Summary: The faculty of Humboldt State University are engaged in a struggle to reclaim a voice in decision-making. Although the university administration publicly endorses principles of shared governance articulated by the AAUP, in fact the faculty voice is routinely ignored. The lack of faculty participation has made it difficult or impossible to address other growing problems of poor management, lack of communication, failure to lead, and abandonment of the University's ideals and traditions. Those problems have been particularly galling to faculty and staff who have been intensely proud of the University for decades. Tensions have been strong and building for about three and a half years, with faculty increasingly advocating a change in leadership. Two years ago a survey of faculty revealed two-thirds were ready to hold a no confidence vote regarding the President. The Academic Senate and the Senate Executive Committee have attempted several times and using several committees to resolve the issues and tensions through discussion and negotiations. At every stage the faculty involved reported they were unsuccessful. During this same period, visitors from off campus showed awareness of the problems or remarked on them, including a WASC accreditation team and consultants hired on the WASC team's recommendation that we find outside help. In May of this year, the President proposed making a change in central administration which three groups of faculty unanimously opposed. The President made the change as close to the end of the academic year as possible, perhaps in order to prevent faculty from being able to respond. This may have been a miscalculation. In an emergency meeting of the General Faculty on Tuesday of that final exam week, a quorum present, a motion was made, seconded and approved by a vote of 128-4 with two abstaining, finding No Confidence in the President and finding that he should step down.
             For a more detailed history and report, see the 15 May 2009 Memo in which the finding of No Confidence was reported to the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees, at http://www.humboldt.edu/~jwp2/BOTltr3.pdf That memo also contains an annotated table of contents to the binder of accompanying documentation, online at http://www.humboldt.edu/~jwp2/gfp.htm

             Although Chancellor Charles Reed's response was seemingly noncommittal (it is also online), he has announced he will attend HSU's opening Convocation (I think this is the first time he's setting foot on this campus) and he requested a meeting with the Academic Senate's Executive Committee. Faculty support for the vote of no confidence is expected at convocation. The Senate Executive Committee meeting is expected to be lively.

(F?)AQ:
One of the best parts of my position as General Faculty President is correspondence and chances to talk with faculty I'd otherwise never meet. The following is an attempt to answer questions they have asked and to save and share insights they have shared with me. I'm doing this hastily, so organization is dicey and it is not nearly as concise as it should be. I'll add more when I can, and I invite more questions and answers.
The questions taken up below are the following:
Q.: Isn't the real problem, as several administrators have said or hinted, that the faculty are a quarrelsome and faction-ridden bunch of prima donnas?

Q.: Isn't shared governance a widely endorsed idea across American Higher Ed? Is there really an issue here?

Q.: What's the difference between censure and a No Confidence vote? Two other CSU Presidents have had resolutions of No Confidence passed regarding them, and nothing's happened. Isn't this futile?

Q.: [reworded here] Many of the faculty's concerns seem gaseous and could be made much more clear and specific. What do you want?

