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Freedom"},{"term":"Management"},{"term":"Austerity"},{"term":"Inequality"},{"term":"Jerry Brown"},{"term":"Online Education"},{"term":"Privatization"},{"term":"Employee Benefits"},{"term":"UC Berkeley"},{"term":"Janet Napolitano"},{"term":"Shared Governance"},{"term":"Campus Safety"},{"term":"Income"},{"term":"Research"},{"term":"Academic Senate"},{"term":"Cal State"},{"term":"Tuition Hikes"},{"term":"archives"},{"term":"Affordability"},{"term":"Contingent Faculty"},{"term":"Future University"},{"term":"Quality"},{"term":"Humanities"},{"term":"UC Santa Barbara"},{"term":"Race"},{"term":"UCOF"},{"term":"Administrative Overreach"},{"term":"Development"},{"term":"International"},{"term":"Mark Yudof"},{"term":"Pension"},{"term":"Unions"},{"term":"UC Care"},{"term":"UC Davis"},{"term":"public goods"},{"term":"Transparency"},{"term":"Liberal Arts"},{"term":"Covid-19"},{"term":"Events"},{"term":"Financial Aid"},{"term":"Community College"},{"term":"Furlough"},{"term":"UC Riverside"},{"term":"Graduates"},{"term":"Policing"},{"term":"STEM"},{"term":"Tenure"},{"term":"democratic university"},{"term":"For-Profit"},{"term":"University of Wisconsin System"},{"term":"Discrimination"},{"term":"Diversity"},{"term":"Economy"},{"term":"Steven Salaita"},{"term":"Teaching"},{"term":"UC Los Angeles"},{"term":"Athletics"},{"term":"Corruption"},{"term":"Critical University Studies"},{"term":"Neoliberalism"},{"term":"Religion \u0026 Culture"},{"term":"UCLA"},{"term":"Graduate Student Conditions"},{"term":"UC Irvine"},{"term":"UCPD"},{"term":"UCSC"},{"term":"health care"},{"term":"Academic everything"},{"term":"Grad Student Strike"},{"term":"Isla Vista Shootings"},{"term":"Linda Katehi"},{"term":"Philanthropy"},{"term":"Structural Racism"},{"term":"Student Debt"},{"term":"UCSB"},{"term":"Academic Boycotts"},{"term":"Admissions"},{"term":"Biden"},{"term":"British Universities"},{"term":"Budget Cuts"},{"term":"Closures"},{"term":"Democrats"},{"term":"K-12"},{"term":"Margaret Spellings"},{"term":"Munger Hall"},{"term":"Newsom"},{"term":"Presidential search"},{"term":"Quantification"},{"term":"Sexual Harassment"},{"term":"UC Health"},{"term":"Workforce"},{"term":"anti-racist pedagogy"},{"term":"higher education policy"},{"term":"reparations"},{"term":"2020 Election"},{"term":"ACCJC vs. CCSF"},{"term":"Cooper Union"},{"term":"Covid-19 Cuts"},{"term":"Cuts \u0026 Cuts"},{"term":"Debt-Free College"},{"term":"Fake Knoweldge"},{"term":"Fake Knowledge"},{"term":"FutherCuts"},{"term":"Gender"},{"term":"LGBTQ"},{"term":"Metrics"},{"term":"More Cuts"},{"term":"Nonpecuniary effects"},{"term":"November 2009"},{"term":"President Drake"},{"term":"State Audit"},{"term":"UC Merced"},{"term":"UCSF"},{"term":"USC"},{"term":"University of Missouri"},{"term":"Vegara vs. California"},{"term":"abolition"},{"term":"abortion"},{"term":"carbon offsets"},{"term":"climate crisis"},{"term":"climate policy"},{"term":"human capital theory"},{"term":"opinion survey"},{"term":"public support"},{"term":"review of The Great Mistake"},{"term":"slavery"},{"term":"stimulus"},{"term":"value of a college degree"},{"term":"white nationalism"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Remaking the University"},"subtitle":{"type":"html","$t":"A blog on higher education and related issues."},"link":[{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/posts\/default"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/-\/Management?alt=json-in-script\u0026max-results=10"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Management"},{"rel":"hub","href":"http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/"},{"rel":"next","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/-\/Management\/-\/Management?alt=json-in-script\u0026start-index=11\u0026max-results=10"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"generator":{"version":"7.00","uri":"http://www.blogger.com","$t":"Blogger"},"openSearch$totalResults":{"$t":"45"},"openSearch$startIndex":{"$t":"1"},"openSearch$itemsPerPage":{"$t":"10"},"entry":[{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-1128290734190457803"},"published":{"$t":"2019-09-29T17:11:00.004-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2019-09-29T17:11:35.363-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Academic Senate"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Admin Responses"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Janet Napolitano"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Shared Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Regents"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"A Systemwide Process for Presidential Searching"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-vsWw36gvQU4\/XZDn7SDa8jI\/AAAAAAAAECY\/toObuf9FZBwfi_XkhXI_UN6nFFORY5eugCNcBGAsYHQ\/s1600\/StudentAssembledAfrikanBlackCoalitionUCLA2015.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"435\" data-original-width=\"640\" height=\"217\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-vsWw36gvQU4\/XZDn7SDa8jI\/AAAAAAAAECY\/toObuf9FZBwfi_XkhXI_UN6nFFORY5eugCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/StudentAssembledAfrikanBlackCoalitionUCLA2015.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\nAfter UC president Janet Napolitano announced her resignation, effective August 2020, the prospect of searching awoke a quotient of dread. \"The Regents will pick,\" one Senate elder told me.\u0026nbsp; \"They won't listen to us. They don't care what we think.\"\u0026nbsp; The idea here is that a small group of uber-regents will pop out another person whose remoteness from educational functions and faculty they will deem a virtue.\u0026nbsp; This has become a national trend: secretive searches that look for a chief executive who will preside over the university rather than develop it from within, and reflect the interests of the governing board ahead of those of the university's multiple constituencies.\u0026nbsp; Examples include presidential searches in \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.postandcourier.com\/opinion\/commentary\/commentary-usc-faculty-students-fight-for-university\/article_45bf00b6-a7f2-11e9-bcf2-b34831c9d865.html\"\u003ESouth Carolina\u003C\/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2019\/05\/02\/mark-kennedy-university-colorado-cu-president\/\"\u003EColorado\u003C\/a\u003E this past spring.\u0026nbsp; The conflict is also present at UC (see \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2015\/11\/the-weak-vs-wrong-and-emerging.html\"\u003Ethis post \u003C\/a\u003Efor national as well as local background).\u0026nbsp; \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nBut the UC Regents do have a formal search process.\u0026nbsp; Called \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/governance\/policies\/7101.html\"\u003ERegents Policy 7101, \u003C\/a\u003Eit requires a number of steps.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe first is that the Board Chair forms a Special Committee comprised of six Regents and other \u003Ci\u003Eex officio\u003C\/i\u003E members (paragraph 1).\u0026nbsp; The membership of the new Special Committee is \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/about\/pres-search.html\"\u003Eposted here.\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe Chair of the Special Committee then \"consults with the full Board of Regents at the beginning of the search for the purpose of reviewing the relevancy of the criteria to be considered and approved by the Board of Regents and discussing potential candidates (paragraph 4). During the search, \"all Regents will be invited to all meetings with all constituencies.\"\u0026nbsp; The Regents then make the final appointment, although Policy 7101 does not specify whether the full Board votes or how that vote proceeds.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe important features here are (1) the Board retains exclusive decision rights over the selection of the president and (2) every member of the Board has equal access to the meetings that constitute the search.\u0026nbsp; The Policy protects the rights of regents whom the Chair does not appoint to the Special Committee--the process is not to be controlled by the Board Chair's Special Committee or a small group of allied Regents--and affirms the Board's sovereignty over the search. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nBut there is also (3): in between the beginning and the end of the Policy comes a potentially huge and dynamic systemwide consultation process conjured in luxuriant description.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nB. The Chair of the Special Committee will invite the Academic Council to appoint an Academic Advisory Committee, composed of not more than thirteen members, including the Chair of the Academic Council and at least one representative of each of the ten campuses, to assist the Special Committee in screening candidates.\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nC. The Special Committee will consult broadly with constituent groups of the University, including the Academic Advisory Committee appointed by the Academic Council, Chancellors, Laboratory Directors, Vice Presidents, students, staff, and alumni. To facilitate consultation, there shall be appointed advisory committees, each with no more than twelve members, of students, staff, and alumni. The student advisory committee shall be appointed by the Presidents of the graduate and undergraduate student associations and shall include at least one student from each campus. The staff advisory committee shall be appointed by the Chair of the Council of UC Staff Assemblies and shall include at least one staff member from each campus. The alumni advisory committee shall be appointed by the President of the Alumni Associations of the University of California and shall include at least one alumna or alumnus from each campus. Such consultation will be for the purpose of (1) reviewing the relevancy of the criteria approved by the Board of Regents and (2) presenting the nominee or nominees to members of the groups at the conclusion of the search.\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nIn classic UC style, the executive decision making body has parallel advisory groups that allows the appearance of consultation but which it can also ignore.\u0026nbsp; Hence the pessimism of some Senate elders. On the other hand, the advisory committees have a power of self-constitution and also activity.\u0026nbsp; The only stated rule is a cap on the number of members. The named advisory committees are:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003EAcademic Advisory Committee \u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003EStudent Advisory Committee\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003EStaff Advisory Committee\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003EAlumni Advisory Committee\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003C\/ul\u003E\nThe Policy puts no limitations on the activities of the committees.\u0026nbsp; How do these Advisory Committees (ACs) actually influence the Special Committee and the overall Board? \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe standard theory is \u003Ci\u003Eprestige\u003C\/i\u003E: find the most prominent or trusted insider from each campus and create what management theorist Clayton Christensen likes to call a \"heavyweight team.\"\u0026nbsp; In the case of the Academic Advisory Committee (AcAC), prestige theory assumes that the regents recognize academic (or senate service-based) prestige and would honor it by adapting their views.\u0026nbsp; Each heavyweight would be recognized as speaking authoritatively for the (leadership of the) particular campus.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nHere's the problem: I know of no evidence that the last three presidential searches have worked this way; the evidence I do have suggests the opposite.\u0026nbsp; Business culture does not respect academic culture, the class gaps between professors and most regents are too wide, and the key feature of Christensen's heavyweights--decision rights--is stripped from the ACs.\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIf this isn't enough to undermine AC leverage, there's also the structural weakness of the committee.\u0026nbsp; With the AcAC, each campus gets one person to represent its ladder faculty; this committee has a maximum of 13 people for a systemwide ladder faculty of over 11,000 (\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu\/2018\/documents\/pdfs\/Accountability_2018_web.pdf\"\u003Epdf p 94\u003C\/a\u003E).\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; This faculty is divided among 10 campuses, between campuses and medical centers, across all the disciplines, which have diverse needs, and across racial groups, which also have diverse needs.\u0026nbsp; The idea of one person representing hundreds or thousands of their colleagues makes no epistemological (or political) sense.\u0026nbsp; It is also a recipe for an incoherent voice coming out of the AcAC, which Senate handpicking of membership can ease only at the price of lost diversity of views. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nBut the UC advisory committees \u003Ci\u003Ecould\u003C\/i\u003E affect the presidential search, by using their committees to prompt campus discussions about the presidential search in the context of the immediate future of UC.\u0026nbsp; All of the Advisory Committees could set up a series of events in which they talk with their constituents on each of 10 campuses.\u0026nbsp; They listen to hopes and fears, gather ideas about leadership needs, hash them over, and then transmit the resulting comments, recommendations, or demands to the Special Committee.\u0026nbsp; One faculty member suggested a \"UC Day\" in which town halls happen across the UC system at the same time. The ACs would have to identify a deadline that would fall before the Special Committee's long-listing and short-listing of candidates such that it (and the Board overall) could fully consider the input.\u0026nbsp; Each committee could do its work in about 6 weeks--2 campus visits a week (if not all done at once), plus a week to debate, formulate, and forward recommendations.\u0026nbsp; The scope of the issue is limited and the reports should be short.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nAnother benefit of using the ACs as a public fulcrum: town halls and other public events would be newsworthy.\u0026nbsp; Whatever they think of professors, unions, and students, governing boards do care about institutional reputation, media coverage, and what they hear back from VIPs as a result of that.\u0026nbsp; They also care about the public debates and collective movements that shape public opinion and apply political pressure.\u0026nbsp; A recent example is the issue of food insecurity and student homelessness.\u0026nbsp; For years, the Board were told UC financial aid took care of low-income students and they took no action to mitigate student poverty.\u0026nbsp; Then, sometime after Bernie Sanders put free college on the political map in late 2015, the media started covering student hunger and homelessness.\u0026nbsp; The UC Regents responded by forming a Special Committee on Basic Needs in late 2018.\u0026nbsp; The actual results have a long way to go, but the point is that governing boards do respond to public discourse, eventually, academic discourses included.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn short, though UC governance has a top-down 19th century structure, the Regents are most likely listen to faculty, students, alums, and staff under three conditions: their Advisory Committees (A) represent a real constituency brought together by a consultation process that (B) speaks publicly about its views of the University in a way that (C) publicly (re)frames the University's needs for its next president.\u0026nbsp; The idea is to create an interest, a buzz, an excitement, a university-wide discussion over what we do and don't need, and, more importantly, to construct a constituency which then builds discourses that have an institutional and political existence.\u0026nbsp; There are no guarantees, but the wager is that the state's media would cover a process in which a university system holds a discussion about its current goals and consequent leadership needs on all ten campuses. \u0026nbsp; The process would upgrade the level of public discussion about California higher ed both inside and outside the University.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThis process would also help locate potential presidents with one vital skill, which is gathering exactly this kind of information from their own institutional grassroots.\u0026nbsp; This might seem irrelevant to the president's main job of political lobbying, but it is not. Recent history shows that a president without deep knowledge of the university's daily life simply cannot make the statewide case for the University's public benefit and fiscal needs.\u0026nbsp; UC's advisory committees could set an example of the creation of this kind of profound, inspiring knowledge that the University needs in its next president.\u0026nbsp; \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nI do hope the current Academic Senate leadership, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/senate.universityofcalifornia.edu\/about\/chair-bio.html\"\u003EChair Kum-Kum Bhavnan\u003C\/a\u003Ei and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/senate.universityofcalifornia.edu\/about\/vice-chair-bio.html\"\u003EVice Chair Mary Gauvain\u003C\/a\u003E, rapidly set up a systemwide faculty fact-finding and deliberative process via the Academic Advisory Committee, details TBD. UC needs a new president with deep understanding of the University's issues, people, and potential, and the ability to learn directly from them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/dailybruin.com\/2015\/12\/18\/uc-divests-from-private-prisons-in-response-to-student-protest\/\"\u003EPhoto credit\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/1128290734190457803\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2019\/09\/a-systemwide-process-for-presidential.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1128290734190457803"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1128290734190457803"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2019\/09\/a-systemwide-process-for-presidential.html","title":"A Systemwide Process for Presidential Searching"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-vsWw36gvQU4\/XZDn7SDa8jI\/AAAAAAAAECY\/toObuf9FZBwfi_XkhXI_UN6nFFORY5eugCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/StudentAssembledAfrikanBlackCoalitionUCLA2015.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-1922007870353633134"},"published":{"$t":"2019-09-07T06:44:00.005-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2020-07-05T14:45:48.947-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Metrics"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Research"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"When the Metrical Tail Wags the University Dog"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-VneGaxbycO0\/XXKP6KIMQXI\/AAAAAAAAEAY\/YykyAnM1hnEf34-wXK5lmXfeMJgCNNnZgCLcBGAs\/s1600\/westworld-0f612e-11x1.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"541\" data-original-width=\"1280\" height=\"135\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-VneGaxbycO0\/XXKP6KIMQXI\/AAAAAAAAEAY\/YykyAnM1hnEf34-wXK5lmXfeMJgCNNnZgCLcBGAs\/s320\/westworld-0f612e-11x1.