The last couple of months have been a lot.
I don’t think I’m the right person to reflect on everything happening on Pennsylvania Avenue right now. I don’t think the world needs yet another mediocre middle-aged white guy spitting his opinions all over the internet. I mean, if I wanted to do that, I’d get myself a podcast or something.
(Speaking of podcasts, not for nothing, get back to work Gavin.)
But I do have something to say about the impacts of the chaos (and, remember, the chaos is the point) specifically on higher education and even more specifically on Buddhist Studies.
Two caveats. First, this is a good read.
Second, what I’m about to say is not an official statement by the Institute of Buddhist Studies. It is merely my opinion, some random collection of things I’ve been thinking about of late. At the same time, I am fully aware of my position and how anything I say or do cannot but be interpreted as somehow reflecting the institution (community) which pays my salary. Still. Even if compartmentalization is an illusion, I’d like to believe that there is a “work me” and a “not-work me.”
With that out of the way.
The Institute of Buddhist Studies currently accepts zero public dollars. Long ago, we investigated what it would take to become eligible to participate in Department of Education funding programs and determined that the costs would not be worth the benefits. In short, IBS would need to invests large sums of money to make our students eligible to receive federal students loans (i.e., debt) and that wasn’t morally palatable. So we decided, instead, to focus our efforts on private donations toward scholarships to help offset tuition costs for our students.
This decision was made with students in mind and certainly not with the foresight of “oh, by the way, in 2025 the CEO of professional wrestling is going to be commanded by a small-minded tyrant to dismantle the DOE and fire everyone making that whole system dysfunctionally chaotic while the courts and Congress try and figure it out.” But, here we are. And so I am grateful of past-us decisions to not be beholden to the DOE in the present. They can threaten to cut off funds to schools and colleges. But we don’t receive any. So, to paraphrase my inner toddler, neener-neener.
Of course, and to go back to that first caveat, it’s not like the actions of the current administration won’t have an impact on IBS, directly or indirectly.
I’ve long told colleagues that, because I work in a gradate-only context, whatever trends we’re seeing among undergraduate students these days don’t really impact us at IBS — but they will, in three of four years, when today’s undergrads become graduate students.
That’s a good general rule, but it’s also overly simplistic. Trends in higher education generally will impact us. And if the DOE is shuttered, there will be significantly less support for undergraduate education generally which means that there may not be undergrads to become grad students. If these larger trends continue (many of which have been happening well before the last election) and undergrad religious studies, Asian studies, or language programs are dismantled or shuttered, then the next crop of potential grad students at IBS will not be as academically prepared as previous generations. Long term and worst case scenario, if there are no universities, then people will not get the required education to teach at IBS and (some) of our graduates will not have jobs to apply to once they complete their program. Among many many other potentially horrific future outcomes. In short, even if we don’t take money from the feds, our whole existence is bound to the fate of higher education. Come what may, we rise and fall together.
What is there to do?
There are always things to do. Many of those things are not things I am in a position to do. (I am not a revolutionary, I am not the kind of person who’s going to throw Molotov cocktails at Teslas, not necessarily because I am ethically opposed to it but because I understand the consequences such actions would have on a host of people besides myself and I am not willing to throw them into the fire with that cocktail. Hm. Maybe that is ethics.) I am in the position to keep steering the ship (HMS Institute of Buddhist Studies) through troubled waters and keep to the hope that we’ll reach the other shore in one piece (see what I did there?).
Put another way, I’ll try and find serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage the change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
What is there for you to do?
Well, like I said earlier, IBS decided to rely on private donations to fund student scholarship. Over the years, I’ve reflected on the economics of higher education and Buddhist studies under capitalism. I have complicated feelings about these things. I have complicated feelings about the fact that (a portion) of IBS’s fortunes rise and fall with the stock market. I have complicated feelings about the larger “system” of higher education, its undeniable public benefits as well as its worst failings. I have complicated feelings because I know that none of this is perfect. We do not live in an idealized world. We live in the saha world. All our choices are complicated and imperfect, and we cannot see all ends.
In an ideal world, the lion’s share of our tax dollars would go not to the Pentagon but to the Department of Education because, collectively, as a united citizenry, we would implicitly understand that education is a good in itself, that a well-informed public is essential to a well-functioning society. That is not the world we live in. And it hasn’t been for a very long time.
I’ve seen several memes of late lambasting the (unelected) cartoon supervillain in charge the Department of Government Efficiency. The gist of these memes is that his Gilded Age predecessors — the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, and so on — used their wealth to open libraries and hospitals and created philanthropic funds that have financed generations of public programming (e.g. Sesame Street and NOVA). Let’s leave aside for a moment some of the historical realities here (these guys had to make themselves look good because of a concerted anti-trust movement that would have eventually made most of America look like that scene in The Dark Knight Rises but we’d rooting for the mob rather than Batman) and just note that the current crop of billionaire super villains aren’t doing very much to convince the rest of us to behave nicely towards them. And, in the limited context of the point I’m laboring to get to, in the absence of a well-functioning government, sometimes private philanthropy is the only way to survive.
As y’all might know, I’m riding my bike to LA this summer in support of two organizations that have been on the vanguard of supporting marginalized folks for decades. Their organizations rely heavily on federal funding, and they face some stiff obstacles to keeping their doors open if this shit show continues.
So, to swing back to my question, what is there for you to do? Well, I don’t expect that any of my readers have the same resources as the cartoon supervillains who, for some reason, refuse to open libraries. But I do suspect that (at least some of) my readers have more privilege and resources than others. And to swing back to my appropriation of the Lord’s prayer earlier, there are things we can control and there are things we can’t. The thing about privilege is that it is also a resource, a resource that can be leveraged. Maybe you don’t have the resources to open a library, but you probably have the resources to give (donate) to worthy causes or resources (time) to call your Congressional representatives or, hell, the resources to complain about this shit show on social media. Don’t discount these resources. It’s all part of the larger tapestry of resistance that, god willing and if the creeks don’t rise, will bend that arc of history inexorably toward justice.
Yes, I am aware that I dropped some not exactly subtle hints into those last two paragraphs asking you to donate both to my personal and professional causes. I’m okay with that. Like I said in that second caveat, compartmentalization is an illusion. Like many of my readers, I suspect, we’re all clinging desperately to some semblance of normalcy, sanity, democracy, accountability, justice, love, hope, beauty, peace (choose one or more as appropriate). There is much in this world that we cannot control. But that does not mean we cannot control anything. Find the things you can control and direct those energies toward increasing whatever normalcy-sanity-democracy-accountability-justice-love-hope-beauty-peace you can, no matter the scale, no matter how large or small.
And, as always, find your family. Hold them close.
Take care, y’all. We got this.
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