DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM. Bardiac discovers the Peter Principle.

He read his handout aloud to us. Seriously, he read his handout aloud. There's probably a hundred years worth of advanced degrees around the table, and he read his handout aloud.

The handout is obsolete. But everybody knows that Power Point exists to make "Read this silently while I read it aloud" more effective. Then we get down to business.

And then we were asked to make suggestions. Someone suggested that point A might make more sense if it were revised as [revision suggestion that made sense]. Our presenter nodded seriously and said, "yes, that's been mentioned to me."

That was the basic pattern a few more times. It was clear, that although these things had been syggested to our presenter, he hadn't actually done the revisions. Nor was he willing to say, "Yes, that's been suggested, and here's why I haven't made the change."

Then the presenter wanted our endorsement for his thing so he could take it on to the next group.

I'm surprised the presenter encountered that much resistance. The principle of comparative advantage suggests that academic committees will be full of relatively ineffective scholars willing to accept whatever fad headquarters would like to use.

Because clearly, he wasn't actually interested in what we were saying, or in revising the work. He wasn't really even listening. He was just doing that administrative dance where someone pretends to get feedback from the staff and faculty, and then does whatever he'd already planned anyway, without including any of the staff or faculty ideas.

If those fads worked, there'd be less reason for me to carp about them.