1. Q.: Isn't the real problem, as several administrators have said or hinted, that the faculty are a quarrelsome and faction-ridden bunch of prima donnas?
   A.: This comment, disguised as a question, could be expanded. Isn't the real solution to be found by dragging the faculty into the real world of limited resources and getting them onboard with "Achieving a Shared Vision," (the title of the Keeling Report)?
                 There is a current story about the faculty the seeds for which were sown with WASC and the Keeling report. You may recall the phrase "professional rock throwers." I hear this story again this summer, from administrators and P.R. flacks. The story is that the faculty are impossibly fractious, quarrelsome, resist the facts of life, can't agree with any new initiatives, can't let go of old ideas.
                 The thing is, there's a kernel of truth, a good kernel. The Senate, for example, is slow because, whatever the motion or policy or resolution, someone is sure to object, and we listen and answer and talk it through. This drives some people crazy and makes some quit the Senate. Consultation with faculty is unpredictable, takes time, leads to unanticipated objections. It's a pain in the ass.
                 Mostly, though, the story is just false, a cover for a darker truth. The truth is that the faculty agree on important bedrock values of the University and the administration does not. (There are exceptions among the administration--the administration I'm talking about here are the chancellor's office, the University President, most of the vice presidents and assoc. v.p.'s, with some miscellaneous helpers. They get reinforcement from some current fad schools of thought in accountability and management which are influential right now in accreditation.) Take the talk about achieving a shared vision. (Sorry to repeat.) WASC and Keeling and our subsequent processes are spilling inkwells right and left on this. It's unnecessary. Look around. We already share a vision. The vision is what sold me on taking a job here. Here's the vision: we see an ambitious university; we see fanaticism about good teaching; we see a diversity of programs with a scattering who are nationally ranked; we see the need to combat abuses of power and other injustices; we see ourselves preparing students not as cogs but as agents of change in the face of urgent world-wide issues. Frustrated faculty repeat this vision, often after hours of meeting about outcomes assessment. Do the administration repeat this vision? They do not. They don't because it's not theirs. They have a vision that features capital letters, of Value Added Education, Assessment of Outcomes, approval from management theorists (TQM and others), facing the Hard Facts of life, learning to Live Within Our Means. Is this pathetic or what? Crucially, this is a passive vision, constructed somewhere else and separate from HSU's traditions and faculty. HSU's traditions and faculty are activist, which is not the same as quarrelsome even if it leads to quarrels. Were the administration to share HSU's vision, the dreadful abandonment of higher ed in California could at least be resisted here.


2. Q.: Isn't shared governance a widely endorsed idea across American Higher Ed? Is there really an issue here?
   A.: Well, yes, it is widely endorsed. See the Chancellor's last goals for President Richmond at the end of the report of the President's six-year review. But behind the scenes it is often hotly contested and where it is not defended it erodes. Thorsten Veblen's The Higher Learning in America, with the subtitle On the Conduct of Universities by Businessmen, prophesied regarding these issues in 1918.
   
                I refer you to the column on August 2nd by Marc Bousquet, one of the "Brainstorm" bloggers for the Chronicle of Higher Education. I often dislike reading him for the same reason I can only take so much Amy Goodman--I get agitated and want to stockpile rocks (that's a joke). It's here on the Chronicle website , not behind subscriber password and so accessible to all. Here are the first four short paragraphs:
                 "Maybe it's time we learned our lesson about shared governance. Four decades of earnest collaboration with management have done little for the tenure stream partners in governance--except to see their steady replacement by instructors, moonlighters, staff specialists and student workers, including undergraduates.
                 "This summer's events on many campuses suggest that "sharing" governance has been just a figleaf for managerial control.
                 "These past few months even the most Pollyanna of profs might have to admit that the fundamental powerlessness of faculty under systems of "sharing" governance is on spectacular display across the country--with opportunistic administrations using the economic crisis to achieve their hearts' desire: wage cuts, furloughs, layoffs, program closures... but no reduction in administration, staff, services, or landscaping!
                 "The administration building's air conditioning is on full blast; their carpets are new and regularly cleaned; their kids are in private school, and they still get out for golf while you're grading papers or paying for your research out of pocket, stealing time from your kids' lives. On the occasions they've taken pay cuts, they've generally been symbolic, knocking a grand or two off a monthly take that would buy an average person a new car. "


3. Q.: What's the difference between censure and a No Confidence vote? Two other CSU Presidents have had resolutions of No Confidence passed regarding them, and nothing's happened. Isn't this futile?
   A.: This is a good one. We don't know. There are some grounds for hope. A censure is much more indefinite in its meaning and in its traditional effects. Sometimes censure seems to be a demand for an apology and reform. No Confidence is more defined and carries more heft. Up until fairly recently administrators without the confidence of their faculty found themselves very shortly without jobs. This is still the most common effect. But, lately there's been more pushback on the part of boards of trustees and the heads of university systems. When there are many layers of decurions, centurions, and procurators between the teachers and the governors then the effect of a no confidence vote becomes more indirect, less assured, and slow. The CSU Board of Trustees has nearly two dozen presidents to work with, and I've been told by someone who attends lots of meetings in the system offices that the BOT takes as one of their primary duties the hiring of good presidents. I don't know how much consternation they feel regarding a third vote of no confidence coming at the same time as an allegedly positive six year review. But then overt consternation is apparently a proscribed reaction. There's an online audio clip of one BOT discussion of the other two votes of no confidence, one of the most disheartening things I've heard in a couple of years. For more on this see Prof. Mae Kuykendall's interview in the Chronicle of Higher Ed from shortly after we took our vote, prompted by her presentation to the AAUP's annual meeting regarding no confidence votes and pressured dismissals of presidents. She points out that trustees and presidents and chancellors routinely poohpooh votes of no confidence right up through and after the removals of presidents. That's preserved on the Michigan State Law School web site.
                 Perhaps a third vote is different. HSU's situation is different. And the word from the other two campuses is that interesting changes are taking place and that the no confidence vote was an importantly good thing. I'm surprised that Chancellor Reed is showing up. Even if he is only coming to correct us, it is still evidence that on some level we are being taken seriously. As far as I know, this is the first time he's set foot on this campus, and I don't think former Chancellor Munitz ever visited here.


