[FRIAM] ‘A huge cudgel’: alarm as Trump’s war on universities could target accreditors | US universities | The Guardian

[steve smith]

> ...
>
> I do not agree with the motives for attacking accreditors, and will 
> admit that there might be a tiny baby in an ocean of bathwater, but I 
> will not mourn their demise.
>
> davew

I'd like to see a larger discussion here of the abstractions involved in 
all forms of "governance" and "regulation".

We all have beaucoup personal anecdotal experiences of the myriad ways 
those designed-in feedback loops seem to go entirely awry or seem to 
work against their own stated purpose. This can exhibit as an acute (or 
even mild but chronic) inconvenience any one of us experiences as we rub 
up against said "regulations".  It can also exhibit as what feels like a 
fundamental opposition of values (e.g. when I feel that it should be my 
personal choice whether I wear a seatbelt while driving vs feeling 
entirely comfortable with deferring to a rule declaring which side of an 
undivided highway I should be driving on).

To the extent that the universe is ordered by stacks of self-organizing 
systems (quarks, elementary particles, atoms, molecules, bio-molecules 
and cellular life, multicellular life, .... ) it would seem inevitable 
that there is a liminal range between these levels of organization where 
what multicellular creatures experience as *cancer* cells are to the 
cells themselves, just exercising their own (?latent?) sovereignty.

It is easy for me to identify with the peasants with their torches and 
pitchforks at the castle gates, but with a little self-awareness of my 
larger context also recognize that there is a logic to the higher-level 
organization of society that I am engaged in which it behooves me to 
understand and engage in (even if as a dissident or freedom-fighting 
revolutionary).   A hallmark of life, and perhaps this stacked levels of 
reality I'm trying to gesture toward, seems to be to maintain a 
multi-scale loyalty/identity with upward/downward coupling...   a cell 
needs to nurture it's own organelles while participating in being a good 
member of a tissue which in turn is organized into a good organ which 
collectively comprises an organism which fits into it's own 
familial/ecosystem/cultural context.

In the spirit of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say 
anything at all", I tend to withdraw my participation from systems where 
I feel that my participation is more disruptive than not.   I (like 
many) harbor all types of anti-social sentiments which have me *wanting* 
to disrupt systems which happen to be inconvenient or confounding to my 
sensibilities, but I also recognize that I actually don't want to 
participate in a "revolution" which I have no concept of what I will 
replace the existing organizational structure with.   My outrage and 
energy are better directed to systems I *can* contribute to?

I don't mean to dismiss all "creative destruction" just recognize that 
perhaps there is always a bias against glancing up and down the stack of 
self-organization and noticing one's actual role in that continuum?   
Many little kids (esp. boys?) seem to find it more interesting  to kick 
down someone else's sand castle than to build their own.   Maybe a 
meta-rule of entropy at work?

Maybe this will trigger a return to Glen's rants about the implicit use 
of "levels" which is also welcome as I don't think my references here to 
"stacks" and "levels" are completely righteous by any means.   I'd like 
to find a better language.

>
>
> On Sat, Apr 12, 2025, at 10:44 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
>> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/11/trump-war-on-universities
>>
>> =======================
>> Tom Johnson
>> Inst. for Analytic Journalism
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico
>> 505-577-6482
>> =======================
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