Is the 'University of the Wilderness,' here pictured in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, or at Yellowstone, or Yosemite, or Acadia, or the Everglades in danger of being muzzled by bureaucracy?/NPS

The late Robin W. Winks, as Randolph W. Townsend, Jr., Professor of History at Yale University, was fond of pointing out that the National Park Service manages a university like no other. Undoubtedly he would be repeating that lecture today, especially since Jonathan Jarvis has been called on the carpet for writing a book without “permission.”

Some 400 “campuses,” all of them unique, underscore the unique responsibilities of the director’s office. First and foremost, the director is a teacher of the American experience and the chief protector of the American land. Certainly the best directors of the National Park Service—and the best superintendents—have put education high on their list of priorities.

The front-line teachers are the park interpreters, whom Dr. Winks admired, as do I. After all, I served as one in Yosemite. However, the teaching does not end with them. Robin would talk as fondly about the parks to a maintenance worker as he ever talked about them with me. He encouraged everyone, not just interpreters, to reach out to the visiting public.

Were the National Park Service ever to forget that (here Robin quoted Horace Albright), it would become just another bureaucracy. Then the second director of the National Park Service, Albright’s warning is from 1933. Everyone in uniform is a teacher, and indeed, that is what the uniform requires.

A consummate scholar, I think Robin would agree that the National Park Service is perilously close to becoming the bureaucracy Albright feared. Its centennial is practically invisible, and now comes this business about the director writing a book.

Even if historians end up writing critically about Jonathan Jarvis, we need to remember what his position is. Our founding fathers expected civil servants to write. They themselves produced the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln, using a mere 271 words, so eloquently defined his country we Americans repeat the Gettysburg Address thousands of times a day.

Can you imagine an ethics officer asking Abraham Lincoln: Mr. President, did you get permission from the government to write that speech? The very idea would be absurd. Who is “the government” if not the president? But there it is—how far we have strayed from our founding fathers in substituting bureaucracy for the electorate.

No, Jonathan Jarvis is not the president. However, he was appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. That puts him far closer to the electorate than anyone in the bureaucracy. Now as head of our government’s finest university—the University of the Wilderness—why should Jarvis further have to ask the bureaucracy for “approval” to do his job?

In universities we write and teach. University time? My time? As every legitimate teacher knows, it is properly all a blur.

Royalties? Give common sense a break. How lucrative are they—really? Besides, for any thinker—for any leader—there is no such thing as an eight-hour day. Responsibility is 24/7. Forfeit my royalties? Why? Because the bureaucracy knows only to define my job as a sound bite—at five we all go home? As Harry Truman said, my day is just getting started.

President Truman meant the schedule of a leader, and the chilling truth is that any bureaucracy wants leadership on the run. Let’s visit an actual university for a moment. Likely, up to one-third of the senior class is struggling to graduate well past the four-year mark. The bureaucrats on campus are wringing their hands over the problem. Hundreds of meetings have been called and dozens of consultants hired. Why can’t the seniors graduate within four years?

Look in the mirror. To fill your position, some full-time instructor was let go. Quoting just a partial list, the Affirmative Action Office, the Sexual Harassment Office, the Office of Diversity and Multiculturalism, the Community Relations Office, the Government Relations Office, the Office of Social Justice, the Curriculum Planning Office, the Office of Alumni Affairs, the Development Office, and yes, the Office of Ethics and Compliance, all came at the expense of teaching. Many university campuses also have their own police force. Just what do you think that costs?

As a primary consequence, the classes the seniors need to complete their majors are no longer offered every year. And when offered, who is teaching them? Nationwide, now a whopping 69 percent of all college and university teaching is done by part-time instructors. How much personal time can they give each student? Not much on $18,000 a year. Benefits? Yeah, right.

