After sixteen years of writing a column for the LJW I have been asked to join the twenty-first century and begin a blog. Since I still haven’t quite yet left the nineteenth century –at least in mind and spirit–this will be a new experience for me. Indeed, I have a rather nice illustration for this blog, but I couldn’t manage to get it to fit my scanner so it will be a few days before it appears here. In the meantime, let me tell you what my blog will focus upon. Jonathan Kealing and Ann Gardner have asked that I use this blog to give my perspective on what’s happening at KU and the academic world and that’s what I’ll do. I suspect that I will occasionally talk about law or politics, but I’ve been told that I should save those comments for my print column [and a wise editor’s corrections] and I’ll try to do so.

At the outset I need to tell anyone who reads this that my blogs here will be entirely my own opinions. I haven’t held an administrative post at KU for a decade so I get no inside information and –like my most faculty and staff–most of my information comes through unsubstantiated rumors. On the other hand, I still know where a few academic bodies are buried and I think I still understand how the university works so I suppose one might say that I have some “insight” into goings on. In spite of what some online commentators say in response to some of my columns, I am not an apologist for the university nor am I a professional malcontent. I just work on the Hill. Like many of my colleagues I went into university teaching because I love to teach and I believe in affordable public education. Also, like many of my colleagues I fear that the current emphasis on research, particularly research that attracts external funding, is subverting the teaching mission of the university. I am very worried that the cost of a KU education is far too high. I am one of the fortunate few who is paid well for what I do so I am always rather reticent about complaining about the cost of a KU education. On the other hand, I do think that the university is still a worthwhile place and serves the people of Kansas and has an important mission to accomplish.

In this blog I will write about several things: what it is like to be a faculty member at KU; what I think the university does right and what I think we do wrong. I will do so in the hope that I won’t annoy too many people in high places and that the first amendment and tenure will protect me. On the other hand, I”m 58 and in my second decade of mid-life crisis–hence the “Grumpy Professor” title–and there’s enough in my pension account to let me retire comfortably, albeit in a small underdeveloped third world country with a good exchange rate, so I’ll write what I think. I also invite comments, even negative comments, because I think that the advantage of writing online is the ability to reply and begin a dialogue in realtime. And if no-one reads this blog; so be it. I am reminded of an academic urban legend current when I was a graduate student [for those of you who care about such things and think law professors have no academic credibility, I have a PhD as well as a JD] that said that there was a Harvard Divinity School professor who was such a terrible teacher that no-one signed up for his courses. Undeterred by this, the professor simply went to the empty lecture hall and gave his lectures anyway. Thankfully, I’ve never been quite in that situation, although I have often suspected that my students were all online doing crosswords or playing solitaire while I stood at the front lecturing. Thus, if I can face a lecture room of uninterested students, I suppose I can write a blog not knowing whether anyone is reading it. At least I’ll give it a try.

More to come as the spirit moves me.