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\nThe rule of infrastructure is that no one thinks about it until it breaks.\u0026nbsp; This week, I was at the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.issi2019.org\/programme\"\u003Eannual conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics\u003C\/a\u003E when I bumped into an example of how the massive flow of bibliometric data can suddenly erupt into the middle of a university's life.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWashington University in St. Louis (WashU) has a new chancellor.\u0026nbsp; He hired a consulting firm to interview and survey the university community about its hopes, priorities, views of WashU's culture, and desired cuts.\u0026nbsp; The firm found a combination of hope and \"restlessness,\" which the report summarized like this: members of the WashU community\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nwant to see a unifying theme and shared priorities among the various units of the university. Naturally, stakeholders want to see WashU rise in global rankings and increase its prestige, but they want to see the institution accomplish this in a way that is distinctively WashU. They are passionate about WashU claiming its own niche. Striving to be “the Ivy of the Midwest” is not inspiring and lacks creativity. Students feel the university is hesitant to do things until peer institutions make similar moves. \u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\"As always, the university needs to become more unique and yet more unified, and to stop following others while better following the rankings.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe report might have gone on to overcome these tensions by organizing its data into a set of proposals for novel research and teaching areas.\u0026nbsp; Maybe someone in the medical school suggested a cross-departmental initiative on \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/pediatrics.aappublications.org\/content\/144\/2\/e20191765\"\u003Eracism as a socially-transmitted disease\u003C\/a\u003E. Maybe the chairs of the Departments of Economics and of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies mentioned teaming up to reinvent public housing with the goal of \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Race-Profit-Industry-Undermined-Homeownership\/dp\/1469653664\/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=Race+for+Profit%3A+Black+Homeownership+and+the+End+of+the+Urban+Crisis\u0026amp;qid=1567760945\u0026amp;s=gateway\u0026amp;sr=8-1-fkmr0\"\u003Efreeing quality of life from asset ownership\u003C\/a\u003E.\u0026nbsp; These kinds of ideas regularly occur on university campuses, but are rarely funded.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nNew proposals is not what the report has to offer. It generates lists of the broad subject areas that every university is also pursuing (pp 4-5). It embeds them in this finding:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nThe other bold call to action that emerged from a subset of interviewees is internally focused. This subset tended to include new faculty and staff . . . and Medical School faculty and senior staff (who perceive their [medical] campus enforces notably higher productivity standards). These interviewees are alarmed at what they perceive as the pervading culture among faculty on the Danforth Campus [the main university]. They hope the new administration has the courage to tackle faculty productivity and accountability. They are frustrated by perceived deficiencies in research productivity, scholarship expectations and teaching quality. A frequently cited statistic was the sub-100 ranking of WashU research funding if the Medical School is excluded. Those frustrated with the Danforth faculty feel department chairs don’t hold their faculty accountable. There is too much “complacency” and acceptance of “mediocrity.” “There is not a culture of excellence.” . . . Interviewees recognize that rooting out this issue will be controversial and fraught with risk. However, they believe it stands as the primary obstacle to elevating the Danforth Campus –and the university as a whole –to elite status.\u0026nbsp; \u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nAbstracting key elements gets this story: One group has a pre-existing negative belief about another group.\u0026nbsp; They think the other group is inferior to them. They also believe that they are damaged by the other's inferiority.\u0026nbsp; They offer a single piece of evidence to justify this sense of superiority. They also say the other group's leaders are solely responsible for the problem.\u0026nbsp; They have theory of why: chairs apply insufficient discipline. They attribute the group's alleged inferiority to every member of that group.\u0026nbsp; \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nStripped down like this, this part of the report is boilerplate bigotry.\u0026nbsp; Every intergroup hostility offers some self-evident \"proof\" of its validity.\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003E \u003C\/i\u003EIn academia's current metrics culture, the numerical quality of an indicator supposedly cleanses it of prejudice.\u0026nbsp; Lower research expenditures is just a fact, like the numbers of wins and losses that create innocent rankings like baseball standings.\u0026nbsp; So, in our culture, the med school can look down on the Danforth Campus with impunity because it has an apparently objective number--relative quantities of research funding.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn reality, this is a junk metric.\u0026nbsp; I'll count some of the ways:\u003Ci\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ci\u003Ethe belief precedes the indicator\u003C\/i\u003E, which is cherry-picked from what would be a massive set of possible indicators that inevitably tells a complicated story.\u0026nbsp; (A better consultant would have conducted actual institutional research, and would never have let surveyed opinions float free of a meaningful empirical base.)\u003Ci\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ci\u003Ethe indicator is bound to Theory X, \u003C\/i\u003Ethe \u003Ci\u003Ea priori\u003C\/i\u003E view that even advanced professionals “need to be coerced,\ncontrolled, directed, and threatened with punishment to get them to put forward\nadequate effort\u003Ci\u003E\" (\u003C\/i\u003Ewe've discussed Theory X vs. Theory Y \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2012\/06\/quality-public-higher-ed-from-udacity.html\"\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2014\/06\/christensens-disruptive-innovation.html\"\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E).\u003Ci\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ci\u003Equantity is equated with quality.\u003C\/i\u003E This doesn't work--unless there's a sophisticated hermeneutical project thatt goes with it.\u0026nbsp; It doesn't work with citation counts (which assume the best article is the one with the most citations from the most cited journals), and its use has been widely critiqued in the scientometric literature (just \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1002\/asi.21228\"\u003Eone example\u003C\/a\u003E). Quantity-is-quality really doesn't work with money, when you equate the best fields with the most expensive ones.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ci\u003Ethe metric is caused by a feature of the environment rather than solely by the source under study\u003C\/i\u003E. The life sciences get about \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/nsf.gov\/statistics\/2018\/nsb20181\/report\/sections\/academic-research-and-development\/expenditures-and-funding-for-academic-r-d\"\u003E57 percent of all federal research funding\u003C\/a\u003E,\n and the lion's share of that runs through NIH rather than NSF, meaning \nthrough health sciences more than academic biology. Thus \u003Ci\u003Eevery\u003C\/i\u003E university with a medical school gets the bulk of its R\u0026amp;D funding through that medical school; \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/ncsesdata.nsf.gov\/profiles\/site?method=rankingBySource\u0026amp;ds=herd\"\u003Enote medical campuses dominating R\u0026amp;D expenditure rankings\u003C\/a\u003E,\n and see STEM powerhouse UC Berkeley place behind the University of \nTexas's cancer center. (Hangdog WashU is basically tied with Berkeley.)\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ci\u003Ethe report arbitrarily assumes only one of multiple interpretations of the metric. \u003C\/i\u003EAn alternative interpretation here is (1) the data were not disaggregated to compare similar departments only, rather than comparing the apple of a medical school to the orange of a general campus (with departments of music, art history, political science, etc.)\u0026nbsp; Another is (2) the funding gap reflects the broader mission of arts and sciences departments, in which faculty are paid to spend most of their time on teaching, advising, and mentoring.\u0026nbsp; Another is (3) the funding gap reflects the absurd underfunding of most non-medical research, from environmental science to sociology.\u0026nbsp; That's just three of many.\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\n\u003C\/ul\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ci\u003Ethe metric divides people or groups by replacing relationships with a hierarchy.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\nThis last one is a subtle but pervasive effect that we don't understand very well.\u0026nbsp; Rankings make the majority of a group feel badly that they are not at the top. How much damage does this do to research, if we reject Theory X and see research as a cooperative endeavor depending on circuits of intelligence?\u0026nbsp; Professions depend on a sense of complementarity among different types of people and expertise--she's really good running the regressions, he's really good with specifications of appropriate theory, etc. The process of \"ordinalizing\" difference, as the sociologist Marion Fourcade puts it, discredits or demotes one of the parties and can this spoil professional interaction.\u0026nbsp; Difference becomes inferiority.\u0026nbsp; In other words, when used like this, metrics weaken professional ties in an attempt to manage efficiency.\u003C\/ul\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nSo if Washington University takes these med school claims literally as fact, and doesn't scramble to see them as expressions of a cultural divide that must be fixed, the faulty metric just killed their planning process.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nLet's take a step back from WashU.\u0026nbsp; The passage I've cited does in fact violate core principles of\u0026nbsp; professional bibliometricists. They reject these kinds of \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.mathunion.org\/fileadmin\/IMU\/Report\/CitationStatistics.pdf\"\u003E\"simple, objective\" numbers\u003C\/a\u003E and their use them as a case-closed argument.\u0026nbsp; Recent statements of principle all demand that numbers be used only in the context of qualitative professional judgment: see\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/sfdora.org\/read\/\" style=\"-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: purple; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003EDORA\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003E,\u003Cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/responsiblemetrics.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/2015_metrictide.pdf\" style=\"-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: purple; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003EMetric Tide\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003E,\u003Cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/polopoly_fs\/1.17351!\/menu\/main\/topColumns\/topLeftColumn\/pdf\/520429a.pdf\" style=\"-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: purple; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003ELeiden\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003E,\u003Cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003E and the draft of the new \u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/wcri2019.org\/uploads\/files\/2019_new\/Hong_Kong_Manifesto_0527.pdf\" style=\"-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: purple; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003EHong Kong\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\"\u003E\u003Cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003E \u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003Emanifesto. It's also wrong that STEM professional organizations are all on board with quantitative research performance managment. Referring to the basic rationale for bibliometrics, \"that citation statistics are inherently more accurate because the substitute simple numbers for complex judgements\"--it was \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.mathunion.org\/fileadmin\/IMU\/Report\/CitationStatistics.pdf\"\u003Ethe International Mathematicians Union that in 2008 called this view \"unfounded\"\u003C\/a\u003E in the course of a sweeping critique of the statistical methods behind Journal Impact Factor, the h-index, and other popular performance indicators. These and others have been widely debated and at least partially discredited, as in this graphic from the Leiden Manifesto:\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nThe Leiden and Hong Kong statements demand that those evaluated be able to \"verify data and analysis.\"\u0026nbsp; This means that use, methods, goals, and results should be reviewable and also rejectable where flaws are found.\u0026nbsp; All bibliometricists insist that metrics not be taken from one discipline and applied to another, since meaningful patterns vary from field to field.\u0026nbsp; Most agree that arts and humanities fields are disserved by them. In the U.S., new expectations for open data and strictly contextualed use were created by the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/nbfc.rutgers.edu\/documents\/report-and-resolution-use-academic-analytics\"\u003ERutgers University faculty review \u003C\/a\u003Eof the then-secret use of Academic Analytics. \u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"\u003E\nThe best practitioners know that the problems with metrics are deep. In a \u003Ci\u003ENature\u003C\/i\u003E article last May,\u0026nbsp; Paul Wouters, one of the authors of the Leiden manifesto, wrote with colleagues,\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nIndicators, once adopted for any type of evaluation, have a tendency to warp practice\u003Csup\u003E\u003Ca data-action=\"anchor-link\" data-track-category=\"references\" data-track-label=\"go to reference\" data-track=\"click\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-019-01643-3?sf215655162=1#ref-CR5\"\u003E5\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/sup\u003E.\n Destructive ‘thinking with indicators’ (that is, choosing research \nquestions that are likely to generate favourable metrics, rather than \nselecting topics for interest and importance) is becoming a driving \nforce of research activities themselves. It discourages work that will \nnot count towards that indicator. Incentives to optimize a single \nindicator can distort how research is planned, executed and communicated. \u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nIn short, indicators founder over Goodheart's Law (\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/conferences.asucollegeoflaw.com\/sciencepublicsphere\/files\/2014\/02\/Strathern1997-2.pdf\"\u003E308\u003C\/a\u003E), which I paraphrase as, \"a measure used as a target is no longer a good measure.\"\u0026nbsp; Thus the Leiden manifesto supports the (indeed interesting and valuable) information contained in numerical indicators while saying they should be subordinated to collective practices of judgment. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/ul\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003EGiven widespread reform efforts, including his own, why, in May, did Wouters lead-author a call in \u003Ci\u003ENature\u003C\/i\u003E to\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-019-01643-3?sf215655162=1\"\u003E fix bad journal metrics with still more metrics\u003C\/a\u003E, this time measuring at least five sub-components of every article?\u0026nbsp; Why does Michael Power's dark 1990s prediction in \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0198296037\/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687442\u0026amp;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1\u0026amp;pf_rd_t=201\u0026amp;pf_rd_i=0415233275\u0026amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER\u0026amp;pf_rd_r=0FFQC722DCKQNWT6EHEQ\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThe Audit Society \u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/a\u003Estill hold: \u003Ci\u003Efailed audit creates more audit?\u0026nbsp; \u003C\/i\u003EWhy are comments like those in the WashU report so common, and so powerful in academic policy?  Why is there a large academic market for services like Academic Analytics, which sells ranking dashboards to administrators precisely so they can skip the contextual detail that would make them valid? Why is the WashU use of one junk number so typical, normal, common, invalid, and silencing? What do we do given that we can't criticize one misuse at a time, particularly when there's so much interest in discrediting an opposition with them?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nOne clue emerged in \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1111\/1468-4446.12647\"\u003Ea book I reviewed last year\u003C\/a\u003E, Jerry Z. Mueller's \u003Ci\u003EThe Tyranny of Metrics.\u003C\/i\u003E Mueller is an historian, and an outsider to the evaluation and assessment practices he reviewed.\u0026nbsp; He decided to look at how indicators are used in a range of sectors -- medicine, K-12 education, the corporation, the military, etc.--and to ask whether there's evidence that metrics cause improvements of quality. Mueller generates a list of 11 problems with metrics that most practitioners would agree with.\u0026nbsp; Most importantly, while they emerged when metrics were used for audit and accountability, they were less of a problem when used by professionals within their own communities.\u0026nbsp; Here are a couple of paragraphs from that review:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nMuller’s only causal success story, in which metrics directly improve\n outcomes, is the Geisinger Health System, which uses metrics internally\n for improvement. There ‘the metrics of performance are neither imposed \nnor evaluated from above by administrators devoid of firsthand \nknowledge. They are based on collaboration and peer review’. He quotes \nthe CEO at the time claiming, ‘Our new care pathways were effective \nbecause they were led by physicians, enabled by real‐time data‐based \nfeedback, and primary focused on improving the quality of patient care’ \n(111). At Geisinger, physicians ‘who actually work in the service lines \nthemselves chose which care processes to change’.\n         \n         \n         \u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nIf we extrapolate from this example, it appears that metrics\n causally improve performance only when they are (1) routed through \nprofessional (not managerial) expertise, as (2) applied by people \ndirectly involved in delivering the service, who are (3) guided by \nnonpecuniary motivation (to improve patient benefits rather than receive\n a salary bonus) and (4) possessed of enough autonomy to steer treatment\n with professional judgment.