Once a Writer, Now a Provost

About once a year, usually when I see the web hosting charge hit our bank account, I remember that I have a website, and that I used to write a whole lot.

I still write a whole lot - just not things I publish on the internet. Trust me, no one wants to read the policies I write, the memos I compose, the compliance narratives I draft, or the myriad other functionary forms of writing I crank out. Over the last ten years, my career has changed dramatically. When I first started writing essays, I was a faculty member in the history department at a small private college. I taught and wrote and wrote and taught and I had lots of things to say about the world around me. I said some of those things with more hubris than was necessary. I said things I wouldn't say if I were writing about the same topics today, and I said them in ways I wouldn't say them now. However, many of the essays I wrote, including the select few that are still visible here on my website, have taken on a life of their own. To revise them now would be dishonest. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm the same person I was when I wrote them, or that I hold the same opinions. In some cases, I still hold the same viewpoints, but express them sparingly if at all. However, what I wrote then forged me into the human I am now, and that's something I'm proud of.

These days, I still teach some, but instead of being a regular ol' professor, I'm in the corner office of the Academic Affairs suite at the university where I work - which is not the same place I worked for the first decade of my academic career. When I say things now, I say them not as a professor or even really as a private citizen, but as the Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs of a comprehensive university. I lead a complex organization, and like most higher ed professionals, I'm leading through complex times when it's hard to find consensus and where expressing any sort of social or political opinion is as likely as not to be misinterpreted.

Just before writing this essay, I added a disclaimer to most of the essays here. Like a good historian, I wanted to add context to things I wrote many years ago. I am still proud of the body of my work that lives out in the world and on the internet. Even if I'd choose to express some things differently (and much less politically now), my work represents an intellectual evolution over time as the world changed around us.

If this is your first time visiting my website, welcome. I hope you find something here that is intellectually useful, and I hope you'll take it in the spirit I intend through leaving it visible for God and all creation to read. If you just remembered that one guy who used to write a lot about white trash and wrote that essay about his mom you saw shared on Facebook back in the day and Googled and found me again, welcome back. If you're one of my students, or a student otherwise assigned to read my work (bless you, child, and bless your professor for remembering me), I hope the things posted here, written over the better part of a decade, will be useful to you as you seek to understand Appalachia.

Several years ago, I made the decision to shift away from writing essays and toward my role as a higher education administrator. Especially in today's ultra-polarized political climate, the two are almost mutually exclusive. One cannot do both effectively. I decided that I could have a more positive impact on Appalachia and on the world through being a good academic administrator and implementing change that leads to better outcomes for students. I still believe that young folks are Appalachia's biggest export, and that we need to change that. I just decided that I could do more to change it by writing fewer essays and instead focusing on the importance of leading change in higher ed that results in more concrete and applicable learning outcomes for the students we teach. There are plenty of people out there to write essays, and I'll leave that work in their capable hands. I think, in the end, while I'm a good writer, I'm a better provost.

Oh, and for what it's worth, though I've softened on many of my political and social stances, I still think JD Vance is a phony, and I still have very little use for the countless woke liberals who lapped up every ounce of his victim-blaming drivel when they read his book for their book clubs and then said my people were too stupid to be trusted to vote. The good thing about having date stamps on my essays: proof positive that I didn't like that guy well before he got into politics. There. Equal opportunity criticism.