Wanted: Someone Who Knows Nothing About the Job

He's baack: Stanley Fish has spent much of the last year stirring things up in a number of topical areas. This time he takes on searches for senior administrators in higher education:

The truth is that there are no perfectly straightforward senior administrative searches. They are all a bit cooked, and often they serve more as window dressing than as genuinely deliberative processes. Indeed, given that search committees are always advisory, those asked to serve on them should be aware that the work they do will quite possibly be to no effect, either because a decision had been made before the process ever began or because the ball is taken away and given to someone else just as the goal is approached. (The phrase “university service” takes on new meaning for those who agree to participate in this piece of theater.) That’s just the way it is, and it’s not a matter of blame, but a consequence of a process that straddles two worlds, the world of teaching and scholarship and the world of high-stakes finance and politics.