\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nI'd be interested to know how the bibliometrics community would feel about limiting the use of metrics to \u003Ci\u003Einternal\u003C\/i\u003E information about performance with these four conditions.\u0026nbsp; Such a limit would certainly have helped the WashU case, since the metric of research expenditures could be discussed only within a community of common practice, and not applied by one (med school) group to another (Danforth Campus) in demanding accountability.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nAnother historian, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.issi2019.org\/keynote-speakers\"\u003EJohn Carson\u003C\/a\u003E, gave a keynote address at the ISSI conference that discussed the historical relation between quantification and scientific racism, calling for \"epistemic modesty\" in our application of these techniques.\u0026nbsp; I agree.\u0026nbsp; Though I can't discuss it here, I also hope we can confront our atavistic association of quality with ranking, and of brilliance with a small elite.\u0026nbsp; The scale of the problems we face demands it. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn the meantime, don't let someone use a metric you know is junk until it isn't.\n\n\u003C\/ul\u003E\n"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/1922007870353633134\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2019\/09\/when-metrical-tail-wags-university-dog.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1922007870353633134"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1922007870353633134"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2019\/09\/when-metrical-tail-wags-university-dog.html","title":"When the Metrical Tail Wags the University Dog"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-VneGaxbycO0\/XXKP6KIMQXI\/AAAAAAAAEAY\/YykyAnM1hnEf34-wXK5lmXfeMJgCNNnZgCLcBGAs\/s72-c\/westworld-0f612e-11x1.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-2988621873866902825"},"published":{"$t":"2018-06-13T11:01:00.005-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2018-06-13T14:19:56.194-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Admin Responses"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Sexual Harassment"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"USC"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Downfall of USC's President: the Problem of Administrative Epistemology"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-pe_drHUiWnE\/WyFcvGJCOCI\/AAAAAAAADmU\/ZHu--xPgh9UiMTKmULxRBdSUzVOVDV9gACLcBGAs\/s1600\/Nikias%2BCLN_StateOfUSC_2018_web-824x549.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"549\" data-original-width=\"824\" height=\"213\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-pe_drHUiWnE\/WyFcvGJCOCI\/AAAAAAAADmU\/ZHu--xPgh9UiMTKmULxRBdSUzVOVDV9gACLcBGAs\/s320\/Nikias%2BCLN_StateOfUSC_2018_web-824x549.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\nIt's a good time to take stock of renewed scandal at USC. One month into the new round, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.ed.gov\/news\/press-releases\/office-civil-rights-launches-investigation-university-southern-californias-handling-sexual-harassment-claims\"\u003Eannounced\u003C\/a\u003E a \"Title  IX directed, systemic investigation into the \nUniversity of Southern  California’s (USC) handling of reports of sexual\n harassment against former employee Dr. George Tyndall.\" \u0026nbsp; Opportunistic though it may be (see \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-usc-federal-investigation-20180611-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter\"\u003ECatherine Lhamon's comment\u003C\/a\u003E), the new DOE investigation points again to a structural management problem at the University.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nI'm going to bracket the profound gender trouble that propels the kind of abuse at issue and look at the role of an ongoing epistemic crisis in administrative practice.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nOn May 16th, the Los Angeles \u003Ci\u003ETimes\u003C\/i\u003E broke the story of a coverup of an allegedly predatory campus gynecologist, Dr. George Tyndall, with this headline:\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-usc-doctor-misconduct-complaints-20180515-story.html\"\u003E\"A USC doctor was accused of bad behavior with young women for years. \u0026nbsp;The university continued letting him treat students.\"\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp; The investigation dug back decades: \"t\u003Cspan style=\"background-color: white;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003Ehe complaints began in the 1990s, when co-workers alleged he was improperly photographing students' genitals.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\" \"Some of the most \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-usc-doctor-firings-20180518-story.html\"\u003Eserious allegations against Tyndall \u003C\/a\u003Einvolve claims of \ninappropriate remarks about patients' bodies and his use of fingers at \nthe start of pelvic exams.\" \u0026nbsp;The story \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/projects\/la-me-usc-clinic-doctor-patients\/\"\u003Estayed on The Times front page\u003C\/a\u003E most days of the month since, as more details emerged, as 20 former students sued USC, as 400 former patients called a complaint hot line, and as the LAPD opened a criminal investigation. \u0026nbsp;The case has audible echoes of that of\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2018\/01\/24\/580304914\/larry-nassar-sentenced-to-up-to-175-years-in-prison-by-michigan-judge\"\u003Econvicted Michigan State abuser Dr. Larry Nassar.\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp; (Tyndall denies all charges and defends his practice.)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nUSC president C.L Max \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-max-nikias-usc-20180525-story.html\"\u003ENikias lasted ten days\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;after the story broke. \u0026nbsp;He was pushed out in part because his administration, in 2016, had\u0026nbsp;arranged a private payout and retirement for Tyndall instead of a full investigation. \u0026nbsp;The case was concealed in spite of Nikias having\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/hscnews.usc.edu\/nikias-espouses-university-values-inclusion-in-presidential-address\/\"\u003Eaffirmed\u0026nbsp;that\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"background-color: white;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EBringing unacceptable behavior out of the shadows and into the light is the first step in eradicating it. \u0026nbsp;Change is imperative. And we stand united on this front.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nIt's a good principle, but it isn't one Nikias actually followed. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nMy bleak mood about this case reflected first to how little protection such statements have afforded Tyndall's alleged victims over 27 years. \u0026nbsp;I grew up with USC--my father had two SC degrees, and many friends and children of friends have attended, including two generations of women who could have been Tyndall's patients. \u0026nbsp;I was thrilled when USC recommitted to central Los Angeles in the early 1990s and built programs reflecting a commitment to addressing systematically the country's sociocultural condition. Many of the most interesting scholars in the study of culture and society worked there--until they got fed up and left. \u0026nbsp;I know firsthand that USC overflows with intelligence. \u0026nbsp;I feel badly for how the scandal and its non-resolution is affecting thousands of dedicated faculty and staff, particularly the whistleblowers and reformers who had been trying to fix things from the inside.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nBut what needs to be fixed at USC? And who would will be doing the fixing?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe changes so far are preliminaries. \u0026nbsp;The USC Board of Trustees has\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Eremoved an apparent enabler (Max Nikias).\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/local\/lanow\/la-me-ln-caruso-usc-trustees-20180531-story.html\"\u003Echanged board leadership\u003C\/a\u003E (mall magnate Rick Caruso has replaced \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/christopherhelman\/2011\/06\/13\/john-mork-donates-110-million-to-usc-whos-john-mork\/#2d0e04fa6cfa\"\u003Egas magnate John Mork\u003C\/a\u003E, who was close to Nikias).\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Ehired an elite L.A. law firm to conduct an outside investigation (LA.'s O’Melveny \u0026amp; Myers).\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003C\/ul\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\nThese things needed to happen, but they aren't reform. They're housekeeping. The University will also need to\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Ecooperate fully with the LAPD criminal investigation and Department of Education inquiry \u0026nbsp;(and not try to overshadow them with the O'Melveny inquiry).\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Esupport all of the potential victims who may come forward rather than trying to set a cap or limit on victims or worse, try to discredit them.\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003C\/ul\u003E\nThese things seem possible and even likely. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThen there's two other things that aren't yet in the wind. USC will need to\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Echange its administrative culture.\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Erefocus the elite university mission.\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003C\/ul\u003E\nThe last pair of changes are nearly impossible for universities like USC. \u0026nbsp;I'm going to talk about one of these--changing administrative culture.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\n***\u003C\/div\u003E\nThe most interesting commentary has been addressing this issue. \u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-usc-doctor-firings-20180518-story.html\"\u003EOne of the LA Times articles\u003C\/a\u003E suggested that repeated complaints from clinic nurses were not acted on by supervisors, who nonetheless may have passed them up the chain, only to have them ignored higher up--until the Tyndall story went public, when the higher ups chopped off some heads further down.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn a piece called \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2018\/06\/05\/why-do-campus-abuse-cases-keep-falling-through-cracks\"\u003E\"Why do colleges keep failing to prevent abuse,\"\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;the former president of the University of Puget Sound, Susan Resneck Pierce, wrote that presidents must create a wholesale institutional expectation to be informed of inappropriate behavior.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nIn cases where presidents know about misbehavior but don’t act, she said,\n fears of bad publicity often drive inaction. But she noted that in many\n cases, “The cover-up creates more negative publicity than actually \nacting on an original allegation would have done.”\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nPierce thus asks administrators to prefer the truth--no matter how ugly-- to the carefully cultivated image of an enlightened and efficient university that they have devoted their careers to building. \u0026nbsp;The first feature of a better management culture is to define risk management as cultivating the truth rather than concealing it. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nHow would that happen? \u0026nbsp;As USC professor \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/readersreact\/la-ol-le-usc-max-nikias-resign-20180602-story.html\"\u003ETania Modeleski asked\u003C\/a\u003E, \"Will there be any meaningful change as long as powerful men overlook the\n harm done to students and instead privately attempt to shore up the \ncurrent power structure?\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThere is a well-known alternative to management as marketing controlled from the top: open deliberation grounded in shared governance. The prominent USC education professor William Tierney spelled it out (in a\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/la-oe-tierney-usc-tyndall-nikias-future-20180528-story.html\"\u003Epiece that should be read in full)\u003C\/a\u003E:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nPresident Nikias relied on a small circle of confidants and, as his \ntroubles rose, the circle grew smaller. The university's Board of \nTrustees, mostly captains of industry, seemed awed by his fundraising \nability. . . . \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nThe Academic Senate sat passively by as problems unfolded. When The \nTimes uncovered alleged misconduct on the part of medical school dean \nDr. Carmen Puliafito, Nikias declined to accept individual \nresponsibility. He ordered an independent investigation, but the report \nwas provided only to executive committee of the Board of Trustees. The \nAcademic Senate registered no public complaint. . .\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nA dramatic increase in non-tenured professors at USC has made the \nfaculty hesitant to confront the administration, lest their jobs be put \nat risk. The result is fewer checks and balances on the office of \npresident. In 2015, the trustees gave Nikias a $1.5-million bonus. The \nAcademic Senate registered no public protest at such an outlandish \nhandout. . . .\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class=\"card collection-item\" data-type=\"text\"\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class=\" card-content \"\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nThis\n is the tragedy at USC: Instead of cultivating an environment of \nreflection and reasoned debate, the university sprinted toward growth. \nThose of us who disagreed with the president were first ignored and then\n banished. We were viewed as a distraction from the school's goal of \never-greater international prominence. And the trustees and the faculty \nessentially acquiesced.\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nTo\n repair the storm damage at USC, we need a Board of Trustees that \nprovides consistent oversight and does not see itself as the handmaiden \nto the president. We need an Academic Senate that ensures that the \nfaculty is an equal partner in decision-making. We need a president who \ncan set a world record in running a marathon without forgetting what \nwinning the race truly means. And we need the entire academic community \nto recognize how important a climate of thoughtful, reasoned dialogue is\n for our university.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nOf course I agree completely. Universities are by definition the natural homes of an \"environment of reflection and reasoned debate.\" \u0026nbsp;And yet, in practice, they mostly aren't. \u0026nbsp;Senior managers have the power to ignore faculty input, and when it offers ideas they don't like, they often do. \u0026nbsp;This is particularly uncomfortable when the faculty member is right--as Tierney, a nationally renowned expert on higher ed, most likely was.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nMore generally, USC leaders seem in practice not to respect the insight and knowledge of frontline workers. \u0026nbsp;They no doubt do in the abstract, but not when someone higher up has other concerns. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThis disregard included the clinic employees who over decades complained about Tyndall's behavior time and again. \u0026nbsp;I've heard many tenured USC faculty members say the same thing--expertise and experience don't count when they contradict the official ethos. \u0026nbsp;Management there seems to have operated through an epistemic authority that they deny to the rest of the university. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nDecades ago, feminist epistemologists analyzed the way that prevailing professional practices systematically ignored knowledge specific to womens' standpoint and experience, and\/or kept women from having critical mass in discussions, and\/or rejected their cognitive capabilities or practices as not worth taking as seriously as their own. (A good online introduction is \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/feminism-epistemology\/\"\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E; and see \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Epistemic-Injustice-Power-Ethics-Knowing\/dp\/0199570523\/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003EEpistemic Injustice.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E) \u0026nbsp;On its face, a textbook example would be the repeated sidelining of the USC clinic's nurses' concerns about Tyndall's gynecological practice. \u0026nbsp;Critical ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, and other disciplines have made similar arguments: epistemic privilege generates epistemic injustice, which manifests itself as, among other things, epistemic disrespect toward positions that aren't part of the official program. \u0026nbsp;This occurs even where the authority in question expresses personal regard for the individuals who are being ignored. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nEpistemic disrespect nearly cost Nikias his job before, in 2017, in the wake of an investigation captured in The\u0026nbsp;Times\u0026nbsp;July headline,\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-usc-doctor-20170717-htmlstory.html\"\u003E\"\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EAn overdose, a young companion, drug-fueled parties: The secret life of a USC med school dean.\"\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp; In that case, Nikias moved the dean in question, Carmen Puliafito, out of his executive position while hanging on to his services and also not exposing his apparently criminal conduct to donors. \"After he stepped down as dean, USC kept Puliafito on the medical school faculty, and he continues [as of July 2017] to accept new patients at campus eye clinics.\" \u0026nbsp;The Times discovered that Puliafito's colleagues had complained about drunkenness and verbal abuse, but had never gotten any relief.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn that case, Nikias was found to be engaged in active avoidance of the facts. He was aware that the\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003ETimes\u003C\/i\u003E\u0026nbsp;was investigating Puliafito by March 2016, because\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-usc-dean-ethics-20170723-story.html\"\u003Ethe paper repeatedly contacted him about it.\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003E\nIt remains unclear when top USC officials first learned about the allegations involving Puliafito. But The Times made repeated inquiries over the last 15 months about Puliafito, in some cases describing information reporters had gathered about the dean.\u0026nbsp;USC's leaders never responded to the inquiries. Numerous phone calls were not returned, emails went unanswered and a letter seeking an interview with USC President C.L. Max Nikias to discuss Puliafito was returned to The Times by courier, unopened.