The Disneyfication of a University

BY DANE KENNEDY

The George Washington University faculty and staff ain’t got no culture. Or worse, we’ve got a negative culture. This was the verdict of the Disney Institute, which the president of our university commissioned last year to assess the culture on our campus. Fortunately, the institute, which is the “professional development and external training arm of The Walt Disney Company,” has a remediation plan. It has designed workshops to teach us the cultural “values” and “service priorities” we evidently require.

The culture that Disney has crafted for us is not, it should be said, the high culture of the arts that the poet Matthew Arnold described as “sweetness and light.” Nor is it the anthropological notion of culture—a system of meaning that shapes social behavior. Rather, it is corporate culture, a creature that has become all the rage in the business world—and now, it seems, is burrowing its way into universities. Its professed aim is to instill a sense of shared purpose among employees, but its real objective is far more coercive and insidious.

Our president is rumored to have forked over three to four million dollars to the Disney Institute to improve our culture (he refuses to reveal the cost). A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.” For everyone else, the university is conducting culture training workshops that run up to two hours. All staff and managers are required to attend. Faculty are strongly “encouraged” to participate, and some contract faculty, who have little job security, evidently have been compelled to do so.

I attended one of these workshops. It was a surreal experience. About a hundred mostly sullen university employees—maintenance workers, administrative staff, faculty members, and more—filled a ballroom. Two workshop leaders strained to gin up the crowd’s enthusiasm with various exhortations and exercises, supplemented by several slickly produced videos. The result was a cross between a pep rally and an indoctrination camp.

We were introduced at the beginning of the workshop to the university’s brand new slogan: “Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time.” Hold on. We change the world only at GW? And we achieve this absurd ambition how? The answer, it turns out, is pretty vacuous—by being nice. “Care,” we were told, is one of our three “Service Priorities.” We were given “Service Priorities” table-tent cards, conveniently sized for our pocketbooks and billfolds so we can whip them out whenever we needed to remind ourselves how we change the world. These cards offer a series of declarative statements—pabulum, some might say—about our “care” priorities. Here’s a sample: “I support a caring environment by greeting, welcoming, and thanking others.” To help us care for others, the university has established a “positive vibes submission” website, where we “can send a positive vibe to someone.” It was hard to detect many positive vibes in the workshop itself.

The other two “service priorities” give us a clearer idea of the culture initiative’s real agenda. One is “safety;” the other, “efficiency.” Both exhort employees to improve their work performance. The very first “safety” recommendation is an injunction to “keep areas clean, well-maintained, and inviting.” An important measure of “efficiency” is a willingness to “embrace change and [be] open to new ways of working.” One might wonder whether work efficiency would be enhanced by redirecting the millions of dollars that are going to the Disney Institute into staff salaries or bonuses instead. But that misses the point. The main purpose of this corporate culture initiative is to create a more disciplined and compliant workforce. Our workshop leaders actually acknowledged that “compliance” is a central pillar of the project.

Lastly, we were introduced to “Our GW Values”—“ours” only in the sense that they were being imposed on us. One might think that our president would be interested in promoting and honoring the values that are specific to our mission as a university, such as innovative research, teaching excellence, critical inquiry, and new ideas. Think again. As crafted by the Disney Institute and its administrative acolytes, “Our GW Values” are “integrity,” “collaboration,” “courage,” “respect,” “excellence,” “diversity,” and “openness.” All worthy values, to be sure, but is it possible to offer a more generic and innocuous set of standards?

The GW culture initiative can be summed up in two words: Mickey Mouse.

Guest blogger Dane Kennedy is the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University.

For a more detailed analysis of this initiative, see Dane Kennedy’s Academe article, “How (Not) to Corporatize a University.”

26 thoughts on “The Disneyfication of a University

  1. Pingback: Reading: The Disneyfication of a University: Admin plays Goofy – Morgan's Log

  2. How sad. This is how far the “busnessification” of higher ed has gone. That whole process being inflicted on you is an insult to all in higher ed.

  3. A third party observed a negative, cynical and jaded culture. A professor responds with a negative, jaded and cynical letter. Sounds like they got it right. What Professor Kennedy fails to acknowledge is that teaching excellence, innovative research and critical inquiry can exist alongside respect, collaboration, integrity, etc. In actuality, they should go hand in hand. As an alum and an educator, I tip my hat to the president for trying to make the student experience better in meaningful ways. I understand the professor’s wariness of “outsiders” and for-profit ventures but as my GW education taught me, you’ve got to open your mind.

    • I’ll add to this as a fellow GW employee. The staff and faculty are sullen because we feel that we are consistently underpaid and underappreciated. Departments that in other universities have staff members of 4 – 5 only have 1 – 2 at GW. Certain administrative departments feature massive turn over and the general consensus is that upper administration has little care for the quality of its workers. We are constantly told that the university is short on money and that they are sympathetic to our plights but nothing ever comes of it. So to have the university spend an untold amount of money to hire an organization to identify these issues, ignore the root cause, and be told that the solution to our woes boils down to “just be happier and nicer to people” is beyond insulting. GW didn’t need to hire the Disney institution to find the root cause of unhappiness; they simply had to ask any employee. They hired Disney to fix their image problem, not to improve the quality of the work environment.

      • Thanks for providing this additional insight. It’s more revealing and substantive than the original post. I hope the president works to ensure good working conditions so university employees are better-positioned to serve the students.

