Another addition to the "great to be gone" cohort

Shortly after leaving academe -- after fifty years of being absorbed in that "institution," as in "you belong in an institution" -- three colleagues and I began to use the remark, "great to be gone," or, simply, "GTBG," to reaffirm the wisdom of our choices to surrender our tenure and academic life before we ran the great risk of being fired, cancelled, protested or otherwise abused by the woke mob (including the woke Loyola administration, wringing their hands with guilt over accusations that the founding Jesuit fathers of Loyola OWNED SLAVES!). As expressed well by Hall and Oates, "the strong give up and leave, the weak give up and stay."

And here is the latest addition to our group of academic misfits, i.e., those who believe that the purpose of a university is to improve society by the pursuit and transmission of knowledge, the exchange of ideas, and the diversity of thought that creates progress.

Sadly, ironically, and perhaps fortunately, the resigning tenured anthropology prof is leaving UCLA (photo of portion of the east-west "Bruin walk" at right) where we feel Gaby earned an excellent education in a field from the "south campus," i.e., the STEM side of campus rather than the social science and humanities "north campus," with no immediately visible, significant radicalization. Although, to be fair, she has embraced some of the rhetoric. She remains a confirmed capitalist and works in the show of Wall Street. In any case, I feel especially grateful that Gaby is gone from that cultural milieu, just as I have been fortunate enough to have been able to participate in higher ed for fifty years and then to leave those ivy-coved halls on my own terms, at a time of my choosing, and with my values and pride intact, not to mention a good retirement buyout package and multi-million dollar retirement account of my own making, along with a Social Security package that, with my deferral until age 70, provides me and then Dena with an annuity worth well over a million dollars. Plus my retirement opened her mind to going back into the corporate world and earning an excellent income as she rises quickly into management ranks.

This is a bit of a long-winded way of reminding myself (and informing the reader) of the blessings of NOT being on a college campus today, feeling unable to speak truth to the power of the woke mob. It reminds me of the handful of students who formally acknowledged that my course showed them that they were neither alone nor wrong in the way they thought about capitalism, markets, freedom, natural rights, traditional values, history, data, science and critical thinking. I have saved and cherished a few of those notes, along with a print out (see file, Reactions to Lorenzi 2000, below) of the collected comments from responses to my resignation as Sellinger dean in August 2000, another fortuitous move and a precursor to being interested in and able to leave academe nineteen years later.

Reactions to Lorenzi 2000.docx

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In any case, Harrison (W) has been a respite from the political, medical, social and economic storm of the last two years, located mainly in Washington (DC), on American university campuses, and in major urban areas "led" by progressive politicians.