September 19, 2005

Dear Colleague,

         We have all heard stories of how great artists slaved for their art. Michelangelo lived on his back on the scaffold as he painted the Sistine Chapel, with paint dripping on his face where it mixed with the sweat. Numberless stories have been told about scientists who went without sleep, ate peanut-butter sandwiches during lunch break, and breathed unnatural air for hours on end all in the interest of truth. And what about UW faculty? We work 85 hours a week, toil and exhaust ourselves for what? Could it be to maintain UW's 18th ranking in the top 20 universities of the world?  (See *note below.) For that proud achievement, we accept low pay and gladly spend "quality time" with books and microscopes rather than with spouse and kids.

         Now I take you to a controversial idea. Isn't it just possible that servants work hard, live in cramped quarters in the basement, and accept low pay because they take enormous pride in their achievement, which is the luxurious life style of their masters and mistresses? That life style is an Art, for which maids and footmen willingly toil. Indeed, they get angry when their Art refuses the perfection they wish to impose on it—as, for instance, when their mistress wears a slightly stained dress to the Queen's Garden Party.

This is how Iris Murdoch puts it in her play, The Three Arrows (Chatto & Windus, 1973):

         Basil:       Oriane, all these people don't exist just for our benefit.

         Oriane:    I think it would be better for everybody if we assumed they did.

         Basil:       They don't work just so that we can put on nice clothes and do nothing.

         Oriane:    Yes, they do. We are their achievement. Our idleness and our luxury are the
                           crown of their toil. Without us their lives would be pointless.          

         Basil:   No!

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu

*Note:  This is the famous list of 100 top universities in the world produced by Jiao Tong University, Shanghai. The criteria for the ranking are primarily number of Nobel Prizes and articles in respectable publications. See The Economist, September 10, 2005.