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\nThe USC president had to be hunted down by the press--several times--before he admitted serious wrongdoing (see a\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-nikias-timeline-20180525-htmlstory.html\"\u003E\"timeline of his troubled tenure\"\u003C\/a\u003E). \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nPuliafito has \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-usc-medical-school-dean-20180605-story.html\"\u003Ebeen back in the news recently\u003C\/a\u003E, trying to hang on to his medical license by blaming his former prostitute-girlfriend for seducing and addicting him. \u0026nbsp;In the process, a \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-usc-medical-school-dean-20180605-story.html\"\u003Eformer vice dean of the medical school testified\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;that he'd informed USC Provost Michael Quick about rumors that \"Puliafito was partying in hotels with people of 'questionable reputation'\" in early 2016.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIt appears that Nikias displayed willful blindness towards Puliafito's conduct and at least condoned a coverup, even as the story was being rooted out with enormous time and effort by reporters. It may emerge that he did the same with Tyndall. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nNikias's conduct is not categorically different from Tyndall's, who--best case scenario--offended even if he did not actually abuse many of his thousands of patients, and who never thought \"oh, this isn't going over well\" and stopped with the sexualized remarks or sexual-seeming manipulations--or was made to stop. \u0026nbsp;The alleged offenses consist of abusing usually very young women in their most vulnerable moment under cover of professional authority and in the name of individual care. \u0026nbsp;This involves a deep negation of consent that, in tandem with the sexualization of medical treatment, compromises the personhood of the victim and of her agency. It \u0026nbsp;is the opposite of what universities stand for. And yet in spite of the longstanding seriousness of staff concerns, senior managers, in The Times' account, acted only when one of the clinic's nurses, who had become impatient with the clinic management's inaction,\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-usc-doctor-firings-20180518-story.html\"\u003E\u0026nbsp;reported Tyndall to the campus rape crisis center\u003C\/a\u003E. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThese appear to be examples of epistemic privilege enabling wrongdoing and a subsequent coverup.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\n***\u003C\/div\u003E\nWe should also recognize that epistemic privilege puts self-governance at risk. Higher education has largely governed itself for a century and a half, partly on the theoretical grounds that professional \u0026nbsp;skills can be developed and monitored only by other professionals. \u0026nbsp;Higher ed has fought off direct federal control of colleges and universities of the type now wreaking havoc in Great Britain, using a self-regulation system of accreditation and related mechanisms. \u0026nbsp;As Heather Steffen reminded our \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/uchri.org\/awardees\/limits-numerical-metrics-humanities-higher-education\/\"\u003Eresearch group \u003C\/a\u003Ethis week, the tradition of self-regulation enabled universities to fend off the effort to apply No Child Left Behind-type learning assessment to colleges in the wake of the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www2.ed.gov\/about\/bdscomm\/list\/hiedfuture\/reports\/pre-pub-report.pdf\"\u003ESpellings Report\u003C\/a\u003E. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nNearly all of us\u0026nbsp;support the general principle, but the self-regulation has actually to take place. \u0026nbsp;At USC it did not. Nikias and Quick had a medical school dean with substance-abuse problems who neither took corrective action himself nor received correction from other administrators. \u0026nbsp;They did not remove (or help) him until exposure forced their hand. \u0026nbsp;The same thing allegedly occurred with Tyndall. \u0026nbsp;In failing to fix their own problems, Nikias et al. not only eroded USC's reputation--they also eroded the justification for academic freedom for all universities, which is the integrity of the self-governance procedures of learned societies.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nFinally, what about the reform potential of Rick Caruso and the USC Board of Trustees? \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWe have some evidence that the Board still lacks interest in shared governance or in Tierney's \"environment of reflection.\" On May 18th, the Times reported that USC had acknowledged receiving 200 complaints about Tyndall going back to the early 2000s. \u0026nbsp; On May 21st, 6 former USC students \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-ln-usc-doctor-lawsuit-20180521-story.html\"\u003Esued the University, \u003C\/a\u003Ealleging that Tyndall had \"sexually victimized them \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/california\/la-me-usc-doctor-firings-20180518-story.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Eunder the pretext of medical care\u003C\/a\u003E and that USC failed to address complaints from clinic staff about the doctor's behavior.\" \u0026nbsp;On May 22nd, the Board of Trustees \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/documents.latimes.com\/read-usc-faculty-letter-demanding-president-nikias-resignation\/\"\u003Ereceived a letter from 200 faculty \u003C\/a\u003Ecalling on Nikias to resign.\u0026nbsp;USC faculty also launched a change.org petition entitled,\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/usc-board-of-trustees-a-call-for-usc-president-nikias-s-resignation\"\u003E \"Remove President Nikias: Protect USC Student Safety.\"\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp; That day, the response of the then-Chair of the USC Board of Trustees was to express\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/alumni.usc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Statement-from-executive-committee_5.22.18.pdf\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\"full confidence in President Nikias’\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003Eleadership, ethics,\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/alumni.usc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Statement-from-executive-committee_5.22.18.pdf\"\u003Eand values.\u003C\/a\u003E\"\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EThe next day, on\u003C\/span\u003E\u0026nbsp;May 23rd, \u0026nbsp;the L.A.\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003ETimes \u003C\/i\u003Ereported that\u003Ci\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-usc-daily-developments-20180523-story.html\"\u003E300 women had called a USC hotline\u003C\/a\u003E with a complaint about their treatment by Dr. Tyndall. \u0026nbsp;The \u003Ci\u003ETimes\u003C\/i\u003E\u0026nbsp;also ran the story they had seen formal complaints about Tyndall dating from 1991 and 1995 (he started work at USC in 1989). \u0026nbsp;On May 25th, as Tyndall defended his practice in a letter to The Times, the paper reported that t\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-usc-doctor-lawsuits-20180525-story.html\"\u003Ehe number of legal filings against USC \u0026nbsp;had risen to 21\u003C\/a\u003E. At a press conference about one of them,\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"background-color: #fefefe; color: #262626;\"\u003E\u0026nbsp;attorney Gloria Allred remarked,\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/05\/25\/us\/usc-president-to-resign\/index.html\"\u003E\"this is only the beginning.\"\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-max-nikias-usc-20180525-story.html\"\u003ENikias's announcement that he would resign\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;came that same day. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn short, the USC Board backed Nikias against the faculty but dumped him 3 days later when they saw potential liability\u0026nbsp;on the scale of Penn State via Sandusky or Michigan State via Nassar.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThis isn't a shocking thing. \u0026nbsp;The actions of Boards of Trustees express truth as grounded in legal authority rather than educational expertise. \u0026nbsp;In this sense, Boards are by definition embodiments of epistemic privilege. \u0026nbsp;USC's Board has fired Nikias, but that may only maintain the epistemological inequality that caused the problem in the first place. If it's all Nikias's fault, then USC leadership can sustain their implicit model of management in which self-governance remains the property of senior officials. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nUnfortunately, the Puliafito and Tyndall cases show that self-governance and top-down governance are at odds \u0026nbsp;Self-governance depends on the intelligence of the entire community, starting with people working with students and patients in the trenches. The kind of decisional oligarchy favored by most universities today guarantees epistemic privilege, and epistemic disrespect, and the inevitable blindness and error.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWilliam Tierney is right to call for real shared governance in a \"climate of thoughtful, reasoned dialogue.\" But that's not going to happen without a sustained battle for the kind of epistemic justice that universities are better at imagining for others than for themselves.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/2988621873866902825\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2018\/06\/downfall-of-uscs-president-problem-of.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/2988621873866902825"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/2988621873866902825"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2018\/06\/downfall-of-uscs-president-problem-of.html","title":"Downfall of USC's President: the Problem of Administrative Epistemology"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-pe_drHUiWnE\/WyFcvGJCOCI\/AAAAAAAADmU\/ZHu--xPgh9UiMTKmULxRBdSUzVOVDV9gACLcBGAs\/s72-c\/Nikias%2BCLN_StateOfUSC_2018_web-824x549.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-1348138561570412009"},"published":{"$t":"2017-03-15T15:36:00.005-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2017-05-01T07:46:54.642-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Funding Model"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Privatization"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Tuition Hikes"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Berkeley"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UCLA"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UCOP"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Does Nonresident Tuition Show that Privatization Works?"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-BqTep-U8gcA\/WMlwDGWTtJI\/AAAAAAAADRY\/EVeXIxBWpqwJPmgEhc7H8gQLCVaYimv_ACLcB\/s1600\/debt%2Bgraduates.jpg\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-BqTep-U8gcA\/WMlwDGWTtJI\/AAAAAAAADRY\/EVeXIxBWpqwJPmgEhc7H8gQLCVaYimv_ACLcB\/s320\/debt%2Bgraduates.jpg\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe most visible item on this week’s University of California Regents agenda has the Board \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/regmeet\/mar17\/b4.pdf\"\u003Econsidering a cap on the enrollment of non resident students\u003C\/a\u003E. It appears towards the end of the second month of a Trump administration that has not dampened enthusiasm for \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/mynewsla.com\/education\/2017\/03\/13\/desperate-college-student-drowning-in-debt-state-may-rescue-you\/\"\u003Edebt-free college\u003C\/a\u003E or \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.reclaimcahighered.org\/48dollars\"\u003Efree college\u003C\/a\u003E but increased it. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDemocrats in California, New York, and elsewhere are proposing debt-free plans and are weighing tuition-free as well (\"\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/politics\/la-pol-sac-debt-free-college-20170313-story.html\"\u003EDegrees Not Debt,\u003C\/a\u003E\" \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.reclaimcahighered.org\/48dollars\"\u003E\"The $48 Fix\")\u003C\/a\u003E. In January, the California \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.lao.ca.gov\/Publications\/Report\/3540\"\u003ELegislative Analyst's Office published a report\u003C\/a\u003E calculating the costs of debt-free college degrees in the state's public systems. When I extended their arithmetic for UC, it showed that UC could be debt-free for less than 10% of its current tuition income. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat would be an amazing thing. It would change what the public thinks universities can do for them. But the UC Regents are talking about a different tuition issue this week.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn California, nonresident (NR) enrollment was a ticking political time bomb that finally went off a year ago, when the State Auditor released a report finding, to quote its title, “The University of California: Its Admissions and Financial Decisions Have Disadvantaged California Resident Students.” The \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/universityofcalifornia.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/Straight-Talk-Report-3-29-16.pdf\"\u003EUCOP rebuttal\u003C\/a\u003E didn’t appease the legislature, which translated the angry denunciations of some members into a \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/politics\/la-pol-sac-essential-politics-state-lawmakers-vote-for-10-c-1464807461-htmlstory.html\"\u003Eproposal that nonresident undergraduates be capped at 10%\u003C\/a\u003E of overall UC undergraduate enrollment. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\n(1)\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003EUC’s response is to propose an overall UC cap at twice that level, or 20% of undergrad enrollment. The proposal grandfathers the three campuses that are now above that cap at their current levels (Berkeley at 24.4%, UCSD and UCLA nearly tied at just under 23%). It lets other campuses grow their NR student enrollment to the point that the overall university level, now 16.5%, reaches 20%. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe advantage for UC is that it can continue to grow overall nonresident supplemental tuition (NRST) revenues (which bring $26,682 in tuition on top of the $13,500 state-resident tuition and campus fees that NR students also pay). The disadvantage for UC is that this flies in the face of legislative desire, which is that NR enrollments stop growing and start getting cut back. Sometime this week, the Regents' proposal was downgraded to a discussion item, so that even this modest proposal will not be up for a vote.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI’m going to focus on aspects of one issue: does NRST actually work as public income replacement? \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENRST is a prime example of privatization, since it partially replaces public funding—state general funds—with high tuition from individual students and their families. Privatization advocates have two main arguments. First, they say they didn’t “replace” public with private funding, since the public funding was already cut and they needed to fill a gap. Second, in the case of NRST, the tuition money comes with low costs, and the benefits are always far greater than these costs. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis year, both UCOP and Senate leaders are also \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-ln-uc-limit-nonresident-students-20170306-story.html\"\u003Estressing the blessings of diversity\u003C\/a\u003E as uniquely offered by NR students. UC may have started privatizing reactively, but now seems to say that private funding is as good or better than public funding, at least in the case of NRST, which is per student $26,682 better than public funding. But is NRST in fact an example of privatization bringing both fun and profit? \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\n(2)\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen I first wrote about it in \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.co.uk\/2009\/09\/can-doubling-out-of-state-students-save.html\"\u003ESeptember 2009\u003C\/a\u003E, I calculated that its financial benefits were overstated: senior officials announced gross income figures that didn’t deduct expenses or real non-monetary costs like the political goodwill required to maintain state funding. I called NRST one of the “nickel solutions” that can get to a 5% (or some other single-digit share) increase in a vulnerable revenue stream but not beyond that. I was using Robert Birgeneau’s plan to do what in fact has happened—ramp up the nonresident share of UC Berkeley’s undergraduate enrollment to about 25% of the total. Then-chancellor Birgeneau projected an increase of tuition revenues to $70 million at 25% NR enrollment. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn response, I estimated the benefit to the UC Berkeley budget had it already achieved a 25% share of NR students: 8% of full instructional expenditures as I calculated them, and 4% of overall campus expenditures. Hence the nickel. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EUCSD professor of marine chemistry Andrew Dickson—and fellow UCPB vet—used a different methodology to \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.co.uk\/2009\/09\/non-resident-tuition-profit-revenues.html\"\u003Ecome up with a similar estimate\u003C\/a\u003E. Both of us emphasized hidden or indirect costs of adding NR students. These included new instructional and student support needs. They included the price of political resentment and backlash from the public and the legislature, which would appear in the concrete budget effect of either cuts or reduced public funding increases over the long term as the University proved once again that it didn’t need so much public money because it had so much private money, including tuition from that semi-infinite supply of international students who were joining a billion-strong global middle class allegedly hungering for an American BA. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis blog's NRST analyses suggested three worrisome features of UC advocacy. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Col\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003EUC calculates the financial benefits as a gross income, not as a net. Indirect and nonmonetary costs (like political goodwill or student work hours) aren’t analyzed publicly.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003EIt denies or deems temporary the anti-public aspects of the move. UC officials were then suggesting that NR enrollment would last only as long as the budget cuts and could be dialed back as soon as possible.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003EWhen someone does put political costs on the agenda, senior officials define them as effectively zero. The same goes for the costs to public funding. I have again recently had a face-to-face experience with a senior UC official who declared the feedback loop from private back to public to be nonexistent. In this view, UC’s continuous and successful efforts to increase private revenues never have and do not now teach politicians that they can cut state funds without hurting the University.