The last Annual Faculty Report I submitted, on 11/11/70, contains the following:

Name George Salzman Rank Professor

Signature (signed) Date 11/11/70 Highest Degree Ph.D.

Department Physics Date of initial UM/B appointment Sept. 1965

I. Teaching

Fall Term Physics 101 - Concepts of Modern Physics - students

Physics 121 - Introduction to Astronomy - students

Spring Term Physics 102 - Concepts of Modern Physics - students

Physics 122 - Introduction to Astronomy - students

I am opposed to the idea of performing this ritual of supposed faculty evaluation for a number of reasons, and this seems to be an appropriate occasion to state them. The major objection is my belief that a competitive social structure is, in the current state of civilization, a very bad thing for all of us. The whole idea that we are constantly being evaluated for the purpose of competing against each other is, I think, destructive of our internal harmony, and in many cases, of our actual physical health.

So-called Western civilization has, of course, cultivated competition, and I recognize its dynamism and the vital importance it has played in our progress in many fields. However, it seems to me that competition merely for the sake of material gain, among people who already enjoy a material standard that surely places us (American university professors as a class) in the top one or two percent of the world's population, is entirely misdirected.

And we ought not fool ourselves that this annual review serves any other function for the individual faculty member - as the column of dollar signs on the final page makes clear. Our society reckons our value in dollars per unit time and the justification for these forms is that they help provide the data for the measurement. Our failure to ask ourselves what it is that we are about as we rush through life is a measure of the extent to which our society keeps us occupied with trivia, and of a gnawing concern that if we ask the questions, we may discover, painfully, that our lives are not really meaningful - that they are mostly wasted.

It seemsto me that the hostility one hears about on the part of many middle class Americans towards the rebellious and searching youth springs from this unconscious fear that their own lives have been worthless when judged by criteria other than material well-being. So they attack the questioners. One may understand, and even sympathize, with such emotions on the part of small entrepreneurs who have worked hard all their lives to gain a bit of security. But if we in the universities have any pretense of being intellectuals, then surely we should be anxious to step back and to look critically at ourselves, and what we are doing with our lives.

One consequence of our competitiveness is the great emphasis on professionalism in our society - see yellow instruction sheet. It is inevitable because the higher and higher degree of proficiency needed to enter the competition means that the individual must specialize to a narrower and narrower domain - where he can then excel. Concomitant with this is the need to give up social activities that may be vital to society's health - because the individual is so hard-pressed to work on his specialty.

Of course I am not opposed to an individual who feels a special calling pursuing it with undivided energy. But I am opposed to a society which tries to keep each one of us firmly in place - tied to a particular "professional" activity, and it appears to me that this so-called evaluation - this weighing of our busy work - is part of the absurdity of our lives. Of course it makes work for the bureaucracy - forms to be devised, revised, printed, and paid for - questions and instructions to be thought about, typing and duplicating and filing - all the actions that a bureaucracy carries on to assure itself that it is important, and useful, and efficient.

What would Thoreau think of us? And would he be right in his assessment? How would Thoreau have "measured up" to this "evaluation" if we were contemporaries? How would he have responded to neatly printed forms with ruled boxes for him to put his answers in? Who makes all the boxes that we are so busy rushing around inside of - and never stepping outside of? If we want to be vital - if we want to be free - if we want to realize whatever creative potential each of us possesses - then we have to forsake the security of our boxes. What is the fear that keeps us in place?