The Counterpublic Papers vol. 8 no. 11

Hey. So I wrote about the Lions the last couple of weeks because I am still tripping about it…and to an extent I’m tripping that I’m tripping.

But there’s another reason.

A few years ago I published a paper on Ella Baker in Contemporary Political Theory. Ella Baker was arguably one of the two or three most important figures in the Civil Rights Movement, operating behind to scenes to garner resources for the movement in its beginnings, to create the institutional infrastructure, and then to develop and then sustain youth autonomy. I wrote the article to push back against the idea that we should only look for political theory in text, and to critique the role charismatic authority is posited to play in black life. I think that article does important work…but I’m now of the belief that we should revisit charisma in a way that retains some skepticism while acknowledging its potential benefits. One of the functions of bureaucracy is to generate consistent and persistent collective action and collective inaction. We rarely write of the bureaucracy required to maintain Jim Crow racism and its northern variant. We write of some of the symbolic elements—the signs for example that pointed whites to certain bathrooms and blacks to others. And we’re increasingly interested in the ways bureaucracies politically produced racial differences. But—and I could be wrong—we don’t really write about the mundane bureaucratic activity required to sustain Jim Crow segregation over time, in ways that people just tended to support because they were there rather than because of any explicit political reason. 

(Until they resisted.)

Throughout the Jim Crow order there were hidden and not-so-hidden violations of this order. But there’s a moment when these hidden and not-so-hidden violations metastasize and spread. 

While we can and should focus on the work figures like Baker performed, we shouldn’t do so in ways that reproduce the idea that charisma functioned solely to reduce black democratic capacity. 

Bringing this to the present, one of the reasons I’m interested in the Lions and their transformation (and yes, I’m writing as if the Lions I grew up watching aren’t likely to come back…I think the “same old lions” team has been replaced) is because I think Sheila Hamp Ford, Dan Campbell, and Brad Holmes were able to change the team’s culture through their charisma. (Really, it’s Campbell, but I’m willing to extend this.) 

Further, when people supporting Trump say (or are posited to say) that they want someone who can cut through the bullshit, what they’re stating is not just that they want a strongman figure, it’s that they want a charismatic figure. Obviously the political project they seek to bring into being isn’t my own, but they see a daunting bureaucracy they cannot manage. They aren’t quite wrong.

….

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it here before but I’m a member of the approximately three years old Kriger School Senate. In fact I’m coming up on the last half of the last year of my term. One of the things we’ve been struggling with has been administration recalcitrance to cede even a bit of decision making authority to faculty. This goes against basic university principles, and to the extent that faculty have expertise in a range of fields, against sound governing principles in general. While I imagine there are a range of activities that faculty members shouldn’t necessarily be involved in deciding, things like creating a new school, figuring out retirement pensions in the wake of potential fiscal crises, developing COVID teaching policies, should involve faculty. In these and other instances Hopkins administration has basically taken power themselves over this process, causing the few elected bodies of faculty we have to play catch up without access to the same level of administrative resources. 

Now the thing is, one would think that this is something that faculty in general would somehow automatically push back against. 

And no. It isn’t.

Faculty often tend to pursue their own intellectual interests in their departments. They may see the department as the place to deal with whatever concerns they have with the university, and only see the university when it comes to their own tenure cases and contracts (or those of their colleagues), or perhaps when it comes to teaching, or they look at a check and see a decimal point off. And they may have thought about the university in this fashion or something like it going back years and decades. The primary reason I haven’t tended to think like this is because I came from a tradition of black student protest, but even here it isn’t difficult to imagine a black faculty member with my same general trajectory understanding the university in the abstract as a contested space, while more or less treating the university as the place they work. If you examined black academic Twitter (which may or may not even exist like this anymore—I’m still on Twitter but it doesn’t seem like any of my posts get anywhere near the traction they used to before Musk took over the platform) you’d see a number of folk (tenured folk) who simultaneously articulate politics that are more or less my own and treat their university as if it’s just the “edu” that happens to come with their email. 

One of the most important things faculty should have primary responsibility for is tenure and promotion. The body Hopkins had carry out this responsibility, the Homewood Academic Council, is undergoing radical reform. I don’t want to go too deep into the weeds here because I’m already up against my word count, but suffice it to say that administration has attempted to take control of the first step of this reform process by appointing a committee of faculty, sidestepping the elected bodies (the Homewood Academic Council itself, the Senate) that technically should have control here.

Some of us who’ve been involved in faculty governance for the better part of decades understand the dire consequences of this move. But only some of us. 

Why do I bring this up? 

Because I see administration and its attached bureaucracy creating an ideational space in which their decisions are articulated and tacitly agreed to as common sense. 

And although there’s more to it than this, I see this as a moment in which a particular type of charisma is called for. 

I don’t ever think I’d have expected to be in a position where the Detroit Lions ends up teaching me something about politics, much less campus politics, but I never expected a charlatan reality TV game show host to become president only to foment an insurrection to try to keep his job. (And obviously I can write more here but again, there’s the word count.)

…..

As part of my Senate duties I chair the KSAS Senate Police Committee designed to informally “oversee” and critically investigate the rollout process associated with the proposed Johns Hopkins Private Police Department. Later today (Monday, February 26, 7pm) we’ll be hosting a virtual public assembly. The agenda will include a presentation on implementation and jurisdictional concerns as well as a q & a session. Visit http://tinyurl.com/JHPD-assembly at 7pm to attend via zoom.

Oh. Been meaning to mention this. A few months ago I got an email out of the blue from novelist Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age. I don’t know Reid personally, and because my fiction tastes are primarily speculative, wasn’t familiar with Such a Fun Age….but she wrote me to tell me that her new novel Come and Get It contains ideas she used Knocking the Hustle to develop. She writes a bit more about that here.

To say it was a pleasant surprise to get such an email is an understatement. I’ve an autographed version of the book, that I imagine I may end up putting next to the Amy Sherald prints Amy gave me after she sat in on my co-taught Black Visual Politics course years ago. 

(Related. The concept of the hustle itself has finally come under critical scrutiny, likely as a dual product of COVID and aftershocks of the economy. Sarah Diamond interviewed me for her piece on “Hustle” as a concept. Take a look.)

Finally, I was going to make a whole post about my photography just to see how Beehiiv dealt with pictures…but it’s a bit late for a best of 2023 joint. So here’s my favorite picture of 2023, taken in the wee hours of the night during a Theo Parrish afterset.

See you next week or maybe a bit later.