Dear Jared,
We’ve never met, but we could be distant relatives or distantly related through marriage — maspucha. I’ve known Kushners my entire life. Kushners came to my bar mitzvah. My family liked to eat at Kushners, a restaurant close to where I grew up in the 1950s.
As your fictive uncle, I’m worried about you, Jared.
You see, The White House announced yesterday your new appointment, which means a lot more work for you. On top of being a senior advisor for foreign policy, you are now tasked with reforming the federal bureaucracy.
OY!
I guess you agree with your Father-in-Law, President Trump, that if you run the federal government like a giant company, all the inefficiencies and waste that constitute the “bloated” bureaucracy will disappear and eventually fade away. It’s just like looking at sunset, no? The key to successful reorganization is to apply business models to federal agencies and programs. Here’s what they said about you in The Washington Post.
President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions.
The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.
Unfortunately, pundits are predicting that like Trumpcare, your Office of American Innovation will be a colossal failure. How can someone as young and inexperienced, they say, not only come up with an Arab-Israeli peace accord, which has long undermined the efforts of the most seasoned diplomats, but also reform the entire government? Can you really run the federal government like a business?
I may just be your fictive uncle, but I’m telling you, Jared, it’s not likely to work. You see, it’s impossible to transpose one model of practices ( business) to another model of practices -government) that exists in a different universe of meaning. You don’t know this, but your fictive uncle grew up to be an anthropologist. In anthropology we call this kind of transposition ethnocentrism, of which there are two kinds—ethnocentrism with power and ethnocentrism without power. In the first kind, people in power attempt to impose their beliefs and practices on others.
“If our methods work in our country or in our business, they’re bound to work in your country or your institution.”
In the second kind of ethnocentrism people do not possess the power to repel economically or militarily the rule of others, so they confront their oppression with resistance strategies. These are attempts to preserve threatened social and cultural integrity. If history is a credible example, ethnocentrism with power has been exceedingly destructive. It is a central component of imperial expansion, which is usually brought on through economic exploitation and/or military adventurism.
Consider the ethnocentrism that brought us the war in Iraq. After a quick military conquest, American “reconstruction” planners, who knew little about the social and political dynamics of Iraqi society, thought that they could export American governance and American business know-how to transform Iraq into a model of democracy. Instead, the unintended consequences of those ethnocentric ideas, which decidedly did not transform Iraq, eventually contributed to the emergence of failed states (Iraq, Yemen and Syria) the political instability of which now threaten the world order.
There is no shortage of examples in which ethnocentrism has been destructive. Consider the failure of ethnocentric business models in our colleges and universities. Most politicians, business leaders and university administrators now believe in the corporatization of the university. From my vantage as a professor, this set of beliefs has undermined the central mission of higher education: to teach students to think critically and express themselves in clear and compelling prose. Such effective teaching takes much preparation (research, class preparation, and one-to-one professor-student interaction). When corporate administrators think that students are consumers and professors are employees, this special intellectual bond, which takes time to develop, is altered. In the corporate university too much professorial time is consumed by processing students and evaluating their “consumer satisfaction.” Instead of pursing our scholarship, which leads to better, more informed and more effective teaching, our attention is focused on busy work. We have to make sure that our “products” are compliant with university regulations, departmental mission statements, student learning outcomes and course assessment goals.
Given the destructive track record of ethnocentric practices, I’m afraid that you have booked a ride on a train that is destined to derail.
That’s why I’m worried about your future.
So Jared, I’m wondering if I could offer you some avuncular advice? You probably won’t take it, but at least I tried, no? Here it is.
1. Read an introductory textbook in anthropology so you can get a better sense of ethnocentrism and how and why it is usually terribly destructive; and
2. Be a mensch and leave your senior positions in The White House. To avoid eventual humiliation, move back to Manhattan, run your newspaper, work in your family’s real estate business, do deals and spend more time with your family. You’ll feel better and you’ll enjoy a less stressful and happier life.
In the end, Jared, you’ll discover that business models work really well in business environments and not so well when they are transposed to government or education environments.
Enough already! Good luck, Jared.
You’ll Need It....
You’re Fictive Uncle Paul