Robin Winks, Yale University

The bureaucracy—those making ten times that amount and up—still argue they are defending “standards.” Their ranks include university presidents now averaging $1 million a year. In Washington State, the president also gets a state-supported 35-room mansion and car. Our university football coach rings in at $2.7 million. To be sure, in 49 of the 50 states, either the varsity football coach or the varsity basketball coach is the highest paid public official. And universities wonder why seniors struggle to graduate?

Yes, they wonder, just as the federal government now wonders what its employees are doing with “government time.” But is the government really concerned about “performance,” or is the bureaucracy again grasping for control?

Dr. Runte, you are writing too many letters on university stationery. Please limit yourself to three pages a week. And please. Buy your own correction fluid for your typewriter. We can no longer afford to pay for that.

The more frivolous a standard becomes, the meaner becomes its enforcement. Historians have written and talked about it for centuries. But then, every civilization grows old and succumbs. We have succumbed. Why does the football coach get $2.7 million and the part-time instructor barely crumbs? Listen to the university president, arm-in-arm with the regents, insist on paying the coach “market price.” Not to worry, though, it’s all from ticket sales and television revenues. Actually, the taxpayers aren’t paying the coach a dime.

However, the English professor we do have to pay. She brings in no ticket sales and added revenue. She should feel lucky we keep her around.

Now that the National Park Service has slipped into bureaucracy, it has slipped into much the same. What would more interpreters bring to “the market?” Salary they would take from us.

Professors used to say—and truly believed—that the administration was superfluous. If the professors didn’t know how to teach, how could people never in a classroom ever know it? Now that the bureaucracy controls the classroom, who is watching the bureaucracy?

Some claim Jon Jarvis brought his “problems” on himself. Just what “problems” would those be? To a professor, that is bureaucratic “code.”

It’s your fault, Dr. Runte. Without permission, you opened the supply cabinet and took an extra sheet of stationery. You heard us when we limited you to three.

I heard you, but another student needed a letter of recommendation. I am sorry, but I didn’t have time to clear it with your secretary. She had already left for the day.

If Jon Jarvis habitually goes home at five, yes, he may have brought his problems on himself. That would suggest he is a bureaucrat. Or would it? The point is: When did he get to close the door on his mind—and who is compensating him for that? Even at home, he might work past midnight for all we know.

That of course is a teacher’s point of view. An educator has many offices—many “desks.” This is to explain why the History Division of the National Park Service especially loved Robin Winks. He respected the National Archives and the Library of Congress as “desks.” He asked scholarly standards of the National Park Service—not standards meant to control and demean its faculty.

We have a complaint, Dr. Runte, that in class, you called former Governor Dixie Lee Ray a tomboy. Really? Who complained about that? I made it clear the quote was hers. That is how she referred to herself in a Newsweek interview. She said she had been raised a tomboy. Then you admit it, Dr. Runte. You called her a tomboy. No, and please listen carefully. The quote was entirely hers. I then used it in a lecture. Well, she can refer to herself any way she wants, Dr. Runte. You can’t.

If it was getting that bad 30 years ago, imagine how bad it is today. As suddenly, every man on campus is presumed guilty of sexual harassment by virtue of being male. Surreptitiously targeting men, there are offices, and high-ranking administrators, overseeing every alleged offense.

One day, I found this tacked to my office door: “Stop Sexual Harassment on Campus!” Days later, now a sticker as well as a poster, it had also been glued to my window and office wastebasket. Looking around, I noticed that only we male professors had “received” the poster. Had anyone asked our permission? No, but then, who needs to ask permission of the “guilty” party?

Why do professors not revolt? Because those that might have revolted have retired. The World War II generation produced the greatest teachers. Having seen something of the world—and fought for it—they were not about to suffer bureaucrats. Some love the new demographic, of course. After all, so long as they remain subservient to the bureaucracy they get promoted, even if the part-timers never do.