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\n\u003C\/ol\u003E\nIn contrast, my research for \u003Ci\u003EThe Great Mistake\u003C\/i\u003E found statements going back to 1970 that inferred legislative obligations from tuition hikes. For me, the question is not \u003Ci\u003Ewhether\u003C\/i\u003E tuition hikes dampen state funding increases but \u003Ci\u003Ehow much\u003C\/i\u003E? How much public money do tuition hikes cost? My answer in 2009 was \u003Ci\u003Emore\u003C\/i\u003E than the 8% of your instructional budget or 4% of your campus budget reaped via expanded NRT. With only 4% annual GF increases and a tuition freeze following deep cuts, the UC system has been losing more than 8% a year compared to its structural needs (e.g., \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/regmeet\/sept11\/f8.pdf\"\u003EDisplays 5 and 6\u003C\/a\u003E; discussion of this \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.co.uk\/2014\/11\/the-new-normal-what-does-it-mean-to.html\"\u003E“New Normal”\u003C\/a\u003E).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat’s happened since? The state cut public funding and still hasn’t built it back. The University raised tuition and then the governor forced a freeze. The University ramped up nonresident enrollment, such that UC now has about 5 times the number of NR students that it had ten years ago. As in any social system, these elements of the funding model are interconnected.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThen, about ten years after the growth began, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.auditor.ca.gov\/reports\/summary\/2015-107\"\u003Ethe State Auditor issued its report\u003C\/a\u003E, and the political blowback began. UCOP responded in three ways. It posted a \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/universityofcalifornia.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/Straight-Talk-Report-3-29-16.pdf\"\u003Erebuttal\u003C\/a\u003E that insisted the University has continued to admit all eligible resident students, rejecting the state’s claim that NR enrollments damaged access. It emphasized the pre-existing plan \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/minutes\/2015\/fin7.pdf\"\u003E(page 8)\u003C\/a\u003E to admit an additional 10,000 resident students, in spite of below-cost per-student funding from the state. And now, the regents will have a discussion of an NR cap that allows further NR growth at the non-flagship campuses up to an overall system total of 20 percent. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\n(3)\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003EYou can see the surface appeal of nonresident tuition from this UCLA \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.senate.ucla.edu\/documents\/Budget101-Revenues.pptx\"\u003Ebudget slide\u003C\/a\u003E, referring to $1.4 billion in core campus revenues in 2015-16. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-3jHxUe4zMwk\/WMldrdgVdZI\/AAAAAAAADRI\/Rh9qq28xEcwHdY4LmUEGnwA-CeWmaax1wCLcB\/s1600\/UCLA%2BRevenues%2B2015-16%2Bon%2B1.4B%2BCore.png\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-3jHxUe4zMwk\/WMldrdgVdZI\/AAAAAAAADRI\/Rh9qq28xEcwHdY4LmUEGnwA-CeWmaax1wCLcB\/s400\/UCLA%2BRevenues%2B2015-16%2Bon%2B1.4B%2BCore.png\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003ENRST was 12% of the campus's core revenues, or over half the total tuition the campus gets from resident tuition. Given limits on the growth of state funding and resident tuition, NRST is no longer a temporary alternative revenue stream but a significant part of the overall budget. At least from the administrative perspective, Premise 2 above--NRST's temporary nature--is moot.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut remember that these are \u003Ci\u003Egross\u003C\/i\u003E revenues. Let's look at NRST \u003Ci\u003Enet\u003C\/i\u003E income, and switch back to Berkeley to compare the 2009 calculations to the actual situation at nearly 25% nonresident enrollment. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike all campuses, UC Berkeley grosses $40,182 per NR undergrad. We subtract gross in-state tuition of $13,500, since the campus would get this anyway with a resident student. (The University normally takes one-third of gross in-state tuition as “return to aid” to support financial aid programs, but NR students also pay this on the in-state tuition \"base.\") UC Berkeley thus receives $26,682 for replacing a resident student with a nonresident student, or for adding a nonresident student rather than adding a resident student.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENext, we subtract a round number of $10,000 for the marginal cost of instruction and related expenses for adding an additional student. These include new additional costs incurred by adding an NR rather than a residential student (a larger international office for visas and other paperwork; language support; academic tutoring; acculturation and integration programs--anyone who things social integration is cheap has never done it!) This reduces the \u003Ci\u003Enet\u003C\/i\u003E yield per nonresident student to $16,682. (In the table in regents’ item B4, page 7, the net is instead $15,862.)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThen, we encounter another subtraction. Undergrads who are residents of California also bring state general funding with them. This is the amount that has been cut so much over the decades--it is down from $19,100 in 1990-91 to $7,160 (in 2016-17 dollars, \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/regmeet\/jan17\/b1.pdf\"\u003EDisplay 3).\u003C\/a\u003E But $7160 is far from zero. In the case when a nonresident student \u003Ci\u003Ereplaces\u003C\/i\u003E a resident student, we subtract $7160. The net after deducting direct costs or losses for this kind of NR student, who replaces a resident, is $9522. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHmm. If we posit that UC Berkeley decided not to add unfunded resident students \u003Ci\u003Eand\u003C\/i\u003E not to overcrowd its facilities, so that all nonresident students replaced a resident they might have taken were the state paying for them, we multiply this figure back by UC Berkeley's \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/opa.berkeley.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/undergradprofile_dec2016.pdf\"\u003E7335 nonresident enrollments\u003C\/a\u003E. In that case, we get a \u003Ci\u003Enet\u003C\/i\u003E NRST for the campus of $69,844,000. This is freakishly close to Robert Birgeneau's 2009 estimate of $70,000,000. More importantly, it is under 10% of the campus's gross tuition revenues. It is just under 4% of the campus's \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/controller.berkeley.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/2014-15_financial.pdf\"\u003E2015 operating revenues. \u003C\/a\u003E In short, NRST remains the nickel solution that it seemed to be in 2009.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA rebuttal to this analysis would object that its premise is wrong: UC Berkeley added resident students as well so NR students didn't simply replace them; the state wasn't paying for many of the resident students so there wasn't that $7160 difference to subtract; or it was paying $5000 instead. I agree that we would get different numbers if we changed the proportion of NR added to NR replacing residents and plugged in the state's shortchanging. There is a range of reasonable estimates of the NRST net. But they wouldn't increase the NRST totals \u003Ci\u003Eenough\u003C\/i\u003E, net of direct monetary cost, to justify making NRST a central and irreplaceable tuition strategy. That's my first conclusion. There's a \u003Ci\u003Eprice\u003C\/i\u003E to the privatization of revenue streams, and it needs to be netted out.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003E\n(4)\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003EDirect financial costs don't exhaust this price. We still haven't touched on the \u003Ci\u003Eindirect\u003C\/i\u003E and non-monetary or intangible costs of the NRST strategy. Some of the indirect costs are monetary. There are costs of competition for nonresident students in the form of new capital projects, better overall student services, better housing, and the like. (I'd refer doubters of these indirect costs to Berkeley's former VC for Administration and Finance John Wilton's \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/berkeley%20must%20%20now%20compete%20for%20its%20three%20most%20important%20revenue%20sources%20%20against%20%20the%20best%20private%20and%20public%20universities%20.\/\"\u003Eanalysis behind his comment\u003C\/a\u003E, \"Berkeley must now compete for its three most important revenue sources against the best private and public universities.\") \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOther indirect costs are costs to academic quality. This is a taboo subject in a University that is now engaged in a permanent campaign to fundraise from everybody, but the problem continues eight years after the crisis. This year, to compensate an angry legislature for NRST, UC enrolled the largest one-year number of new residential students in living memory. Campuses are handling the “surge”--on top of the continued growth of non-residents--with strategies like hiring non tenure track rather than tenure track faculty, growing course sizes, and endorsing short-cuts such as having some undergraduate work be graded by other undergrads. How do we quantify this cost of tuition-suppressed public funding--which may follow our graduates into their working lives--so that state government cares about it? \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere are still other costs I will merely name. One is the public cost to national higher education as states race each other to swap students so they ca triple charge them. The Department of Education should confront this absurd escalation of overall national tuition charges, which drives some share of student debt, though even under Obama it did not. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnother other is the loss of political goodwill. This is hard to put a number on, but \"The $48 Fix\" calculated that UC is at least $3 billion in general funding below where it would be had it simply grown with the state from 2000 on \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net\/reclaimcahighered\/pages\/1666\/attachments\/original\/1486491013\/48dollarfix.pdf?1486491013\"\u003E(Table 1). \u003C\/a\u003E Clearly not all of this gap can be traced to tuition hikes. But the annual state funding shortfall is 5 or 6 times larger than even the gross NRST revenue figure for the system-- to say nothing of the net.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe should do a few things going forward. Faculty should support the Senate's call that \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/minutes\/2017\/board1.pdf\"\u003EUCOP not just give the state an NRST cap (page 8),\u003C\/a\u003E but call on it to buy out the NSRT--and set a wider precedent for restored public support. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe need to recognize that the three premises I mentioned above don't hold. We must see nonresident enrollment through a calculation of its \u003Ci\u003Enet\u003C\/i\u003E revenues that includes its indirect, political, and social costs. This means we must face the fact that when we include the cost to public support of the educational core, privatization is a money loser. This leads to the only viable alternative, a public-good model for the university that supports \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.lao.ca.gov\/Publications\/Report\/3540\"\u003Edebt-free college\u003C\/a\u003E,and a \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.reclaimcahighered.org\/48dollars\"\u003E$48 Fix\u003C\/a\u003E. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe same goes for research as well as teaching. Research funding and graduate education have also been destabilized by the private-revenue model. I'd ask faculty skeptics who think \"multiple revenue streams\" is the only way to keep Berkeley and other UC research on top: Are you better off today than you were 8 years ago, when we started to ramp NRST up?"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/1348138561570412009\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2017\/03\/does-nonresident-tuition-show-that.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1348138561570412009"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1348138561570412009"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2017\/03\/does-nonresident-tuition-show-that.html","title":"Does Nonresident Tuition Show that Privatization Works?"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-BqTep-U8gcA\/WMlwDGWTtJI\/AAAAAAAADRY\/EVeXIxBWpqwJPmgEhc7H8gQLCVaYimv_ACLcB\/s72-c\/debt%2Bgraduates.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-4149792345652319288"},"published":{"$t":"2016-10-04T09:00:00.001-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-10-04T09:00:19.500-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Academic Senate"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Admin Responses"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Shared Governance"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Faculty Principles for Senior Management Hires"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-KToEmExleRg\/V_Ks37cR3CI\/AAAAAAAADLY\/WdzIggYcQ8s75MIXA0mPbkhtUiYWJZgpACLcB\/s1600\/bouncers.gif\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"237\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-KToEmExleRg\/V_Ks37cR3CI\/AAAAAAAADLY\/WdzIggYcQ8s75MIXA0mPbkhtUiYWJZgpACLcB\/s320\/bouncers.gif\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\nAre senior administrators now less likely to involve faculty in major management decision than before? \u0026nbsp;The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) is worried enough to have written \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/cucfa.org\/2016\/09\/principles-for-choosing-chancellors\/\"\u003E\"A Statement of Principles for Choosing New University of California Chancellors\u003C\/a\u003E.\" The statement emerged from agreement among Faculty Association representatives from every campus.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nCUCFA calls on officials to hire only those candidates who \"support the value of public education.\" Everyone says they support this value, so CUCFA says what its members believe its components to be. First comes the recognition that \"efforts at privatization have failed to sustain the University's central mission of education, research, and service for the people of California.\" \u0026nbsp;The statement spells out the elements of post-privatization: focusing on core mission rather than capital projects, serving more resident students rather than more high-tuition students from out-of-state, dialing back administrative growth while capping management salaries, \"opening the budget to meaningful faculty review and input,\" and increasing contact with the surrounding society.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nCUCFA's definition of \"public\" reflects national and international trends that have been slower to develop in California than elsewhere. \u0026nbsp;One is \u003Ci\u003Edeprivatization\u003C\/i\u003E. I first heard this term used to describe current changes in Poland's university system, but deprivatization is implicit in the Free College movement launched in U.S. politics by Bernie Sanders. The premise is that people can analyze the effects of privatization, and, if found negative, can lower tuition rather than raise it, raise public funding rather than lower it, reduce student debt rather than increase it, and expand research cost coverage rather than shrink it. Where there's a will there's a way, and the way here is particularly obvious.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u0026nbsp;A second trend is \u003Ci\u003Epostmanagerialism\u003C\/i\u003E--or so I'll call it here. Large private and public organizations now operate under widespread cynicism about their good will and effectiveness. Decreasing proportions of U.S. residents think corporations are on their side. \u0026nbsp;Something similar is happening to public universities, some of which, like UC and CUNY, have tripped themselves up in a series of scandals that shed doubt on their devotion to public service. \u0026nbsp; You don't have to be familiar with the literature about learning organizations to believe that the low-information professor and the cognitively isolated senior manager each undermine universities. \u0026nbsp;Universities need smarter human systems that we have now, and strong shared governance can help bring that about.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nA third trend the CUCFA statement reflects is the demand for\u003Ci\u003E epistemological diversity\u003C\/i\u003E, driven in large part by academics working in the global South.\u0026nbsp; Societies are both internally diverse and quite different from each other, and need their university research to reflect variable demands--say for non-GMO pest-resistant crops, or for democratic theory that does not assume constitutional unity or a common language.\u0026nbsp; University diversity has, in recent decades, been undermined by audit culture, which norms universities towards \"best practices\" represented by the institutions that dominate global rankings, whose template is Anglo-American.\u0026nbsp; As part of its normal operation, audit introduces quantitative management practices that make collaborative governance seem unnecessary: a manager doesn't need to know her faculty and departments and make complex judgments based in large part on informal knowledge, but just have research output measures, impact factors, and rankings of departments and faculty members.\u0026nbsp; Such metrics make personal interactions seem superfluous, and intellectual diversity unnecessary.\u0026nbsp; Such standardization is now being contested and is likely gradually to be pushed aside. It will be replaced by multidimensional forms of evidence and judgment that require more rather than less interaction among members of universities, and more openness to one another.\u0026nbsp; CUCFA's push for shared governance makes epistemological diversity easier to achieve.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nOur current, highly unrigorous definitions of the public university make sense if the future is going to extend the past two decades. \u0026nbsp;But it won't. The public university going forward will have to rediscover the effectiveness of shared resources, mutualized costs, and collaborative governance. It will need to discover much stronger meanings of \u003Ci\u003Epublic\u003C\/i\u003E. \u0026nbsp;If this is right, then CUCFA's statement is ahead of the curve."},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/4149792345652319288\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/10\/faculty-principles-for-senior.