Ad Hoc and Academia

Abstract

To the classicist, phrases like the legal corpus delicti and amicus curiae, like the aesthetic deus ex machina and ad unguem carry a certain unction as pre servative of a language the classicist loves. But who can say the same ad hoc, that ubiquitous prefix to Com mittee ? Seemingly, no group assigned a task in univer sity or college or high school or in any educationally ad ministrative or advisory body whatsoever can be other than an Ad Hoc Committee.,, What, really, does ad hoc add to a committee's func tion? The phrase, presumably, means for or for this purpose or for the business at hand. But is not every appointed for or for this pur pose or for the business at hand ? By what linguistic legerdemain can an ad hoc be expected to achieve what a simple committee without a qualify ing Latin prefix could not likewise bring about ? One might wish, of course, that there were no more to ad hoc than this. However, one feels, it is to be feared, in an ad hoc committee, that sense of immediacy which is so blithesomely rampant in Academia today. To do it now, immediately, without delay (and perhaps without much thought) seems to have pervaded the breath of our academic lives, often to the exclusion of any sane and reasoned approach to problems and ques tions which may well be frighteningly in need of an swers.