New Mexico Quarterly Volume 18 | Issue 3 Article 9 1948 The rP ofessor and the University Joaquin Ortega Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq Recommended Citation Ortega, Joaquin. "The rP ofessor and the University." New Mexico Quarterly 18, 3 (1948). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/ vol18/iss3/9 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Mexico Press at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Quarterly by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Ortega: The Professor and the University ·, , , THE PROFESSOR AND THE UNIV ERSITY * Joaquin Ortega' "...-,mS IS, in long strokes, the story of a c?llege professor, a li~tle man ..1..' who does not amount to mu~h according to the standards Imposed by our materialistic outlook. He may be at times-admired for his intel lectual aptitude, but n~t for long, for it is hard to understand his kind in a land .where everything else is· so understandable. Big shots, and .small shots who aspire some day to swell into big shots, despise him at heart, and regard him as a wayward son who has sidestepped from the path of real enterprise. He is just a ,professor, one of those queer crea tures living almost on the margin of American acquisitive society indif ferent to the centripetal torce of "making money.". This centripetal force, which is the source of nearly all our sins and of some of our virtues, has barely touched him.