Every department should have one person who says, “Wait a minute.”
Sometimes a meeting benefits from that person who hears nine people agree and proclaims that the tenth opinion deserves a hearing.
At work and at home, I get excited about new ideas, new approaches, and new tools. As the Academic Director of Academic Technology Services at UC Davis, I have spent part of my career encouraging faculty to create and use online resources, to teach hybrid or online classes, and to teach with images, audio, and video. Even when I read about the latest in artificial intelligence, I might ask “What could we build with this?”
My Religious Studies colleague Naomi Janowitz asks a different question.
“What might we lose?”
I have attended tech-centric faculty meetings where I have seen Naomi take notes with a Lamy fountain pen in a notebook. I have led discussions about efficiency while she steered us back toward attention and the needs of our students. Naomi asks what people should do with the time the new tools save. Read another book? Have another conversation? Think a little longer?
Years ago, I encountered a phrase from the Babylonian Talmud: ipkha mistabra, often translated as, “The opposite is more probable.” I have always liked the phrase, even if I have rarely practiced it except to challenge my students’ arguments and assumptions. Most of us prefer agreement. Agreement feels productive. Sometimes agreement gets us to lunch sooner.
Universities, however, also need people who delay lunch.
When a colleague retires, an office gets emptied. The books disappear. A favorite teacup remains unused in the departmental lounge. Someone else eventually inherits the furniture.
Sometimes the real vacancy appears during a conversation when you suddenly realize that the person who would have challenged everyone’s assumptions is no longer in the room.
I got to read this poem at Naomi’s retirement party.
For Naomi Janowitz: The Start of Summer
ONE
I remember the first time I was brought to her office.
I wanted to take the stairs.
But no, my elderly guide, the chair of English,
Insisted on the elevator, telling me on the way to the 9th floor,
“I think you should really get to know Naomi Janowitz.”
We arrived at the highest point on campus, the entire county her vista.
She may have been the only weekday Davisite
who could see both the Sacramento skyline
and all four surrounding mountain ranges.
Surrounded by all those canonical texts,
I was struck by more analogues than I can process.
From that elevation, I saw Zeus on his eagle,
I think of Hliðskjálf, the high seat of Odin,
or the Garuda upon which Vishnu would be mounted.
No matter the religious imagery, on that first visit to the office
I was both taken in and taken aback.
TWO
When I arrived in California a few years before,
I noticed how deliberately our academics thought,
how lugubriously they talked.
But not Naomi.
Quick-witted, quick-minded, quick-tongued,
She was more like Saraswati,
The Hindu goddess of learning, speech, poetry, music, and wisdom.
I felt compelled to bring a court stenographer with me
on subsequent visits so that I could later consult an accurate record of what was said,
to review the titles of the books that had been recommended,
to consider the methodological insights into research and teaching.
THREE
When I started to teach with technology,
Naomi continued to teach without technology.
When I said, “Let’s embrace the tool,” she shook her head.
“Ipkha mistabra” / EEP-khah miss-TAHV-rah
The Babylonian Talmud tell us,
“The opposite is more probable.”
If nine people in a room agree to a course of action,
let there be a 10th person who says no,
who says, “Put down the smartphone.
Who says, “Put down the laptop.”
Who says, “Put it down in your notebook. Or just listen. Listen and then think.”
AI is not the path to Yahweh.
The newest freshman at UC Davis and the most veteran professor alike
Are surrounded by distractions, delimited by temptations.
What is the proper course of action, the most moral choice, when thus beset?
Naomi has an opinion about that.
Rather than a devil’s advocate, she appeals to the angels of our better natures.
FOUR
So the books have been packed up, many of them given away.
The teacups she donated to the ninth floor student lounge will remain.
But what of that magical office, that intellectual throne room in the clouds?
What function Olympus, when the gods are retiring to Berkeley?
The KDVS Office Hours may be rebroadcast forever,
but the office has still been emptied.
FIVE
After she escapes the samsara of faculty meetings,
committee meetings, impromptu teacup meetings.
After the classes and the grading and letters of recommendation,
all of them blessings.
After the escape to the Parinirvana of a paid-off home in Berkeley,
where does that leave the rest of us?
After so many years of affection, of devotion,
What do we see when we look up to the ninth floor of Sproul Hall?
A true believer, I’m ready to keep in my heart,
to keep in my crowded soul, the image, the idea, the example
of Naomi after she has departed.
We will think of the conversations.
And if we can think quickly enough, we will think of the insights —
sudden as raindrops amidst an endless Davis summer,
a summer that starts today.
What an unusually hot Wednesday evening we will enjoy again tonight, especially those who join us outside for the pub quiz under the misters at Sudwerk! I anticipate wearing shorts. Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on conveyances.
In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: American literature, Beatles, birds’ nests, birthplaces, British singers, budgets, counties, defense spending, elementary schools, essays, gaming, Hall of Famers, hardware stores, horrors, international travel, jolly people, Kentucky, marches, Mediterranean locations, heroes, New Orleans, Oscar nominees, Oscar winners, plant science, power lines, pranks, recent audiences, Rebeccas, Revolutionary Era heroes, restaurant chains, rides, romances, scowls, seafood, Sharons, singer-songwriters, slip sliders, summer comforts, sunflowers, sunrises, thunderstorms, toys, current events, and Shakespeare.
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Best,
Dr. Andy
Three questions from last week’s pub quiz:
- Psychology. What phrase describes the mental discomfort experienced when one holds conflicting beliefs or attitudes?
- Pop Culture – Television. On what television network did Outlander originally premiere in the United States?
- Another Music Question. Chrissie Hynde is the longtime lead singer of what band that was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005?
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