OK, yes, lots of ways to complete that sentence (e.g. “Every university and college needs a fool… and mine already has several”, etc.).  But I mean this in a very literal sense.  Institutions need the equivalent of Medieval Fools, or Court Jesters, to help them combat bad institutional culture.

In addition to being a barrel of laughs, Fools had a specific function in medieval and early renaissance courts; namely, they were able to speak truth to power, albeit obliquely (think Robin Williams rather than Jon Stewart). Because they were dressed as figures of fun, they had some license to tweak the noses of the powerful, because their words could be shrugged off as the ravings of a simpleton.  Yet, frequently, those ravings were useful because they presented truths that could not otherwise be said aloud.  Those Fools were no fools; as Shakespeare said, playing the Fool took considerable wisdom.

Now, I’m not actually suggesting that universities and colleges need to dress someone up in an ass’ costume and run around making fun of people in an academic council meeting (inspiring a thought as that may be).  Nor am I suggesting that there needs to be someone who is specifically charged with poking fun at executive power at a university – most institutions already have enough self-appointed critics filling that job.

No, what I have in mind is something different: someone who has license to speak truth across the institution.  Not constantly, as a gadfly role (that would just get annoying).  But occasionally, maybe once every year, it would be useful for a Fool to give each institution a once-over.  And where I think this could be most useful is not on issues of specific policy – again, each institution has lots of self-appointed critics of management to do that – but rather on issues of institutional culture.

As a friend was observing to me yesterday, bad institutional culture never looks bad from the inside.  There’s always good reasons for this little bit of secrecy, or flippant refusal to make data public; there’s always a good reason for sanctioning financial or business entanglements, which are at best borderline, or good reasons to not make tough decisions, thus allowing problems to fester.

No one sets out to be part of a bad institutional culture.  Bad cultures are created gradually, inch-by-inch, so slowly that no one on the inside notices.  The function of a university/college Fool would be to come in from the outside and say, maybe once a year, forcefully and publicly: What the heck are you people doing?  How did you all get this inappropriately cozy with industry?  How did your principles of governance get so undermined that the faculty union thought it appropriate to grieve Senate decisions? (Don’t scoff – this has happened.) Why are you even thinking about evicting a student union from its building? 

Everybody wants to be part of a good academic culture.  Fools might be able to play a role in keeping everyone on the straight and narrow.  It’s got to be at least as good an idea as having organizational behavior consultants crawling all over the place.