Michael Bérubé writes a stunning article for the Chronicle, "Why I Resigned the Paterno Chair." It's a long article that covers many angles of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Michael has been bottling up a lot of emotions and he's gotta get it out.
He recognizes that locals who complain loudly on national TV look like assholes. He repeatedly brings his essay back to the victims of the abuse. But he also points out that there may have been a rush to judgment when it came to Paterno's culpability in the matter. He also says that the critics have gone too far and actually believe that Paterno himself was a child abuser.
He responds to anti-football critics. He points out that more elitist sports play a huge role in selective colleges.
"No one complains—hell, no one even cares—that some of America's small, elite, liberal-arts colleges have student bodies one-quarter of which are made up of athletes in those sports, even if those athletes have grades and SAT's considerably lower than those of their fellow students."
I love essays that take a black-and-white issue and make it grey. A delight to read.
Apt. 11d 
Masterfully written! Glad the girl is sleeping in a tiny bit so I could enjoy it with my morning coffee. Thanks so much for bringing it to my attention. You are my curator for all things academic-y.
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Wonderful essay, but am I missing something here??? Did he actually state the reason he resigned? It’s a thorough portrait of the relationship between academics and athletics, the role of football at large universities, the response of the Penn State community, the mistaken beliefs of the public– but why did he resign? If anything, given his relationship with the Paternos, I would have thought that he would have kept the chair.
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“Did he actually state the reason he resigned?”
Well, my subtext answer is that he resigned, though he didn’t want to, because otherwise every conversation he was involved in would be about Paterno and the Penn State scandal.
I did not find the article masterful or up to the generally high standards I have for Berube (though, mostly, I’ve only read about Jamie). It was a scattershot defense of something (not altogether clear, but, Paterno, the Paterno family, Penn State, Penn State football, . . . .).
I am sympathetic to a few arguments about the scandal (grey areas). I do think the Paternos, all of them, including his wife and son have become conflated with Sandusky’s crimes. I actually had a moment of dissonance when I was thinking about how someone’s son had been abused, and then remembered that it was Sandusky’s son, and not Paterno’s. I imagine that others have more complicated conflations of information about the scandal (including attributing Sandusky & McQuery’s actions). I can see why the family would want to protect/defend against assumptions about things that Paterno certainly did not do. But, Berube’s article did not add anything to my analysis.
(Oh, and the debate over the value of college sports to a college is an entirely different debate, one that Berube mixes into his story. I think college sports is irremediably corrupt, mostly because I think that big time NCAA sports (basketball & football) are incompatible with student academics for the majority of the players, and if that’s the case, “college football” should simply be professionalized.
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I also did not find the essay to be terribly insightful or powerful. And I had a slightly different take on why he resigned after reading it than others seemed to have understood (which tells me clarity was not achieved in this piece). I thought he was intimating that while there might be grey pieces to this story – ultimately, keeping the Paterno chair would not be recognizing the damage done to vulnerable children. That to keep the chair would be tacitly agreeing with those who would like to say the most damage done in this whole case was to Penn State, not to the countless victims who were let down by almost everyone in a position to help (including Joe Paterno).
Now, I may have misread the article, as I said it wasn’t very clear and seemed more to be a “you don’t know the people, you can’t judge on the facts” kind of argument which I don’t find to be terribly compelling. Especially since no one in positions to help ever seemed to have thought of those children as people deserving of help.
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I thought it was a bit of a straw man argument. He seemed to be arguing against all the people who think Joe Paterno was a child molester. Um, who are these people? I’m sure some of these people exist, but so what? Crazies of all stripes abound.
It’s an interesting piece. Maybe I’ll share it with my students and see how they read it. I’m not really sure what his goal is in writing this piece.
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“I think college sports is irremediably corrupt, mostly because I think that big time NCAA sports (basketball & football) are incompatible with student academics for the majority of the players, and if that’s the case, “college football” should simply be professionalized.”
Sport is corrupt, generally speaking.
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I enjoyed it, for the inside view and the shades of gray that I knew must be somewhere in the story. Thanks, Laura.
I don’t see a straw man – even I, who hold no truck with college football or Joe Pa, find most of the coverage hysterical and a complete bore -“we knew he’d come to a bad end…” sort of sums up most of what I’ve read.
I did roll my eyes at his non-point about small liberal arts college sports. Trying to imagine, say, the Bowdoin administration involving town police and county social services in covering up an accusation against a squash player. Failing utterly.
(Did I miss the radio appearance? I’m travelling in a state I’m pretty sure NPR doesn’t reach)
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Amy – Did you make a new baby yet? Post a picture on your blog, please, and send us the link. Hope you’re feeling well.
It was a super interesting article, even if he didn’t really answer the question. Anjali is right.
Thanks for asking about the interview, Artemesia. I just wrote a post about it. Things were a little nutty around here yesterday.
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I think Michael is a bit guilty of ye auld “no one ever talks about” trick, e.g., “But what about that guy, officer, he was speeding too!”. At small liberal arts colleges, we talk quite a bit about athletics, actually. At Swarthmore, at least since we got rid of football, I would say sports has reliably been a presence in our institutional conversations.
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“Amy – Did you make a new baby yet? Post a picture on your blog, please, and send us the link. Hope you’re feeling well.”
Yes, indeed–Baby T was born a week ago. We’re having the traditional feeding trouble (had to start doing heavy bottle-feeding yesterday evening and we have yet another weigh-in today), but I think we’re going to be OK. Last night, my husband and I also finally got our heads together and I pulled out one of our old Kiddopotomas swaddlers for Baby T and he cannibalized the vibrating unit from a bouncy seat and stuck it under the mattress of the bassinet.
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I don’t agree with the conflation of corruption of college and professional sports. Professional sports is entertainment. As long as everyone gets paid for what they do with no delusional promises, I’m cool with it. I worry about the development programs (developing kids for the pros) and I don’t know what will happen to the kids being groomed to play in the NBA/NFL if they were groomed in an alternative system (NHL/MBL?), but I don’t think it could be much worse.
Kids getting sanctioned because they sold an autographed t-shirt is what got my goat.
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Peek in on Amy’s blog — she’s been updating us about Baby T. It’s brought back all my memories of having a newborn (the second time around — the first time I was shocked beyond reality of what having a newborn entailed). The posts made me remember how truly miraculous babies are and how much we can love them.
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