Savageries of the Academy Abroad - My Life Among the "Headhunters" of Presbyterian Taiwan & Narrow Escape from a Saudi Arabian Prison Thereafter (Paperback)

In a very general sense, Savageries of the Academy Abroad attempts to lay bare the moral insufficiencies of university bureaucracies abroad, which I have come to know personally and then fled in horror. What I've written in this instance can only be called "irresponsible" and "disobedient," but, in my defense, a necessary evil given the bureaucratization of the academy and its innumerable little Eichmanns. Such grievous doubt and skepticism, as Hannah Arendt points out, are "variations of nonviolent action and resistance" under dictatorship. Given the appalling state of higher education at the moment--universities back home not much better--there is no longer a place for "pragmatism" and, least of all, "prudence." My own undeniable fear and loathing of authorities (great and small, western and non-western) goes well beyond the usual lamentation round the office water cooler, but rages against the inhumanity of it all, so that, indeed, all might hear-most especially the "powers that be." People matter less and less, institutions matter more and more. (There was more simple humanity at the German furniture factory where I worked before I entered university, supposing I might fare better among an allegedly better sort.) And so, it is high time that I write something in a revolutionary vein in order to look myself in the mirror. To remain silent any longer would be tantamount to the same intellectual and moral spinelessness that has given us this deeply troubling state of affairs, teachers and students alike the conscious and/or unconscious victims of what is fast becoming, if not already, a gargantuan intellectual fraud. Had I known that the academy abroad was so troubled and, indeed, tantamount to a vow of poverty and obedience, or known that I would be expected to teach a frightening number of courses/students for mere pennies on the dollar, forced to lower my academic standards (or else), I might have taken my father's sage advice and stayed at the cabinet shop where I had a much better chance of making not only a decent living, but an honest one. The wings of feathers and wax that I fashioned for myself, with the academy's help, may have saved me from the monotony of factory life per se, carrying me safely across oceans in both the literal and metaphorical sense. But, I sometimes ask myself if I didn't flee one factory for another. What follows, then, is a dark accounting of my four-year sojourn in Taiwan and a very short stint in Saudi Arabia. Both were very painful and extremely disappointing involvements in their own right. Prospective PhD graduates need to know what they are likely to experience if they should choose to teach in a foreign country and a lack of civility that stretches the limits of credulity.