      • I second this as a current staff member at GW. Staff are not treated with respect by the administration. This is apparent in the new HR employee evaluation system that allows for only 2 designations: Achieves Expectations or Needs Improvement. There is a third designation Exceeds Expectations but no one is allowed to get that designation. This came directly from HR and from the President. These designations are tied to raises – another way they keep raises down. This does not incentivize employees to do their best work and is contributing to the high turnover.

  4. This program seems like a total waste of money. I taught at GW for ten years and regard it as a special place, two steps closer to policymakers, whether classmates or instructors. It’s a place where, as happened to one of my students, you can run into Ralph Nader in the elevator.

  5. This hiring of consultants to lead colleges shows a lack of leadership skills by college presidents. I wish I could hire a consultant to do my job for me and still get paid, but I don’t need one; I know reasonably well what I am doing..

  6. if the professor were a candidate for president (of the university) would he win? The culture wars would, I fear, reduce it to Disney versus the Donald.

  7. Kennedy’s nostalgia for “the high culture of the arts that the poet Matthew Arnold described as ‘sweetness and light'” is just as troubling as the intervention of neoliberal Disney branding at GWU. Arnold’s dichotomous conception of culture – for example, his concerns over who and what are “civilized” and the Victorian pursuit of a singular perfection/ideal – formed the basis to justify exclusions and erasure of all sorts of cultural production, especially for those groups outside of the dominant spheres of power. One should be cautious in glorifying Arnold’s ideas without qualification.

    Since Kennedy doesn’t address culture from Williams’ perspective, the argument misses an opportunity to identify the ordinariness of GWU culture. What are the various cultural values and norms at GWU? Why should GWU’s existing culture be defended? (I presume that such culture(s) exist and should either be protected or reformed by those who live/participate in the practice of GWU’s academic and workplace culture). The reader has no idea about such things, however, as Kennedy doesn’t make any affirmative case. Disney may say that there’s a “negative” culture (whatever that means). Still, an effective critique of campus neoliberalization should likely include some articulation of what culture(s) are present and necessary to survive.

    Worse, the argument presented in the blog post ignores Hall’s thesis that culture is never static, but always a site of struggle. Kennedy seems unaware that the very act of GWU’s outsourcing to Disney in order to to conduct cultural interventions into university culture is exactly what cultural dynamics can look like, especially when capital and client-administrators can collaborate without fear of dissent or resistance. To critique Disney and the corporation of the university is one thing, and I whole-hardheartedly agree, but failing to defend observable culture(s) or ignoring the fact that culture is always a contest where power matters, whether we like it or not, is not an effective rhetorical response.

    If one wants to get rid of Mickey Mouse, it’s not enough to point out the rodent in the room. One needs an articulation of why they shouldn’t be there in the first place, a coherent counter-strategy, and a set of practical, adaptable, ongoing tactics to hasten their removal.

    • That sounds like a lot of interesting thoughts, Charlie! But you neglected to greet, welcome, and thank the others participating in this conversation, and that’s a big cultural no-no! Remember, only a real “Goofy ™” tries to advance a critical dialectic without the Service Priorities!

  8. Pingback: The culture that is Disney? The culture that is GWU? - Marginal REVOLUTION

  9. As adjunct professor for many years at both State Colleges and Private, the university atmosphere is counter to the learning environment requirements.
    GW might be a lot different than other schools, but there are too many administrators, too many cultural studies and other barista degrees. (A barista degreenis one that are low pay or not useful for professional jobs).
    The system has become politically charged and do not recognize that, in general most students would be better off with the Khan Academy, and similar online products. GW really is just a Disney like approach to higher education and this kind of training will leadnto.a.better product that serves the student, their family, and the corporate world. It might help with being better steward to Carholic Tradition.

  10. Pingback: The culture that is Disney? The culture that is GWU? – business-99.com

  11. Welcome to today’s corporate indoctrination. Anyone who’s been working in a business environment could have written this article. Disney, and similar consulting companies, are hired because their message to upper management is that workers are responsible for their own happiness, and upper management has no obligation to do anything more than bring in the consultants. It’s intentionally self-serving.

  12. WE, the parents of your students, as well as your students, are footing the bill for yet more wasteful and unnecessary spending by the leadership of your college. Working overtime, two jobs, getting loans, more loans, and even more loans. All so your president can piss all the staff off with the disnification of GWU. Nice to know where our tuition dollars are going. I’m guessing we’ll see some sharp tuition increases in the near future. Nice to know it’s not just the staff that are opposed to this inefficient use of tax payer and tuition payer dollars.

  13. Pingback: PDR in the Disneyfied university | Academic Irregularities

  14. I am a Hofstra University professor emerita of fine arts and art history. At first I thought this was a parody, but then was aghast to realize it’s the author’s account of a true Mouse disaster at GW University. I read this as part and parcel of the corporatization of the American University–where faculty are replaceable cogs and students are “products” to be churned out to the specifications of the corporations that will then employ them. Learning to think, and learning how to approach different bodies of knowledge in different disciplines–all are tossed to the winds as the emphasis is increasingly placed on nothing but STEM courses that support a society where no one thinks at all.

    There is no longer any “higher” in “higher education.” It’s all flattened and softened into pablum.

  15. Pingback: Disney in Academe’s Groves | Jeff Pooley

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