'Bluster (New Style) Invokes the Public Good'

I write about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand that research can be costly and professors don’t work for the love of it, but money has become the barometer of worth. Small grants can be ignored regardless of the intrinsic worth of the research. Big dollars means big media splash. The percentage of staff devoted to “development” has metastasized. Shilling is a fulltime job. I’m not against money. I look forward to payday. But, selfishly, it’s no fun to write about. It’s boring. 

Last year at Kaboom Books here in Houston I found a first American edition of Kingsley Amis’ A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957–1967 (1968) and couldn’t resist. “A Tribute to the Founder” suggests that the disproportionate emphasis on money at universities, and industrial-scale philanthropy in general, is nothing new:

 

“By bluster, graft, and doing people down,

Sam Baines got rich, but mellowing at last,

Felt that by giving something to the town

He might undo the evils of his past.

 

“His hope was to prevent the local youth

From making the mistakes that he had made:

Choosing expediency instead of truth,

And quitting what was honest for what paid.

 

“A university seemed just the thing,

And that old stately home the very place.

Sam wept with pleasure at its opening.

He died too soon to weep at its disgrace.

 

“Graft is refined among the tea and scones,

Bluster (new style) invokes the public good,

And doing-down gets done in pious tones

That Sam tried to put on, but never could.”