4. Q.: One of the most maddening things about the faculty for me (well, besides the Senate's elaborate gavottes and quadrilles of motion: amendment: amendment to the amendment: failed motion to end debate: motion to return to committee with a deadline: and so on, ad banging my head on the table) is the lack of clarity and specificity. Can you not just say, clearly and in a list of objective and measurable terms, what it is you need and what you want?
   A.: The issue can be clarified and can generate particular proposals besides the one that should be pretty clear--isn't it?--that President Richmond should step down. I can explain any of those last six words. This question really is frequent, if one allows for variations in wording. I've been trying, in answers to faculty, to become more plain-spoken and to make clear that, yes, the issue is not just about President Richmond, that we are not blaming the President for the worldwide economic collapse or the California budget debacle or the precariousness of democracy as a contemporary institution. Some faculty are adamant about removing the issues from purely personal terms--the debates among faculty about being respectful vs. being rude, being strong vs. enabling abuse through politeness have helped to clarify that the current issues are about structures as well as people. I've gotten some positive feedback for a couple of my responses--one lecturer commented, "Generally, I like . . . the shift from burning RR in effigy to talking about what we really want and working to get it, RR or no RR. I know you've been doing this all along, but rhetoric around RR has obfuscated this goal at times. This, too, should draw in those faculty who may still be standing on fringes due to mixed feelings about RR or mixed feelings about the campaign to unseat him, regardless of their feelings for him." I owe John Meyer and Betsy Watson (though they shouldn't be blamed for how this gets put) for pressing for more clarity and for thinking about tactics rather than persons. That was hard for me to do--there are just too many grounded people in the world--and so it's too wordy. Here are pieces of those letters:
                John Meyer and Betsy Watson had both asked me, I think prompted by thinking about tactical issues, to be more precise regarding what faculty need. They may both be recommending that we fix/fixate less on the figure of the President, less on getting him to leave, and more on specific structural changes that will last regardless of whether he stays or goes. I'll mention here that John Tarjan (Chair of the statewide CSU academic senate, whom I called for advice about approaching Chancellor Reed) commented over the phone that an insistence to the Chancellor that the President leave immediately will be counterproductive even though there is a good chance that a more patient and long-term set of goals may succeed (I took him to be holding out hope for change).
                 I confess to being torn regarding these issues. The things I tend to insist on are less well-defined, less measurable, but I do insist that they are more crucial to the kind of University we have had and that their absence is our main threat. How do you set up a structure that automatically wonders what the faculty interests are (and what the student interests are without using those as rationalizations for pet programs) regarding issues of cancelling classes, prioritizing programs across major divisional lines (i.e. deciding what to keep under different vice-presidents), preserving a diverse set of programs, insistence on lots of writing and discussion both in majors and in GE, instilling ambition and ability to tackle urgent global and social issues, . . . ?? I fall back these days on the talk about vision, partly because the problem seems to be macular degeneration.
                 Let me try again. I'm a philosopher--what would I know about being specific??
                 The Expanded University Executive Committee, which met for a while after the Keeling Report with Ken Ayoob as the facilitator, was shockingly different from the old standard vanilla University Executive Committee, in that it was participatory, interesting, included disagreements, made decisions, and included a strong faculty voice by virtue of including the Senate Executive Committee. Also, giving the University Budget Committee decision-making power and giving it the power to raise issues might be a step toward (shared? forget that) better governance, and reconstituting the University Executive Committee so that it has decision-making powers and works only or primarily on action items instead of sitting through butt-numbing informational presentations (not that they are not fascinating, fascinating) that could have been distributed in writing--now there's a pair of proposals. I think that the Provost's unsuccessful attempt to reform the Provost's Council to get it to waste less time on information items and meet less often (well, it was successful to some extent) may have been with these same goals, but it has not yet been saved from being restricted in scope to Academic Affairs even though officially the Provost is not only the VP of Academic Affairs but is, as Keeling and Hirsh recommended, also and separately the chief operating officer of the University. The chain of command needs tweaking still, with the other VP's reporting to the Provost in fact as well as in name. As it is, I'm not sure we have a governance structure at all, much less one that uses our resources--instead we have people defending turfs and maligning each other.
   
