"Professors" Are Not Minted In Heaven

There is a nasty, unsigned article that is making the rounds in cyberspace. On August 16, 2007, the same article surfaced on Ghanaweb.com, the premiere privately-owned national website, if one may aptly say so, in view of the fact of Ghanaweb being, arguably, the most comprehensive and readily accessible source of information on Ghana.

The nasty article was titled “How GIMPA Boss Made Himself a Prof” and was credited to the Ghanaian Observer. And for those of our readers who may not be aware of the existence of the Ghanaian Observer, it is one of a group of four, or so, Nkrumah-leaning newspapers that are published in the private residence of Mr. Kwaku Baako, at the Labone Estates, at least the last time that yours truly checked that was a factual reality.

I personally had the misfortune of encountering the Ghanaian Observer in cyberspace in the wake of the still-raging vigorous debate on whether to rename Ghana’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, after its putative founder and the undisputed Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah.

In a rather heretical column that appeared in the Ghanaian Observer, the pseudonymous writer disdainfully parried off the preceding noble proposal by cavalierly suggesting that he would rather have Legon renamed for the people of Labadi, on whose landed property Ghana’s premiere academy stood. The smart-alecky writer, needless to say, had not been equally intelligent enough to also suggest that since the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) also sits smack-dab on bona fide Asante landed property and in Asante territory, it ought to be renamed the Osei-Tutu University of Science and Technology (OT-UST).

In any case, the afore-referenced article titled “How GIMPA Boss Made Himself Prof.,” claims that Dr. Stephen Adei, rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, just recently arrogated himself the purportedly undeserved academic title of “Professor” by the quite simple and cynical act of a flimsy memorandum that Dr. Adei, allegedly, scribbled on regular notepads and circulated among the front-office staff of GIMPA.

The maliciousness of the aforementioned Ghanaian Observer article inheres in the crass ignorance of the writer. First of all, no reputable academic institution of the caliber of GIMPA would ordinarily appoint just about anybody to head the same, who does not have the equivalent ranking of either a “Full-Professor” or a “Senior Professor,” meaning somebody with an academic ranking above that of “Assistant Professor,” the basic rank at which most college and university teachers begin their professional careers.

In sum, Dr. Stephen Adei ought to have been deemed to have possessed the ranking equivalent of a senior professor before being appointed Rector of GIMPA. And while this writer, himself a senior professor, has appropriated the traditional American academic ranking system – there are, of course, regional and local variations even right here in the United States – in making a case, or holding brief, for Dr. Adei, approximately the same ranking system is used by such major Ghanaian academies as the universities of Ghana, Cape Coast and Kumasi, even where, as pertains to the case of the University of Ghana, the labyrinthine British system of professorial ranking is used.

The preceding notwithstanding, there have been quite a remarkable number of cases in which the appointees’ recognized sterling expertise, or relevant achievements and experience in disparate fields of endeavor, has been legitimately used as the basis of appointment to Vice-Chancellorship or Directorship, as it apparently pertains to the case of Dr. Stephen Adei. For, at the end of the day, appointments to headship – or stewardship – of many a major academic or professional institution are almost invariably political. In the case of Dr. Adei, even as the evidently vindictive author of the Ghanaian Observer article notes, the Rector’s service as a United Nations Development Program’s Resident Director in Namibia, or the Southern African Region, likely played quite a significant role in Dr. Adei’s appointment as Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration. Needless to say, serving as a UN director of regional or even local development has a kind of cache – or global recognition – that the position of a Rector of GIMPA may not necessarily have, both in terms of salary and prestige.

Indeed, had the writer of the nasty Ghanaian Observer article appreciated as much as the preceding, s/he would likely have thought twice, as it were, before imperiously presuming to impugn the personal and professional integrity of Dr. Adei. For being appointed Rector of GIMPA did not necessarily imply that Dr. Adei had been promoted to a higher professional status in the process; it could even be that the GIMPA rector assumed his current post and title as a mark of patriotic sacrifice, rather than one of upward mobility, even assuming, for the sake of sheer argumentation, that Dr. Stephen Adei were a hardnosed careerist or even an impudent social climber, as it were.

In essence, what motivated this writer to rejoin the vicious and malicious and outright savage Ghanaian Observer article has more to do with what he had read, by way of some readers’ comments, in the Ghanaweb.com chat-room. For instance, one critic, who obviously had an axe to grind with the GIMPA rector, could simply not fathom why an alleged 64 lecturers – of totally unspecified calibers – would leave GIMPA during the 8 years that Dr. Adei has, reportedly, been in charge.

Admittedly, the preceding number is a rather high turnover rate, indeed; but then, the critical reader ought to ask him-/herself this equally germane question: Just how many lecturers have left Ghana’s major academies for the proverbial greener pastures, over the past several years, other than the purely visceral or even political fact of a particular Vice-Chancellor having been accused of either managerial incompetence or sheer personal mean-spiritedness, just like a handful that yours truly knows?

And, by the way, unlike Ghana, here in the United States, the title of “Doctor,” as in Dr. Stephen Adei, is regarded as being far more prestigious than “Professor.” For the latter title, which is routinely and loosely used as a rhetorical address, a respectable one, to be certain, has more to do with the range of one’s salary than the depth of one’s intellect or even professional competence. Besides, being appointed a Full-Professor or Senior-Professor has become, at least in recent years, so politically charged as to be rendered almost practically irrelevant.

Of course, there is the purely and objectively academic dimension of being awarded the ivory-tower title of College- or University-Professor. The preceding notwithstanding, most American college professors who have “earned” the Ph.D. or Doctorate, prefer to be addressed as “Doctor,” rather than “Professor,” even when they have also attained the status or professional ranking of “Professor.” For, by and large, as already indicated, here in the United States, every college teacher – even one with the “lowly” ranking of an “Instructor” or “Lecturer,” is accorded the professional honor and respect of being addressed as “Professor.” So what is the big deal about the GIMPA ruckus?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “The Tower Mafia,” a forthcoming account on the anti-African and anti-immigrant culture wars in the American academy. E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com