College faculty are (to my mind) like those lobsters you see in restaurant tanks.
There are of course many kinds of professors. In the faculty senate you’ll meet the following Moliere-esque figures:
The “Tartuffe” is an administrator, usually a dean or provost who will tell you with affected gestures that he, she, they, what have you, cares a great deal about blah blah blah but never helps out.
The “Harpagon” is also an administrator, but he, she, they, can also be a faculty member. The Harpagon is driven by rhetorics of cheapness but he, she, they, generally drives a nice car.
Statue du Commandeur: a rigid, punctilious, puritanical type—“this is the way we’ve always done it. If we changed things for you, we’d have to change things for everybody. Yes, it certainly must be hard…” See:
The Geronte: when his son is kidnapped he says: “Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?” (What in the deuce did he want to go on that galley for?” In other words, he brought this upon himself. “Really, shouldn’t you try something easier? I could have told you.”
“I am, I fear, Inclined to be unfashionably sincere.”
–Moliere