After fleecing the taxpayers and the donors, the bureaucracy survives on grants. In a research university, up to 60 percent of an outside grant is “overhead” the researcher never sees. What? You now lack enough money to complete your research? Go find yourself (us) another grant!

Ultimately, for all of that to survive, everything great about higher education had to go. Great teaching was first to go. Next due process had to go. We haven’t quite reached the bottom yet, but think of every professor as that proverbial canary. The coal mine called the bureaucracy will snuff out anyone who dares challenge its control.

The implications of that are just as relevant—and just as serious—for our University of the Wilderness. Let’s take another look at that $12 billion backlog, for example. How much of it is “real?” To be sure, every time we hear the figure, it seems to have grown by another billion.

Who wants billion-dollar figures these days? A bureaucracy. The National Park Service is not the Pentagon, but the game is still the same. If you are truthful, the other players will cut your budget to ribbons. In other words, the moment the bureaucracy asks, the moment the truth inflates. A generous overhead for the bureaucracy is built in.

As bureaucracies grow to defend their priorities, they lose respect for an institution’s traditional priorities. Is Congress ever going to give the Park Service an extra $12 billion? No. But now the bureaucracy has its survival package. The most we can afford is ourselves.

Parkinson’s Law still applies. A bureaucracy is all about itself. It wants no rivals, only growth. In the old days, a university staff was professors, deans, secretaries, maintenance (buildings and grounds), admissions and records, and athletics. The coach was paid the same as any professor.

In Washington State, how did we ever get to 18,000 full-time “staff” versus 2,000 teaching faculty? Were the governor to ask, those further calling themselves boosters, friends, and “family” of the university would likely demand his head.

You think it is any better in Washington, D.C.? Where I fault Jonathan Jarvis is not to have made the centennial into a full-blown public teach-in. “Find Your Park!” Got it. “This Bud’s for you!” Got it. Now what, Mr. Jarvis? How about asking those of us with better ideas?

But again, what if the bureaucracy insists he not ask? Keep your distance from Alfred Runte. He will demand four pieces of stationery instead of three.

Translation: Runte knows whom we have displaced—the teachers. He would recommend slicing our ranks instead.

I would, and I do. Robin Winks softened the message somewhat, but then, he was on the National Park System Advisory Board. I have lost faith that anything good can come from a bureaucracy, no matter how many pieces of stationery I am “allowed.”

If I am wrong about the backlog, I am not wrong about what is happening to the parks. These past few years, I have seen some wonderful young people forced to leave Zion National Park because there was no work. They wanted to be teachers; they wanted to be interpreters. They wanted to do the real job of preservation, and the Park Service could only say no.

What a shame. You mean we can’t charge extra for that behemoth motor home? We can’t let a few potholes go? The local chamber of commerce always gets first dibs on park priorities—from snow-plowing to widening roads?

The serious ethical issues in the National Park Service have nothing to do with writing books. They have rather to do with preservation. Who has the right to change the parks—wire them, speed them up, make them more profitable for the concessionaires—when everything about those priorities leads to the loss of wilderness, which indeed the parks were meant to be.

I have watched the American university turn into little better than a Ponzi scheme. I feel deeply for all of the young people and their parents still expecting something good to come from that. Even when it does, it still costs them far too much. Most college expenses are no longer for teachers, at least, not the kind of teachers universities used to have.

Harry Butowsky is right. If we no longer want to pay for the teachers, there is no reason to keep expanding the University of the Wilderness, either. After all, the first to go will be the teachers, not only in the new parks but all the rest. The bureaucracy will ensure that its own priorities come first, for that is what bureaucracies know to do.

A kind and gentle soul, Robin Winks again warned us of that diplomatically. Before his death in 2003, he had visited every unit of the national park system then in existence—some 360 sites. Rest in peace, Robin. We know you loved the parks. Please then forgive me for being blunt. If even the National Park Service is now to spend its time on witch hunts, its problems—and indeed, our country’s problems—go far deeper than either of us imagined.