary-Consider-thinking-the-unthinkable-17445088.php).

I am also deeply troubled by two features within your administration. Your Dean of Undergraduate Education lists no classroom teaching experience in her professional biography (edit 2025/01/24: At least one of Vice President Malatesta's online profiles now shows that she has "served as an adjunct professor" at UAlbany. I'm still troubled that a dean of undergraduate education left a situation in which it took me so long to find this out, unless she served as an adjunct for the first time after I started making noise about the issue of her professional biography lacking mention of classroom teaching experience. I'm also a bit leery of people who style themselves as "adjunct professor," rather than "adjunct instructor.") and is trained in criminal justice (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanne-malatesta-43a25418/details/experience/). Perhaps Dean Malatesta does an excellent job, but the message of her qualifications is that obedience is prized over teaching. Dean Malatesta might address this issue by writing more about the philosophy and skills she brings to her position, to eliminate the possibility of misunderstanding. (https://www.albany.edu/provost/deans/faculty/joanne-malatesta) Prospective employees and students, unlike me, will not go to the trouble of telling you, Mr. President, about any misgivings they might have in relation to Dean Malatesta’s professional history.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the same officer of your administration occupies, as I understand it, the roles of soliciting donations from people of high net financial worth, managing the fund into which donations are deposited, and occupying a seat on the board of trustees, which decides what to do with the money. Rich people have a vertically integrated hold on your administration. How is it that Vice President Sanai’s three roles do not constitute three pairwise conflicts of interest? Why is the Dean of Undergraduate Education not a member of the board, when the liaison to the money is?

This semester, I will foster a discussion at UAlbany of how to rethink the vast Collins Circle lawn so as to express values other than those of conformity and uniformity, the clear messages of close-cut, monoculture lawn, a problem about which I wrote to you, Mr. President, last May (https://www.momshair.org/letters). I congratulate you, Mr. President, on presiding over the establishment at UAlbany of at least two no-mow zones last year (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FuHDLzyU0sQ). I encourage you, Mr. President, to publicize the efforts of your institution to undo the harms to Nature wrought by this meretricious hand-me-down from imperialists, enslavers of human beings, and 20th-century Babbitts, the close-cut, monoculture lawn.

By pursuing groundskeeping reform to a far greater extent and publicizing your efforts, Mr. President, you might provide direct leadership to the community in our city, state, and beyond, while providing an example to the silent thought leaders you lead, Mr. President, that it is now safe to emerge from their labs and practice thought leadership on a larger stage.

Thank you very much, Mr. President, for your time and all the good you do.

Best wishes,
James

James Lyons Walsh

Pronouns: he, him, his

My initiative to address the global polycrisis is at

www.godispoor.org

My professional history is at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-lyons-walsh-92409b56/

Babbittry in Zenith
February 4, 2024

There’s a big story in Albany, New York, USA about the ascendancy of Babbittry. The picture above, of Collins Circle, the main approach to the University at Albany, clearly shows one of the chief symbols promoting conformity, the close-cut, monoculture lawn. Also shown are University Hall to the left and the Massry Center of Business to the right. Here are eight observations on Babbittry in Albany:

1)            The University at Albany libraries were closed for the entire winter break, nominally in pursuit of energy conservation. I’m generally for reducing energy consumption, but many scholars do most of their non-teaching work over vacations. A librarian there said that this was the first time the libraries had been closed for the entire break and that it was “a big problem.”

2)            The museum in the Fine Arts Building at UAlbany is open 11-4 Monday-Friday. Why isn’t it open on weekends and those evenings when performances are held in the nearby Performing Arts Building? Make parking free on weekends, and you have a perfect family activity that might get the youngsters inspired. Legend has it that there’s a nice pond or lake for walking around, too.

3)            University Hall was said in this article to contain fine art from the university collection the day it opened. I went inside for the first time this week and didn’t see any art in the first-floor public area. Art can offend, and why would you run the risk of offending prospective students? It’s perfectly beige inside, now. It feels comfortable, which troubles me.

4)            The enormous sign reading “Massry School of Business” atop the Massry Center for Business must make some first-time visitors overestimate how much of what they survey is part of that school. Arriving on public transportation in good weather, one enters the university by walking first between the administration and business buildings, rather than the Arts and Sciences and Fine Arts Buildings, as before.

5) I've seen art on display in the Massry Building, but that building's support of Babbittry is even more oppressive. The building is the foul-weather entrance, via tunnels, to the podium, the structure including the colonnade in the picture above, for people arriving at Collins Circle, including by public transportation. I would often plod through this palace of business on my way to the tunnels and, ultimately, the modest digs of the Physics Department. Every time I entered Massry, I was slapped in the face with the glass-fronted showcase to the aptly named UASBIG, the student-run investment fund. Do we think, despite our experience of financial collapse in 2008, that elevating the social status of market speculation is a good idea, especially with physics students passing by?

6)            At the College of Saint Rose, philosophy, including the mandatory ethics class, was an early casualty of budget cuts. Art education went. The focus in recovering financially from the overbuilding that seems to have pauperized the school was on boosting enrollment and cutting costs via concentrating on practical subjects and de-emphasizing studies that help to make life worthwhile. Here's an excellent article pointing out that, for example, biology students often make matriculation decisions based on music programs.

7)            Though I have no direct knowledge of this, it seems obvious to me that both Saint Rose and UAlbany hired marketing firms, maybe a decade ago. Following the lead of marketers outsources the risk of speaking publicly and promotes uniformity across the ecology of higher education. Marketing can make a sale, but it shouldn't be relied upon to generate long-term commitment.

8)            How is it that UAlbany, which prides itself on its diversity, has an enormous, close-cut, monoculture lawn at its main entrance? Not only is the green monstrosity at Collins Circle an expensively maintained biological desert, from which all but one kind of life is excluded during a biodiversity crisis, but also it symbolizes cutting down anything that sticks out. Universities are places where nonconformity and free speech have traditionally been relatively safe. Lawns are the means by which Babbitts force Mother Nature to grovel before them and asphalt the threat they hold in reserve should our Mother rebel too vigorously in trying to grow Her hair a little.

Here’s a German businessman and patron of opera, a safe, high-status realm of culture, intoning on the tendency of state organizations not to “act and think commercially,” as if commerce were the only concern of humanity. I wish his complaint applied to a greater degree in the United States.

I understand how Babbitt won recent battles: Culture had been used to exclude groups of people and justify oppressing them. The idea that the victims of systemic theft lacked culture has been replaced as justification for their plight with the idea that the victims lack merit. Isn’t that the defining characteristic of meritocracy?

All humans have culture and need ample facilities for participating in it. All humans have merit, and nonconformists help others to keep this point in the front of their minds. To fight Babbittry, support tax increases, mock the exaltation of commerce, and reduce the acreage of those bright-green symbols of conformity, close-cut, monoculture lawns. Not coincidentally, these actions will promote the survival of human civilization through the current, perilous century.