Wine and Reading Comprehension: In Vino Veritas
Installment II
The last anyone has seen of Dr. Swift 2.0, he was ending his annual retreat in the Napa Valley, getting himself psychologically fit for teaching. He’d stumbled onto an idea, a possible way to help struggling readers, but he couldn’t get the call he’d received from President Kookoo Bird Cocopuff out of his head. As you continue down this narrative path, charitable reader, it might be useful to refresh yourself with a peek at Installment I. Some days have passed since Napa…
+++++
Fall semester 2028 opened with little fanfare. As he walked from the parking structure to the Eduction building, Swift flashed back on a distant memory of professors on the picket line, chanting lines from Nietzsche, singing union songs from long ago, striking for reduced teaching loads and more tenure-track positions. The strike paralyzed the state university system the opening of that Fall, 2023; it felt like a good idea at the time. But campuses statewide hemorrhaged students and never recovered. Faculty as they had existed pre-2024 faced extinction.
The union still existed in name, but state government had taken complete control of the curriculum and its enabling resources. It was far worse in Florida and Texas. Disciplinary knowledge rock solid for centuries had begun to crumble like dried leaves under foot. Even worse, institutional agreements and values that upheld the promise of future knowledge were fractured.
Moderates in the White House during the pivotal year of 2024 faced strong opposition from a Republican-controlled Congress and a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. Cocopuff ended up skating through the maze of law suits he faced and somehow was re-elected to sit in the Oval. Some states and localities outright rejected federal involvement and oversight and pursued their own policies in higher education, undermining academic freedom and commodifying research, whitewashing history.
The image of Earl Butz, this gigantic pig grown surreptitiously in the basement of the Agriculture Building at Moo University in a state mysteriously like Iowa in a piece of fiction from the 1990s, formed in his mind as he sat in his office. An economist at Moo made a name for himself not too mention a pile of cash by selling bogus data sets about Earl Butz to the pork industry. When he was exposed as a fraud, righteous outrage spewed from Moo faculty—MOOOOOO!—and he lost his professorship.
No more. In Fall, 2028, nobody within university any longer believed in old style blind peer review and disciplinary accountability. The single remnant of the old regime was the Institutional Review Board. Thank God for that.
The moderate administration was worked to buttress higher education. There was real concern about thousands of bogus research papers published every year—concern for medical practice, law, engineering, accounting, all of the professions people depend on.
The pressure to publish, the difficulty of getting qualified peer reviewers to serve exploding numbers of Open Source journals, the influence of external monied interests eroding enforcement of academic integrity policies—then, that magic then which doesn’t come again, then people believed things could be fixed through diligent accountability. Rots of Ruck.
Public universities lost the actual right to Academic Senate faculty governance in Red states and Blue states alike. Meetings of Senators were hollow affairs, more like gripe sessions than anything else. The structure of administrations at public universities were fragmented, dysfunctional. It wasn’t uncommon for a college president to live across the country and meet with local administrators in zoom sessions.
Former budgeting constraints on state governments forcing some states to guarantee adequate and appropriate local spending for public schooling, including universities, had been adjudicated as unconstitutional at the federal level. The argument written by then-Justice Samuel Forsuch went like this: The federal government must ensure that policy makers in each separate state cannot require budgetary decisions to treat social safety net issues, including public schools, as sacred cows.
Swift could do only what was in front of him to do. The oppressive political economy driving corporate profits ever higher was gutting whatever was left of humanism and the humanities. What could he do?
The final date to add students approached. Swift sat in his office. Students never came to office hours anymore, but he could hope. He could use some adds, partly to give each class a margin in case the drop rate decimated the group, partly to bring more voices to class discussions. All of his sections were lightly enrolled. Without tenure, which the state system left intact for already tenured faculty but eliminated for new hires, two would have already been cancelled.
Shadows from lush trees surrounding the Education building began to creep through the windows. Bose speakers lightly brushed his ears with mellow tones of Wes Montgomery. He loved his office. He’d appointed it with all the comforts of home, a rocking chair on a woven rug, a really cool sound system, a small refrigerator.
His phone rang.
*
Thirty minutes later he hung up. He couldn’t remember a word of what had been said. He’d recorded the phone conversation to have a transcript for analysis. When he pushed the red record button he didn’t realize he would need it just to know what was said. He knew recording without consent was a criminal offense. He hated doing it but felt he had no choice.
He made sure to close his door. This was ludicrous, he knew. The door had been partly open when he was talking, and Benjamin Smitherman, a special education professor in a neighboring office, peeked in once. No remedy for that, he thought. Then he started listening to the recording.
“May I speak with John Swift?”
“Speaking.”
“Dr. John Swift 2.0?”
“Yes.”
“Please hold for POTUS.”
He stopped the tape. Shit. He hadn't expected this sinking feeling threatening to pull him through the floor as the full weight of his situation hit him. He felt his heart pounding, his breathing rate increase, a tingling in his legs. Could a person spontaneously ignite? Get a grip. Settle down. Chill.
“Dr. Swift, this is your favorite President. We spoke several weeks ago. Do you remember that conversation? This is very important, very important.”
“Yes, I do, Sir. Absolutely.”
“You remembered to call me my name, Sir. I like that. Before we go any further, I have to know. Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not recording this conversation?”
“Yes—er, no, Sir.”
“Well, which is it?”
“I’m not recording.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because I am, and if I find out you are, I’ll have to kill you.”
“Oh. Ok.”
“It’s a matter of national security. I am national security.”
He stopped the recording again. Suddenly, he felt dizzy. His breathing became labored. He’d never experienced an anxiety attack, but he considered the possibility. He got the hives once after eating a piece of Halloween candy and went to the emergency room for a shot of Benadryl, but this whole body, slam the eyes shut, stay in the chair, don’t throw up.
A minute, maybe two passed. Swift stepped out into the hallway for a drink of water. The cooling liquid seemed to soothe him. He needed to splash his face and went into the bathroom.
“What’s wrong with you?” Benjamin Smitherman, who was washing his hands, asked, looking concerned at Swift’s ashen face in the mirror.
“I don’t know.” Smith replied. “I’m nauseous.”
“You look horrible. Should I call 911? Or maybe the custodian? Are you going to puke?”
Then he did, he puked, the chicken nachos from his lunched now barf on a tile floor. Quick-footed, nimbly, Benjamin skittered toward a wall, saving his shoes and pants.
Swift rinsed his mouth.
“Yeah, maybe you’d better call a custodian.”