Equal Opportunity Protection

by
P.D. Lesko

I NORMALLY DON’T like to write in response to anything published
in the current issue of the magazine in which my column appears.
However, Brian Caterino’s piece on Stanford’s Office of Learning
and Technology got me thinking. In particular, I’m thinking
about Professors Cohen and Boyer, the scientists whose patent
brought in a cool $100,000,000 to Stanford. Of course, Drs.
Cohen and Boyer earned quite a bit of money from said patent.
However, it’s hard to look at the difference between a few
million dollars and a hundred million dollars and be satisfied
that these fellows weren’t shortchanged (quite literally).
Of course, any employee who brings in $100,000,000 dollars
for her or his employer is nothing short of a rainmaker. Employers
love rainmakers. Are scientists the only potential rainmakers
on campus?

Let’s meander over to the College of Arts and Literature
and see if we can’t find a few more rainmakers. Shall we begin
in the English Department, with the Creative Writing program
faculty? Professor Usula K. LeGuin, at the University of Washington,
has been cranking out sci-fi best-sellers for years. The University
could snap up her royalty checks every month and dole out
a few bucks to her on a quarterly basis. And what about the
other Creative Writing faculty out there? Not every one of
them is an Ursula K. LeGuin, but I’m sure the $5,000 dollar
paycheck for publishing a short story in, say, The Atlantic,
would be of interest to any administrator with a penchant
for pinching pennies. Short fiction and poetry sales can add
up surprisingly fast. Let’s not forget about writing grants
and award money. A Guggenheim or Rockefeller award can be
worth $40,000-$50,000.

Next, the Law Quad beckons, or at least it should interest
the folks who want to make a buck off of intellectual property
rights. Who can be sure that Harvard’s professor Alan Dershowitz
does all of his thinking and writing at home? Harvard should
benefit from the fact that its law professors have use of
the Law Library and secretarial support. Of course, there
are crucial differences between the science and law faculties.
The lawyers can sue. As a result, the prospect of horning
in on their intellectual property rights may be not only expensive,
but time-consuming. It’s probably best to leave the lawyers
alone.

The Writers? They say that the Pen is Mightier than the Sword.
Which college is prepared to weather the storm of bad press
generated when that first Fatwah goes out informing the Creative
Writing faculty that the University intends to manage publishing
copyrights and compensation? I’m sure writing faculty around
the country would quit in protest and glut the free-lance
writing marketplace before turning over their checks, writing
grant money and McArthur genius grant cash to an Office of
Learning and Technology. Writers would rise up in support
of one and other, much like writers did when Salman Rushdie
was the target of his Fatwah. Writers love oppression; hardship
nourishes writers, much like matching grants nourish scientists
and class action suits nourish attorneys. It’s probably best
to leave the writers alone, too.

So who’s left? Yes, my friends, by zeroing in on the scientists,
university administrators have demonstrated a classic schoolyard
maneuver. They have grabbed the pencil-necked nerds and shaken
them down for their patent money. Smart kids have suffered
similar fates for as long as there have been pocket protectors,
mechanical pencils and bullies incapable of understanding
and remembering common algebraic terms. Naturally, administrators
have begun with the science faculty. What, after all, will
a bunch of researchers do when faced with an Act of Congress
and an Office of Learning and Technology? They will submit
to the humiliation, content with time and a bit of money to
devote to their cerebral tasks. After all, shakedowns rarely
involve the financial annihilation of the victim. Put bluntly,
what is a successful “protection racket” without customers
in need of “protection?” These universities collect the money
generated by an individual’s patent and then oversee everything,
from filing the patent to marketing the patent. It is a tidy
little operation, of which any bully would be proud.

To me, the more burning question is whether or not universities
can be satisfied with the money generated by science faculty
shakedowns? Will universities eventually attempt to manage
the intellectual and creative rights of other faculty members?
I think so. However, there are thousands of scientists left
out there who can be bullied into turning over the fruits
of their research, creativity and labor. What with the booming
production of science Ph.D.s, the supply of patent-seeking
nerds is virtually endless.

It’s a shame, however, that college faculty in the humanities
and non-science professional schools are not protesting what
is being done to their colleagues in the sciences. Perhaps
the other faculty suffer from schoolyard jitters. After all,
there is nothing so unnerving as watching a bully shakedown
a smart kid for his patent money. After all, if a bully can
take away $95,000,000 dollars from a really smart kid, what’s
the bully capable of doing to the other kids? It doesn’t take
a lot of imagination to figure it out.