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/4149792345652319288"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/4149792345652319288"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/10\/faculty-principles-for-senior.html","title":"Faculty Principles for Senior Management Hires"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-KToEmExleRg\/V_Ks37cR3CI\/AAAAAAAADLY\/WdzIggYcQ8s75MIXA0mPbkhtUiYWJZgpACLcB\/s72-c\/bouncers.gif","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-1565510068326602195"},"published":{"$t":"2016-09-21T08:29:00.001-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-09-21T08:30:12.607-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Academic Freedom"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Shared Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Berkeley"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"A Global Crisis of Faculty Faith? Two Berkeley Examples"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-dR2cHyrhcJQ\/V-GclUjBjxI\/AAAAAAAADKU\/MlkNPTPzSGk5ZCXMRL0E8kzGL27fnlmtACLcB\/s1600\/scottkellyla.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"189\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-dR2cHyrhcJQ\/V-GclUjBjxI\/AAAAAAAADKU\/MlkNPTPzSGk5ZCXMRL0E8kzGL27fnlmtACLcB\/s320\/scottkellyla.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\nI've always believed that university professors are willing and able to govern academics, but now I am not so sure. \u0026nbsp;I am worried about growing fatalism among even tenured faculty activists.\u0026nbsp; I'm concerned about the tacit belief that unstoppable historical forces have already destroyed the universities they want to keep.\u0026nbsp; From this standpoint, local resistance can work but remaking is futile, though remaking is the premise of shared governance and of academic freedom.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nMy summer travels took me to London, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Liverpool, Bonn, Cambridge, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Crewe, York, and Valencia, mostly for lectures and discussions with faculty members about the state of\u0026nbsp; universities in their country. \u0026nbsp; I was struck by the contrast between the great intelligence and professional commitments of the professors on the one hand, and their lack of hope for universities on the other. \u0026nbsp;Several of the visits revolved around higher education conferences, where I heard brilliant analyses of the nuts and bolts of national education initiatives that lacked a standpoint for faculty intervention.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nEveryone was extremely busy teaching, running research centers, organizing outreach programs, testifying to government officials, and so on--there was never a lack of constructive activities.\u0026nbsp; But I sensed little confidence that any of the faculty activities would help improve their institutions or the policy environment. There are important exceptions to this rule, and I am always impressed by the great spirits who continue to be attracted into academia. When necessary, faculty would set up Temporary Autonomous Zones and hope that these spaces--labs, classrooms, offices--would escape outside attention long enough to succeed at getting their work done. It's not that faculty members saw managers as their enemy. They saw them instead as a fatal environment.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nA few examples: in Denmark I heard stories both of a comedic inability of managers to return email from faculty who had major proposals before them and of the mandatory use of automated work output management systems that scored and ranked faculty members for university managers. \u0026nbsp;In South Africa, I encountered professors who were angry at their students for demanding #FeesMustFall rather than at politicians for failing to fund the higher education mission. in Britain, I worked with faculty who were responding to the post-2011 elimination of public funding for all qualitative teaching fields by reinventing entire programs nearly every year to be more appealing to the student market. \u0026nbsp;They were all great people who had reacted to challenges by creating better local solutions, but with no expectation that it would help the university system.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn most cases, output audit was replacing direct faculty-administration dialogue and the collaborative reimagining of that university's future. \u0026nbsp;The UK's Tory government has been the most explicit about its use of funding authority to replace professional judgment with market signals. In cutting central government funding for instruction to zero for most subjects, it has forced teaching to cater to student demand. \u0026nbsp;It uses impact assessments and other auditing techniques to norm STEM research to business needs. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nGovernments are ignoring the fact that universities are supposed to be way out in front of public sensibility in both technical and sociocultural subjects.\u0026nbsp; Universities \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2016\/09\/20\/the-cost-of-corporate-funded-research\/the-lack-of-funding-is-a-tragedy-for-bold-scientific-breakthroughs\"\u003Ecan't be original unless they are out in front\u003C\/a\u003E. Managing by audit, in contrast, readily norms the teaching of society, culture, and science to established mainstream views, whether that be commercial television's stories of the origins of terrorism or the pharmaceutical industry's preferences on the characterization of molecules. This norming reduces the university's non-market and social value. It ironically reduces its market value by emphasizing existing rather than future skills for students and well-known rather than challenging problems for research.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIt was impossible for me to forget the University of California's travails no matter the distance, and I see two recent Berkeley issues through the gap I saw this summer between faculty reaction and faculty governance. \u0026nbsp;One issue is the budget: Berkeley's \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.dailycal.org\/2016\/09\/19\/administration-members-faculty-meet-discuss-growing-campus-budget-problems\/\"\u003Esenior managers are apparently still saying\u003C\/a\u003E that private revenue streams and more entrepreneurship will fix the budget deficit.\u0026nbsp; I interpret the evidence to show that \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/08\/what-berkeleys-problem-is-not.html\"\u003Ethe deficit came in large part from privatization\u003C\/a\u003E and cannot be fixed by more of the same. \u0026nbsp; I also think that the admin's proposed solutions of \"enrollment control, self-supporting degree programs, increased land utilization, entrepreneurship, and fundraising\" expresses the conventional budgetary wisdom of our proverbial neoliberal era of the kind that universities exist to get beyond. Either way, the issue can't be resolved by meetings that offer spotty information about which faculty ask isolated questions and express frustration. \u0026nbsp;It can only be resolved by faculty bodies--the Senate and\/or the Faculty Association and\/or other groups--doing independent analysis with comprehensive financial information and building their own sustainable budget to advocate to the administration.\u0026nbsp; Faculty members haven't shifted from budget reaction to budget governance. Until they do, nothing will change.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nSame goes for the Berkeley administration's suspension in the middle of the term of a student-taught course, \"Palestine: A Colonial Settler Analysis.\" \u0026nbsp; Dean Carla Hesse suspended the course on the same day that \u0026nbsp;\"43 Jewish, civil rights, and education advocacy groups\" \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.amchainitiative.org\/letter-to-uc-berkeley-chancellor-dirks\"\u003Ewrote to campus chancellor Nicholas Dirks\u003C\/a\u003E to claim that the course was political advocacy, met the \"government's criteria for anti-Semitism,\" had been approved and was being taught by anti-Zionist zealots, and was out of compliance with UC Regents policy.\u0026nbsp; And yet the course had been approved through a standard process in which faculty members have primary and ultimate authority over the curriculum--in this case the department's acting chair and the Academic Senate. \u0026nbsp;It also appears that the Berkeley administration would have taken no action without\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/education\/article\/UC-Berkeley-suspends-controversial-course-on-9220950.php\"\u003Epressure from outside interest groups\u003C\/a\u003E, and that the suspension was a response to this outside pressure. \u0026nbsp;The chancellor and\/or executive dean in this case intervened in the faculty's core domain in response to an outside grievance, and they triggered national coverage of basic questions about academic freedom. \u0026nbsp;For the blow by blow of that issue I refer you to \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/academeblog.org\/2016\/09\/15\/berkeley-bans-a-palestine-class\/\"\u003EJohn K. Wilson's detailed analysis\u003C\/a\u003E, Berkeley professor \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.dailycal.org\/2016\/09\/20\/decals-cancellation-transpired-unfair-shortcuts\/\"\u003ESamera Esmeir's commentary\u003C\/a\u003E, and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/academeblog.org\/2016\/09\/19\/allowed-again-but-question-remain-about-suspension-of-berkeley-class\/\"\u003EDr. Wilson's critique\u003C\/a\u003E of Dean Hesse's reinstatement letter.\u0026nbsp; My point here is that\u0026nbsp;various kinds of internal pressure were brought to bear, from \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@ethnicstudies198\/an-open-letter-to-the-uc-berkeley-administration-regarding-academic-freedom-1bf60c9a040e#.jehuacld3\"\u003Eevery student in the course\u003C\/a\u003E and also from Berkeley faculty, which resulted in the course's reinstatement, and yet this kind of strong reaction is not going to be enough.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nFor the dean's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/3110924-Hesse-Letter-Regarding-ES198-Fall-2016.html\"\u003Ereinstatement letter\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;claims both that deans \"review, but do not approve the academic content\" of courses in this program \u003Ci\u003Eand\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003Ethat this review legitimately asked about course content, that is, about \"whether the stated objective for the course to 'explore the possibility of a decolonized Palestine' potentially violated Regents Policy by crossing over the line from teaching to political advocacy.\" The latter phrase does assert an administrative right to review content of these student-taught courses even when they are, as in this case, approved by the appropriate faculty.\u0026nbsp; Dean Hesse's position is thus that enforcement of University instructional policy does not lie with the faculty alone, but requires administrative supervision.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; This remains a departure from standard AAUP-based principles of faculty self-governance of instruction.\u0026nbsp; It is consistent with the trend toward shifting the supervision of instruction reflected in the MOOC wave of 2012-13, where officials signed contracts with little faculty knowledge or input, and with the trend toward removing faculty from the university's reputation management that enabled acts like the Board firing of Professor Steven Saliata from the University of Illinois and of Asst. Professor Melissa Click from the University of Missouri.\u0026nbsp; While faculty reaction helped resolve the immediate UC Berkeley issue, faculty governance will be needed to reconstruct authority over curriculum in order to prevent such intrusions in the future.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe Berkeley student course on Palestine raised the question of whether society will allow universities \nto function as their over-the-horizon intellectual resource.\u0026nbsp; It represented academic inquiry that fulfilled the intellectual mission of being out in front of public sensibility on an important question. When a classroom, library, or laboratory houses original solutions, some factions will see them as impossible, outrageous, or offensive. \u0026nbsp;This is the routine impact of any avant-garde in art, science, and every field in between, whose members are treated as enemies before in many cases being lauded as pioneers. \u0026nbsp; All the outrage means is that the university is doing its job. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nSince senior managers can apparently not be expected to stand up to influential outsiders, the tenured faculty will have to do it.\u0026nbsp; It would be better to do it by re-establishing governing authority over the conditions that make originality possible, rather than putting out particular fires on a global scale. "},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/1565510068326602195\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/09\/a-global-crisis-of-faculty-faith-two.html#comment-form","title":"9 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1565510068326602195"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/1565510068326602195"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/09\/a-global-crisis-of-faculty-faith-two.html","title":"A Global Crisis of Faculty Faith? Two Berkeley Examples"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-dR2cHyrhcJQ\/V-GclUjBjxI\/AAAAAAAADKU\/MlkNPTPzSGk5ZCXMRL0E8kzGL27fnlmtACLcB\/s72-c\/scottkellyla.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"9"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-9065942164806391375"},"published":{"$t":"2016-07-19T19:50:00.002-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-07-20T03:26:31.816-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Regents"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UCOP"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Regents Propose Centralization Without Real Justification"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-k3Z93_mySTY\/V47Zpn2YRGI\/AAAAAAAAA50\/sE6gzMCZanYDfGEVRyB85BqqtYg_wo48wCLcB\/s1600\/200px-The_Court_of_Chancery_during_the_reign_of_George_I_by_Benjamin_Ferrers.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-k3Z93_mySTY\/V47Zpn2YRGI\/AAAAAAAAA50\/sE6gzMCZanYDfGEVRyB85BqqtYg_wo48wCLcB\/s1600\/200px-The_Court_of_Chancery_during_the_reign_of_George_I_by_Benjamin_Ferrers.jpg\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\nAs you may have seen, the Regents will vote July 20th on a \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/regmeet\/july16\/g1.pdf\"\u003Eproposed revision\u003C\/a\u003E to their By-laws and the University's Standing Orders. \u0026nbsp;An original\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/regmeet\/may16\/g1.pdf\"\u003E presentation\u003C\/a\u003E was made at their May 12 meeting; tomorrow's discussion will be about a modified version of that proposal.\u0026nbsp; You can find the modifications \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/regmeet\/july16\/g1attach3.pdf\"\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E. Commentary on this has been provided by former Regent Velma Montoya (\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.americanthinker.com\/articles\/2016\/06\/gutting_accountability_at_the_university_of_california_.html\"\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E and\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.americanthinker.com\/articles\/2016\/07\/a_nearcoup_d_the_tat_at_the_university_of_california.html\"\u003E here\u003C\/a\u003E), Hank Reichman at the Academe Blog has commented \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/academeblog.org\/2016\/07\/06\/on-the-university-of-california-v-gutting-accountability\/\"\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E, and the California Association of Scholars has sent a letter reprinted \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.americanthinker.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/the_coup_at_the_university_of_california_rolls_along.html\"\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E. \u0026nbsp;I urge you all to read the various documents and commentaries but I wanted to clarify some of the important issues quickly.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThe proposal combines two major sets of changes. \u0026nbsp;The first is a dramatic alteration in the Regents committee and meeting structure--an alteration that could reduce both public debate and oversight in important ways. \u0026nbsp;And second, the proposal begins a process that will likely result in the elimination of the Standing Orders of the University. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThese proposed changes have led to a wide range of criticism. The weakness of the arguments in favor of these changes suggests more fundamental problems with the current status of the Board of Regents.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n1) At present the Regents have 10 Standing Committees.\u0026nbsp; The proposal reduces this number to 6 and vests important internal power to the Governance and Compensation Committee. \u0026nbsp;In addition, the Chair of the Board, Chairs of Committees, and the President of the University are being given the authority to determine the scheduling of discussion whenever an individual Regent wants an item added to an Agenda (\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/regmeet\/july16\/g1.pdf\"\u003E3\u003C\/a\u003E).\u0026nbsp; Importantly, although Committee meetings are traditionally held sequentially under the new system, different Committees will meet concurrently during the 1st day of the Regents meeting, making it more difficult for newspapers, members of the University community, and members of the public to attend all the meetings they are concerned about. Interestingly, there will no longer be a Long-Range Planning Committee.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIt is, of course, impossible to know how these changes will actually affect the Regents practice. \u0026nbsp;But having listened to the discussion at the May meeting, I am not confident that they serve any purpose other than the centralization of power. \u0026nbsp;In discussing the origins of these proposals, proponents suggested that they grew out of a Regents retreat and were a response to the sense that too much time at meetings was spent listening to reports from administrators. \u0026nbsp;I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone forced to suffer through an administrative filibuster. \u0026nbsp;But there is a simple way to avoid that--demand that all reports be in writing, sent in advance, and then \u003Ci\u003Eread them before the meeting.\u003C\/i\u003E\u0026nbsp; That way you can push back against the filibuster by asking intelligent questions or raising objections.\u0026nbsp;If the individual Regents are too busy to do that then they should just decline the honor of serving on the Board. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nReducing the number of Committees and dividing up Committee presentations will not solve the problem of too much transactional activity--all it will accomplish is reduce the possibility of public oversight and also increase the specialization of Regents even if the second day has a long plenary session. \u0026nbsp;As with their reorganization of the Health Care Committee--\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2015\/11\/this-week-at-regents-ii-medical-centers.html\"\u003Ewhere a report indicating a problem of communication internal to the Health Sciences enterprise led to an expansion of central power under the Regents\u003C\/a\u003E--the Regents have identified one problem and proposed a solution to something else.