Zakuta, Leo: University Politics

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MEMOIR:

Memoir pages are intended to provide a personal recollection of life at the University of Toronto or events in the author's life which he or she deemed significant. For this reason, these entries are entirely the work of the authors and are not subject to the normal fact-checking or editing of Encyclopedia entries. The editors request that the pages be approached accordingly.

My All-Purpose Political Address

Here we are again, with the irresistible opportunity to harangue a captive audience. I’m calling this My All- Purpose Political Address, equally suitable or not for any office, political or other, because the only issue here is my impeccable, nay, perfect credentials. They constitute my platform. Everyone knows what a platform is — a device to hoist a candidate or party to a winning position, whereupon it disappears, except for the opposition’s reminders. They, of course, forget that they did exactly the same thing. But I digress. What can perfect qualifications be? And how does one achieve them?
I learned what they are the hard way, slowly and painfully, as is my wont. And of all places, at the University of Toronto, where I was once a bureaucrat in the graduate school. One of my duties was to be on many Search Committees — for chairmen (now chairs — I once asked in an angry moment, “If X is the Chair, is Y, his Associate, a Stool?”), deans and the like. You might think that interesting work, and for a while it was. In fact, if only it had been left at that, the discussion of the shortcomings of the candidates would never have been less than interesting. But every Search Committee wanted to warm up for that job — the only one that mattered — by first discussing what they called “criteria.” Indeed, one committee undertook to “prioritize our criteria,” a phrase then so new to me that it left my mouth agape. It was at OISE, of course.
As you may imagine, the discussion of “criteria” stretched to a limitless horizon without encountering any useful landmarks. And yet, tiresome and time-wasting as those discussions were, I did learn something from them.
I eventually realized that all the criteria — everything the members wanted — could be boiled down to one simple, perfect qualification, the one which I solemnly offer you as my platform today — the ability to walk on the water. Nothing more. It explains why every Search Committee fervently wants an “outsider”: they know all too well the walking-on-the-water capabilities of their own colleagues, but never lose faith in a miracle-worker out there somewhere. I will conclude by not telling you something; I’ll desist from repeating the ancient joke in which one great religious prophet tells another, who is sinking out of sight, how to do it. His message is, of course, “Fool, walk on the rocks!”

Leo Zakuta

Quoted, with kind permission off the author, from: Zakuta, Annette.Leo Zakuta: Reminiscences, Rants and Raves. Toronto: Iquana Books, 2013.