The Committee of eternal deliberation : institutional satire from inside the university

Abstract

The Committee of Eternal Deliberation is a work of institutional satire that examines how contemporary universities function — and sometimes malfunction — from the inside. Drawing on familiar practices of academic governance, the book explores how structures designed to support ethical decision-making — such as committees, policies, and administrative processes — can gradually become ends in themselves. Rather than facilitating judgment, these systems may defer responsibility, fragment accountability, and prioritize procedural compliance over meaningful action. Through a series of interconnected chapters, the book traces how everyday academic life is shaped by recurring patterns: the proliferation of meetings, the expansion of bureaucratic requirements, the performance of expertise, and the growing reliance on technical systems that mediate decision-making. Written in the form of institutional documents, reports, and narrative sketches, the text uses satire and exaggeration to make visible dynamics that are often difficult to name directly. It focuses not on individuals, but on the organizational logics that structure behaviour across roles — from faculty and administrators to students and professional staff. The book does not argue for the abandonment of process or governance. Instead, it raises a more fundamental question: what happens when institutions rely so heavily on procedures that they displace the very judgment and responsibility those procedures were meant to support? Accessible to readers both within and outside academia, this work offers a critical, and often humorous, reflection on the tensions between ethics and bureaucracy, intention and outcome, and decision and delay in modern institutional life.