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n2) The Governance Committee is also proposing that the Standing Orders be absorbed into the newly drawn By-Laws. \u0026nbsp;Although I don't agree with the CAS that the Standing Orders function as some sort of l\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.americanthinker.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/the_coup_at_the_university_of_california_rolls_along.html\"\u003Eegislative record\u003C\/a\u003E, they are correct that they should not be folded into the By-Laws.\u0026nbsp; (It is the fact that they are not a legislative record that gives them their importance). \u0026nbsp;The Standing Orders as they stand now have been infrequently changed and they are extremely detailed. \u0026nbsp;It is their public detail that makes them so important. \u0026nbsp;To give only one example, when the Regents determined that they wanted to give President Yudof special furlough powers they needed to make explicit changes under public scrutiny--scrutiny that produced a great deal of debate. \u0026nbsp;To be sure, the Regents did what they wanted to do--as is their wont--but they needed to do so publicly and with their responsibility marked out. If you want wider input, then publicity is important. Of course if you don't, then having vaguer rules will have that effect. The new By-Laws are in fact much vaguer than the Standing Orders, which will allow for changes with less scrutiny. One argument made in favor of this change is that the By-Laws take a 2\/3 vote to change while the Standing Orders only require a majority vote. But the simple answer to that is to make the Standing Orders require a 2\/3 vote as well.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIn a nutshell, the Regents are considering a set of changes that may make it more difficult for the public to see what they do at their meetings and allow for policy changes to proceed along vaguer than usual lines. At a time when UC administrators are under increased scrutiny and the University itself is viewed with greater suspicion of being out of touch with the State, the Regents are proposing a major overhaul of their organization and relation to the public without real justification or careful university wide discussion. \u0026nbsp;That one likely result will be greater control in the hands of fewer Regents is a cause for alarm. The whole process highlights fundamental problems with the practice of Regental governance."},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/9065942164806391375\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/07\/regents-propose-centralization-without.html#comment-form","title":"1 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/9065942164806391375"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/9065942164806391375"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/07\/regents-propose-centralization-without.html","title":"Regents Propose Centralization Without Real Justification"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Michael Meranze"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/05336793340375780406"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-k3Z93_mySTY\/V47Zpn2YRGI\/AAAAAAAAA50\/sE6gzMCZanYDfGEVRyB85BqqtYg_wo48wCLcB\/s72-c\/200px-The_Court_of_Chancery_during_the_reign_of_George_I_by_Benjamin_Ferrers.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"1"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-3011890087741328878"},"published":{"$t":"2016-05-01T10:32:00.003-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-06-23T23:29:25.657-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Faculty"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"For-Profit"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Linda Katehi"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Protests"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Davis"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"The Costs of the Katehi Affair"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-i-U6CzTRfQQ\/VyY9cSUwylI\/AAAAAAAADIw\/CCRip3BVHlsdB3BHS3yBmnP8Ae1HQpVIwCLcB\/s1600\/UC%2BDavis%2BParisa%2BEsfahani%2BKyla%2BBurke.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"197\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-i-U6CzTRfQQ\/VyY9cSUwylI\/AAAAAAAADIw\/CCRip3BVHlsdB3BHS3yBmnP8Ae1HQpVIwCLcB\/s320\/UC%2BDavis%2BParisa%2BEsfahani%2BKyla%2BBurke.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EThe simplest political question posed by the ongoing Katehi crisis is, \"Can state government trust the University of California to clean its own house?\" \u0026nbsp;The non-firing of Linda Katehi says, \"No.\" \u0026nbsp;It's hard to imagine a better targeted confirmation of UC's reputation in Sacramento for poor management. If we didn't have the Katehi Affair, Jerry Brown would have had to invent it.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EYes she deserves due process, yes \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/uc-davis-letter-to-uc-president.html\"\u003Ewomen chancellors deserve it\u003C\/a\u003E as much as male chancellors do, and yes the campus view should be decisive rather than UCOP's. \u0026nbsp;But UC's bureaucracy should have prevented the chancellor's \"mistakes\" before they happened, or an internal investigation should have caught them before the Sacramento \u003Ci\u003EBee\u003C\/i\u003E did, or President Napolitano should have completed her investigation before \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/news\/investigations\/the-public-eye\/article74801327.html\"\u003Eshe tried to fire \u003C\/a\u003EChancellor Katehi, or she should have succeeded in firing her on the basis of the preponderance of the evidence she already had. \u0026nbsp;None of these things happened.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EDense corporate controls entangle every regular UC employee on a daily basis. It takes dozens of person-hours in a half-dozen offices to set up a post-doc contract. \u0026nbsp;A researcher can wait 6 months--at least I once did--to get final approval on an outside vendor contract when there is a wrinkle, like a specialized foreign researcher who doesn't carry liability insurance. \u0026nbsp;The Katehi affair tells the public that senior managers live by different rules. It says the same thing to UC employees. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EThis fragmenting of the university polity goes deep. \u0026nbsp;It's an effective short-term managerial technique, since it divides and demobilizes. \u0026nbsp;It does enormous long-term damage. \u0026nbsp;We can't measure that with existing metrics.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EOne type of damage appeared in \u003Ci\u003ECHE \u003C\/i\u003Ecoverage of faculty views, where the faculty seemed not just divided but individually ambivalent and unclear. \u0026nbsp;The title of the \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/article\/In-Fight-Over-UC-Davis\/236297?cid=trend_au\u0026amp;elqTrackId=b2360f8e55234eb4a5aabbf064763f71\u0026amp;elq=b2703dad815a4003846eb4bfce78406d\u0026amp;elqaid=8881\u0026amp;elqat=1\u0026amp;elqCampaignId=3028\"\u003Epiece\u003C\/a\u003E could have been, \"What's Going On?\" The interviewees were not working from an explicit standard of management behavior that they felt they should enforce. \u0026nbsp;Contrast these views with the UC Davis students whom Amy Goodman interviewed and \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2016\/4\/29\/after_36_day_student_occupation_university\"\u003Eaired on Friday\u003C\/a\u003E. \u0026nbsp;Seniors\u0026nbsp;Parisa Esfahani and Kyla Burke (pictured above) produced precise, detailed explanations of the conduct they were protesting. They tied that to their big picture policy issue, \"the normalization of the privatization of the university,\" which they said was subordinating education to money making. \u0026nbsp;They offered an integrated analysis of the range of Katehi \"mistakes\" as symptoms of a worldview that they did not accept. \u0026nbsp;The sense of belonging to the university, and the right \/ obligation to establish principles to which its leadership would be held to account, has come from the undergraduates.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EI thought Linda Katehi should have resigned after the pepper-spray incident in 2011. I thought this not because it \"happened on her watch,\" but because she was unable or unwilling to fix it afterwards. The officer in question, \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sacramento.cbslocal.com\/2013\/10\/23\/pepper-spray-cop-former-uc-davis-officer-pike-awarded-nearly-40000-in-comp-claim\/\"\u003EJohn Pike\u003C\/a\u003E, earned global fame for the casual contempt with which he doused seated protesters with pepperspray, marking them as outside of the \u003Ci\u003Euniversitas,\u003C\/i\u003E\u0026nbsp;outside of society. Chancellor Katehi didn't rush to the students' defense, and\/or condemn the act (even with the using \"pending a full investigation\"), and\/or discipline wrongdoers in a direct and forthright way. Her eventual reaction became her trademark: slow, calculated, and unsatisfying. \u0026nbsp;This helped spread the damage through the system, as UCOP hired celebrity chief Bill Bratton's then-firm Kroll Security, \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2011\/11\/is-uc-daviss-pepper-spray-investigation-truly-independent\/249263\/\"\u003Ewith its own conflicts,\u003C\/a\u003E to investigate UC overall. \u0026nbsp;She seemed not to take hold of the real issue--obvious police misconduct leading to the violation of the civil rights of the protesters, and of their human dignity. \"These are our students, or our neighbors. And this is a university,\" she did not say. \u0026nbsp; She did not convene the university as a community with the permanent, historic obligation to understand itself. \u0026nbsp;My gut feeling was that she presided over \"UC Davis\" without connection to it. \u0026nbsp;I was struck by her walk through the silent crowd of students, at night, surrounded by bodyguards, unable or unwilling to speak, as though enfolded in a martyrdom of her own making.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EI won't rehearse her current errors--they have \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/cloudminder.blogspot.de\/2016\/04\/some-of-narratives-around-uc.html\"\u003Ereceived much attention\u003C\/a\u003E, including Angus Johnston's definitive anatomy of the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/studentactivism.net\/2016\/04\/29\/total-incompetence-of-idmloco-consultants-katehi-hired-to-scrub-the-internet-is-hilarious-appalling-predictable\/\"\u003Einane Internet scrubbling contract\u003C\/a\u003E. \u0026nbsp;But I will\u0026nbsp;note that her board service was not like that of the other chancellors. \u0026nbsp;She accepted positions at institutions that are directly opposed to UC interests. King Abdulaziz University\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/2012\/01\/are-saudi-universities-buying-their-way-into-top-charts.html\"\u003Egames rankings with cash payments\u003C\/a\u003E to prominent researchers for quasi-no-show jobs in exchange for sharing their citation credit, in order to leapfrog universities that have built reputations over decades. Wiley thrives by overcharging universities and their students for their own research results. DeVry prospers more when UC's public funding is less. \u0026nbsp;Such board payments are not invitations to internal critique--these institutions get abundant external critiques for free--but to use public servant stature to legitimate for-profits. Chancellor Katehi has shown serial poor judgment, and to me all the incidents flow from the same failure to understand how people think and feel when involved in public service. \u0026nbsp;She's not a bad person. She just doesn't get it.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EMy diffuse but fundamental concern is the general aura or \u003Ci\u003Eethos \u003C\/i\u003Ethat Linda Katehi has helped sustain. It's not so much the petty self-dealing, culminating in putting her reputation ahead of that of the entire university's, as it is the short selling of what a university is. \u0026nbsp;The university should stand for justice, enlightenment, and the continuous reconciliation of our private interests with the general welfare. \u0026nbsp;It should constantly trace great teaching and research back to open communication. \u0026nbsp;It should benefit student finances rather than hurting them.\u0026nbsp;It should be a public good in the existential sense, where, for starters, regular citizens feel like the university is on their side. \u0026nbsp;It should model democracy, starting with managers possessed of generosity toward the \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2016\/4\/29\/after_36_day_student_occupation_university\"\u003Erole of student protesters\u003C\/a\u003E in having prompted the investigations, and of enough epistemological humility to learn from critics.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EThis is the university I want. I'm convinced the wider public wants it too. \u0026nbsp;We have already learned what happens when we don't deliver it.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/3011890087741328878\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/05\/the-price-of-katehi-affair.html#comment-form","title":"6 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/3011890087741328878"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/3011890087741328878"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/05\/the-price-of-katehi-affair.html","title":"The Costs of the Katehi Affair"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-i-U6CzTRfQQ\/VyY9cSUwylI\/AAAAAAAADIw\/CCRip3BVHlsdB3BHS3yBmnP8Ae1HQpVIwCLcB\/s72-c\/UC%2BDavis%2BParisa%2BEsfahani%2BKyla%2BBurke.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"6"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-2455261332253969529"},"published":{"$t":"2016-04-27T07:46:00.002-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-06-23T23:29:25.648-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"guest post"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Janet Napolitano"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Linda Katehi"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Davis"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UCOP"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"UC Davis Letter to UC President Napolitano: Curb Gender Bias by Publishing Policies"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-RgbnqoSEtvU\/VyDQJhT-ZLI\/AAAAAAAADIc\/HhSFD8sCpk8O3v3iZWcjEk1w_7-twQyxwCLcB\/s1600\/UCDavisfatal-laff-egghead.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"136\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-RgbnqoSEtvU\/VyDQJhT-ZLI\/AAAAAAAADIc\/HhSFD8sCpk8O3v3iZWcjEk1w_7-twQyxwCLcB\/s320\/UCDavisfatal-laff-egghead.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: x-small;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003Eby Linda F. Bisson, Former Chair, Davis Division of the Academic Senate, 2006-2008; 2011-2012\u003Cbr \/\u003ERachael E. Goodhue, Chair Elect, Davis Division of the Academic Senate 2016-2018\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E \u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EDear President Napolitano:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe want to express grave concern over a pattern of negativism in the press and social media regarding women Chancellors and senior administrative leaders.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EThere are strong parallels between the singularly intensive criticism of our Chancellor Linda Katehi and that previously of Chancellors Fox (UCSD) and Denton (UCSC), and of UC Vice President Greenwood. Yet, the activities that are being criticized clearly fall within the standards of UCwide practice.\u0026nbsp; This pattern is exemplified by a \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2006\/feb\/16\/local\/me-cap16\"\u003E2006 LA \u003Ci\u003ETimes\u003C\/i\u003E article\u003C\/a\u003E that criticized compensation practices for senior UC executives: those singled out for criticism for “extravagant pay practices, perks and privilege for top executives” are all women.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EThe intensity of the criticism at the time ended in tragedy for Chancellor Denton. Chancellor Fox’s term was equally framed as fraught with turmoil, turmoil apparently not experienced by her male colleagues who were facing identical issues due to budget cuts and lack of diversity and inclusion. In an\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/news\/2011\/jul\/05\/fox-leaving-ucsd\/?#article-copy\"\u003E article in the San Diego \u003Ci\u003EUnion Tribune\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E written on Chancellor Fox’s decision to step down, she is described in terms steeped in implicit gender bias, including the quote ascribed to former President Richard C. Atkinson:\u0026nbsp; “She handled that as well as she could have handled it” – not as well as anyone could have handled it or as well as it could have been handled.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWomen in leadership positions are often the victims of intense implicit bias and, as a consequence, of the phenomenon of “single storyism” - the reduction of their actions to a simple narrative that appeals to the biases of a broad section of society, in this case implicit gender bias and women being incompetent for their position. Whatever they say or do in response is twisted to fit the “single story.”\u0026nbsp; We think the LA \u003Ci\u003ETimes\u003C\/i\u003E article listed above illustrates perfectly the problem of the single story experienced by senior women administrators at UC.\u0026nbsp; If the LA \u003Ci\u003ETimes\u003C\/i\u003E story were rewritten today, Chancellor Katehi’s name is likely the only one that would be added to the list.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAll of UC is richer because of the participation of women and underrepresented groups at all levels. We know you and your leadership team share this belief. We are concerned that UCOP does not recognize that senior administrators who are identified with an underrepresented identity vital to our diversity are subject to vilification in the press simply because of that identity.\u0026nbsp; We are also concerned, as recent press regarding our Chancellor Katehi demonstrates, that Chancellors and other senior administrators are not well-equipped to deal with single storyism, nor is there the recognition that others, such as UCOP, must step in to address the criticism as well.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe absence of factual information on UC policies and practices with respect to external compensation for all senior administrators has led to speculative and negative public debate regarding a single senior woman, when the practice of external involvement is widespread. We would like to request clear articulation from UCOP of both the formal policies and the informal practices as they pertain to executive compensation (e.g., have senior managers been encouraged to participate in activities outside UC). We note that legislators are calling for the same review. UCOP's understanding of the broader issues involved is essential to informing these external discussions. The need for UCOP to take action is urgent.