Prestidigitation goes to college

The advertisement was nestled in the business section of the paper beside the usual dull ads announcing open positions for professors of business studies and deans of dentistry. This one, however, invited applications for the “Allan Slaight Chair for the Study of the Conjuring Arts” at Carleton University.

Conjuring Arts? At a university? You bet! A quick search of the university’s website found me the press release to prove it was real enough. And, perhaps anticipating some heat, the university has come out with its dukes up. The conjuring arts is a “respected and growing academic area of study,” it insists.

According to the univesity, the position represents a “ground-breaking and exciting opportunity to develop a new interdisciplinary academic programme.” Related fields include psychology, history, literature, communication, religious studies and theatre. Research topics range from the history of warfare, the use of political persuasion, neuroscience and psychology to the study of literary genres and devices, mathematics and game design. That’s quite a plateful.

You are a candidate for the chair if you have a PhD and a strong teaching or research record, and a track record of having taken an interdisciplinary and innovative approach. If you get the position, you will have some spending money for research, travel, visiting scholars, conferences and student support. In return, the university will expect you to put Carleton “at the forefront of this dynamic area of education and research” and to go out and tout the university as a “unique intenational resource for collections and artifacts related to magic.”

The man behind the chair is retired Canadian broadcasting executive Allan Slaight. He has put up $2 million, and the university has matched it. His Foundation has also donated over 1,600 texts on deception to the university. (The university didn’t get everthing, however: the Foundation donated a collection of rare magic posters and Houdini ephemera to the McCord Museum in Montreal—which is fitting, considering Houdini’s fatal connection to that city). Slaight became hooked on magic as a child, and has been a practising magician since he was a teenager. He has written on magic, and hosts an annual conference for magicians. His Foundation has also contributed $250,000 to support awards for excellence in magic. (Slaight and the Foundation have a track record of generous philanthropy, which includes donating $18,000 to refurbish a piano belonging to Fats Domino that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina.)

So who might be qualified for this challenge? They are bound to be a somewhat unconvential person, as the essence of conjuring is deception, and deception embraces a number of unconventional ways to make a living. They must also have a certain flair, to pull off the ambassadorial part of the job. Yet they must posess enough discipline to have obtained a doctorate, and demonstate enough academic rigour to mollify those who, perhaps with a little envy, might sniff that the conjuring arts are not exactly real science. The only potential candidate who comes to mind is Robertson Davies, the author of Fifth Business and founding master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. Unfortunately, he has long since shuffled off this mortal coil and no amount of deception is going to bring him back, unless the search commitee wants to dabble in communication with the spirit world, in which case it would really have a hard time defending the appointment.

There are two things that worry me. First, the ad doesn’t offer any assurance that the program will be run in compliance with the magicians’ code.That code says magicians don’t reveal the sercrets behind their tricks to the world and put other magicians out of work: they pass them on only to the extent necessary to keep the secret alive, and then only to trusted associates who have sworn to keep the faith. It would be a shame to think that academics were poking their noses into things we woud really rather not know. Yet if they don’t tackle the mysteries of deception head on, aren’t they just nibbling round the edges of their subject?

Second, how will a candidate go about satisfying the committee he is familiar with the conjuring arts? Will he be expected to perform some act of prestidigitation, like attempting to saw the secretary of the search committee in two, or removing the contents of the committee’s wallets, or letting pigeons escape from his briefcase?

Good luck, Carleton. By the time this search is over, you’ll no doubt be wishing you had been looking not for a chair in the conjuring arts but a dean of dentistry.

DSIMMONDS@WELLINGTONTIMES.CA