                 But I still think vision is where the action is. I have come to think that administration complaints about faculty fractiousness and factions is a hoax, and the talk about achieving a shared vision is code for dragging the faculty into endorsing the administration's vision. I said before, though maybe I'd revise it some now, that in fact we've already achieved a shared vision and that it really is central to HSU's faculty and students and is embodied in our traditions. The problem is that the official vision statement is a camel, designed by committee thinking about PR, and has little power and not enough substance.
                 . . . Take the talk about achieving a shared vision. (Sorry to repeat.) WASC and Keeling and our subsequent processes are spilling inkwells right and left on this. It's unnecessary. Look around. We already share a vision. The vision is what sold me on taking a job here. Here's the vision: we see an ambitious university; we see fanaticism about good teaching; we see a diversity of programs with a scattering who are nationally ranked; we see the need to combat abuses of power and other injustices; we see ourselves preparing students not as cogs but as agents of change in the face of urgent world-wide issues. Frustrated faculty repeat this vision, often after hours of meeting about outcomes assessment. Do administrators repeat this vision? They do not. They don't because it's not theirs. They have a vision that features capital letters, of Value Added Education, Assessment of Outcomes, approval from management theorists (TQM and others), facing the Hard Facts of life, learning to Live Within Our Means. Is this pathetic or what? Crucially, this is a passive vision, constructed somewhere else and separate from HSU's traditions and faculty. HSU's traditions and faculty are activist, which is not the same as quarrelsome even if it leads to quarrels. Were the administration to share HSU's vision, the dreadful abandonment of higher ed in California could at least be resisted here."
                 Somewhere in the couch cushions there's an earlier and probably more respectable articulation of HSU's vision. I thought it was in a GenFac Pres report, and am dismayed to find it's not. It may be delusions of grandeur, but I plan to include something like this in a letter to faculty soon.
                 However. Back to John and Betsy (and others). The problem remains, the tension between philosophical listening to the music of the spheres and vision or visions on the one hand and what specific measures we can take or what specifically we need on the other. It's not clear that wearing black ribbons or participating in a boycott, even if it does lead to President Richmond going away, will help empower the faculty or rehabilitate our ability to nurture ambitious students for taking on urgent global and environmental issues. (I do think that making visible the extent to which we share common causes is important, especially in these grey and red-inked times. And I'm convinced that any success will have a tremendous positive effect on morale which will last even through our upcoming decisions about which programs should sacrifice arms and legs.)
                 I suggest the following as proposals. 1. We propose and work to turn the University Executive Committee into an activist and decision-making committee, with only action items on the agenda and with a formidable faculty component among the members. 2. Ditto the University Budget Committee. 3. Alter the Provost's Council by including representatives of the other VP-level divisions, give it decision-making powers and veto powers over the existence of programs, and include on it the officers of the Senate. 4. Announce and clarify the organizational structure to include the alleged reporting lines to the Provost.
                 This was hasty, and surely needs revision. I don't know where to plug in the Cabinet for Institutional Change, but it probably should have more time and have more decision-making power too.
                 There needs to be something about rewarding wise leaders willing to participate, especially faculty leaders. We are reducing release time because we are desperate for that money, and because it is rife with inequities, even though equity arguments and the need for cultivating new leaders could argue for more rather than less. The Senate should put this on our agenda, and decisions about what is appropriate release time need to be policy rather than results of negotiation each year with the Provost.