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-family: inherit;\"\u003EWe thank you for considering this request.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp; \u003Cbr \/\u003Ec:\u0026nbsp; André Knoesen, Chair, Davis Division of the Academic Senate\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; Dan Hare, Chair, Academic Senate\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; Linda Katehi, Chancellor, UCD\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/2455261332253969529\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/uc-davis-letter-to-uc-president.html#comment-form","title":"11 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/2455261332253969529"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/2455261332253969529"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/uc-davis-letter-to-uc-president.html","title":"UC Davis Letter to UC President Napolitano: Curb Gender Bias by Publishing Policies"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-RgbnqoSEtvU\/VyDQJhT-ZLI\/AAAAAAAADIc\/HhSFD8sCpk8O3v3iZWcjEk1w_7-twQyxwCLcB\/s72-c\/UCDavisfatal-laff-egghead.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"11"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1170716682680204889.post-8205624083224918176"},"published":{"$t":"2016-04-25T09:56:00.001-07:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-06-23T23:29:25.701-07:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Academic Boycotts"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Academic Freedom"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"guest post"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Management"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Religion \u0026 Culture"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Shared Governance"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Irvine"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UC Santa Barbara"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"UCOP"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Two Faculty Letters to UC President \u0026 Chancellors on AAA \/ BDS Controversy"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ZMuo7LPf5MI\/Vx5L8w93NKI\/AAAAAAAADII\/GcvwnpCJFhA8-lOXxZkqAElWZTx8MrQWACLcB\/s1600\/YesMen.png\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ZMuo7LPf5MI\/Vx5L8w93NKI\/AAAAAAAADII\/GcvwnpCJFhA8-lOXxZkqAElWZTx8MrQWACLcB\/s400\/YesMen.png\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\n\u003Ci\u003EWe post two faculty responses to \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/media.wix.com\/ugd\/c9faad_06c5dd0abb8a4e9d92200e81819089f0.pdf\"\u003Ethe letter\u003C\/a\u003E that the University of California's president--in the company of all ten campus chancellors--sent to the American Anthropological Association to express their \"concern about the Association's proposed resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions.\" The AAA membership vote on the resolution opened on April 15th. Materials on the Association debate can be found at \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.americananthro.org\/StayInformed\/NewsDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=13484\"\u003EAAA Resources Regarding Engagement with Israel\/Palestine.\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nLetter 1, from Professor Fogu to Chancellor Yang, has been endorsed by the UCSB Faculty Association.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Ch3\u003E\n LETTER 1\u003C\/h3\u003E\n\u003Cb\u003ETo: Chancellor Henry Yang\u003Cbr \/\u003EFrom: Claudio Fogu, Dept. of French \u0026amp; Italian, UC Santa Barbara\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nI am writing to express my concern for your signing—along with the nine other UC Chancellors—\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/media.wix.com\/ugd\/c9faad_06c5dd0abb8a4e9d92200e81819089f0.pdf\"\u003Ea letter \u003C\/a\u003Edrafted by UC President Janet Napolitano, dated April 19, 2016, urging members of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) not to ratify a proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions. I am fully aware of the fact that along with many other universities, the University of California, in the person of its president (\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/regents.universityofcalifornia.edu\/governance\/policies\/1300.html\"\u003EPolicy 1300\u003C\/a\u003E), has already expressed its opposition to “academic boycotts” in the past, and has the right to do so. I question, however, both the inclusion of chancellors in signing this letter, the lack of any consultation with UC faculty about its content and\/or the wisdom of sending it, and, most importantly, the timing of it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIf Policy 1300 does give our President the right “to speak for the University,” this right comes to her from the Board of Regents, and it presumably refers to all matters of administrative and public representation of the University as an institution. On the other hand, the University of California also has a long-standing tradition and commitment to shared governance, especially when it comes to questions impacting academic matters. The two principles are clearly at odds with each other and it is therefore a delicate matter of interpretation and political acumen for a President to decide when it is appropriate to speak on behalf of the University. The fact that President Napolitano asked all ten chancellors to sign her letter indicates to my mind that she was not certain of having the authority to send that letter and therefore sought to buttress her right by involving the chancellors. At a time in which shared governance has been eroded for several years in the system, it is particularly disturbing to witness this instrumental use of authority and lack of consultation with UC Senates and faculty on matters of great concern to the faculty.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nI am not referring to the actual merits of the academic boycott under consideration by members of the AAA, but to the very serious interference with the voting of a resolution by members of a scholarly association who are employed or may be employed by our university. It is one thing to speak for or against resolutions taken by scholarly associations in favor of the academic boycott of Israeli universities, as it was the case with the American Studies Association in 2013. The protest came after the vote had taken place, and, whether one agrees with it or not, it did not interfere with the actual voting procedures. To send a letter that explicitly claims that “the University of California believes that an academic boycott is an inappropriate response to a foreign policy issue and one that threatens academic freedom and sets a damaging precedent for academia,” and therefore “urge(s) Association members to consider the boycott’s potentially harmful impacts and oppose this resolution,” is not only misrepresentative of the percentage of UC-system scholars who support the boycott, but also a far cry from the right to public critique and from the defense of academic freedom invoked in the letter. For an institution that hires the members of an association to urge them to vote one way or another is at best interference, and at worse intimidation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWith all due respect I hope you will consider consulting at least with the head of the Academic Senate next time you are invited by UCOP to sign a letter on behalf of UCSB.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Ch3\u003E\n LETTER 2\u003C\/h3\u003E\n\u003Cb\u003ETo: President Janet Napolitano and Chancellors Dirks, Katehi, Gillman, Block, Leland, Wilcox, Khosla, Hawgood, Yang and Blumenthal\u003Cbr \/\u003EFrom: Mark LeVine, Dept. of History, UC Irvine \u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nI am writing to express my strong concern and anger at your April 19, 2016 letter to the American Anthropological Association regarding the ongoing vote of the organization's membership on whether to endorse the Academic Boycott of Israeli academic institutions. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nLet me begin by pointing out that when the ten chancellors of the UC system and its President can't even remember the correct name of the organization they are writing to criticize—you called the AAA, one of the oldest and most prominent learned societies in the United States, the “American Association of Anthropologists”--it does not auger well for the accuracy and cogency of the arguments that follow. Sadly, this fear was confirmed by the contents of the letter. As has already been expressed by colleagues at UC Berkeley after former Chancellor Birgeneau and EVC and provost Robert Breslauer attempted to interfere in the AAA vote late last year, it is “unacceptable that [senior UC Administrators] would lend their voices to the organized intimidation of critics of Israeli state policy, and we particularly worry about the effect of such intimidation on our junior and more vulnerable colleagues.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nFar from being the private opinion of academics concerned about the potential actions of colleagues, you are speaking directly and officially for the University when you declare that “the University of California believes that an academic boycott is an inappropriate response to a foreign policy issue and one that threatens academic freedom and sets a damaging precedent for academia.” Before even offering a critique of your arguments I find myself compelled to point out that while you have come together to take a highly public, united stand against a boycott of academic institutions complicit in a five-decades long occupation, you have shown nothing close to this level of attention or unified voice to condemn the very real violations of academic freedoms associated with the ongoing systematic sexual harassment (and worse) suffered by women at UC, dozens of new cases of which have come forward in the period between the Regents' much condemned attempt to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in its March 23 policy statement and your present letter. I would like to know, How can you justify the amount of time and energy spent coordinating this letter when no similar collective letter from all of you has been issued surrounding the clear and ongoing dangers faced by women at UC, not to mention the harassment experienced by various minority communities on campuses across the University? (In fact, such collective letters on issues not directly related to the University are an unusual occurrence.) \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nTurning to the letter, I would like to ask, by what right and upon what evidence can you, without a vote of the Academic Senate, make an explicit declaration of what the “University of California believes”? As far as I can tell, whenever members of the UC community have expressed their collective opinions on the issues of academic boycotts or BDS more broadly, large percentages of those participating in such discussions have endorsed them, as evidenced by the votes of the Associated Students of UC (ASUC), the system-wide student Senate, as well as several campus AS Senates, in support of divestment resolutions. Moreover, the publicly available evidence clearly shows that substantially more UC professors are on record either endorsing BDS or at least refusing to label it as anti-Semitic then are their colleagues offering the criticisms outlined in your letter. This was most recently made clear by the overwhelming opposition to the Regent's universally condemned attempt to classify anti-Zionism (and particularly BDS) as a form of anti-Semitism. Nowhere does your letter mention the diversity of opinion at UC on the issue you are making such a definitive pronouncement. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWhile as individuals you have every right to speak your views on BDS or any issue, you clearly do not have an imprimatur to speak on this issue on behalf of the UC community on the issue of BDS, never mind adopt a position that is clearly at odds with the majority of its publicly expressed opinions. Your letter can only be understood as reflecting a troubling disregard both for shared governance and for academic freedom and honesty as well. By using your power as the senior leadership of UC to declare an official policy that is in opposition to the expressed opinions of a significant share of the UC community without any discussion of the issue by Academic Senate, you are potentially causing significant harm to members of our community. This is especially true of students, staff and junior or non-Senate faculty who might feel intimidated by your declaration of official policy into silencing their constitutionally protected opinions. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nYour letter is also extremely troubling because it seriously distorts the nature and meaning of the BDS call under discussion by the AAA and other professional organizations and, as important, utterly ignores the disastrous situation faced by Palestinians during half a century of Israeli occupation. Beginning with the latter, as the newly released State Department annual report on human rights once again makes clear in its second paragraph (and which is supported by the regular reports of every major global, Israeli and Palestinian human rights monitoring organization there is), Israel systematically denies Palestinians the right to education and more broadly “discriminates against Palestinian [citizens] in almost every aspect of society,” while engaging in “unlawful killings, use of excessive force, and torture” against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. And these actions are merely an addition to the mundane brutality and crimes associated with the massive ongoing settlement enterprise whose perpetuation and intensification is the Occupation's acknowledged goal. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nIndeed, your description of the Israeli occupation as merely a “foreign policy issue,” as if it was a trade dispute between WTO members, betrays a particularly shocking ignorance and disregard—I do not know which is worse—of the brutal realities of the Occupation. How, may I ask, can you write a letter expressing such concern over a well-established protest strategy with a long and proven history while saying nothing about the world's longest occupation and all the very real harm it does? I would like to invite all of you to come to the Occupied Territories and experience life as a Palestinian, particularly a student or professor routinely and systematically denied the right to pursue her or his education, research or teaching, and then explain to the UC community how this debate is merely over a “foreign policy issue.” \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nTurning to Paragraph 2, you argue that “free expression, robust discourse, and the vigorous debate over ideas and principles are essential to the mission of academic institutions worldwide.... These freedoms enable universities to advance knowledge and to transmit it effectively to its students and to the public. The University of California has a strong tradition of free speech and the free exchange of ideas, and it is our responsibility to defend academic freedom and our scholars’ ability to choose their research and colleagues. Limits to the open exchange of knowledge and ideas between our universities stand in direct opposition to our values and goals.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nThis argument is riddled with empirical flaws and inaccuracies that are quite frankly inexcusable coming from senior academics in your positions of administrative power and public prominence.. To begin with, as all the debates over BDS in professional associations such as the AHA, ASA, MESA and now AAA make clear, in no way does the call for an academic boycott entail restrictions on free expression, robust discourse or vigorous debate. In fact, just the opposite is true. The very act of bringing BDS before our professional organizations has stimulated unprecedented debate around the Occupation and the larger conflict. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nMoreover, in no way does the BDS call advocate restrictions on “our scholars' ability to choose their research and colleagues” (to speak for myself, I continue to do research, write and otherwise collaborate with many Israeli scholars). What it does do is suspend institutional cooperation and collaboration with Israeli institutions that are in any manner complicit in the Occupation, which sadly most Israeli universities clearly are. Yes, this policy demands a sacrifice by scholars, both Israelis and their colleagues; but this is a small price to pay to highlight the incredible suffering endured by Palestinians because of the Occupation, including the large-scale destruction of the Palestinian education system during the half century of occupation, systematic thefts of funds and equipment, and prevention of Palestinians from even leaving the Occupied Territories, never mind establishing anything close to the level of collaboration with foreign colleagues and universities that Israel enjoys (please check your records and report to us how much UC has spent collaborating with Palestinian compared with Israeli higher education institutions and scholars).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWhat's more, the present policies of uncritical collaboration itself exacts a very high price, on Palestinian education, about which you have nothing to say. Indeed, these realities have led upwards of two dozen Israeli anthropologists to support the BDS call. Did you consult with them or their colleagues in other disciplines in Israel who support BDS to understand the varieties of opinion within Israeli academia on this issue before making your pronouncement? Isn't that what scholars are supposed to do? Should you, as the most senior scholars at UC, be setting an example in this regard? \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nEven more troubling, you do not mention in your letter that UC is one of the top 5 institutions receiving “BSF” (US-Israeli Bi-National Science Foundation) grants, with campuses engaged in multiple projects with Israeli universities involving significant research funds. My own campus, Irvine, established the “UC Irvine\/Israeli Scholar Exchange Endowment for Engineering Science Program,” whose $2 million endowment supports collaborations with Israeli universities, such as Tel Aviv University and The Technion, which are deeply and publicly implicated in the machinery of the Occupation. A 2014 MOU between Governor Brown and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the legislative resolutions supporting it, have further “unfettered collaboration between Israeli and California Universities.” Unfettered for Israelis, yes. Impossible even to dream of for Palestinians, however, as they have no comparable collaboration, and very often are illegally prevented from leaving the Occupied Territories by Israel when they do. I do not recall the last time the President or chancellors have spoken with one voice about these issue. Do Palestinian students and academics not matter in any meaningful way?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nFinally, in your third paragraph you argue that “an academic boycott goes against the spirit of the University of California, which has consistently championed open discourse and encouraged collaboration with scholars and peers from international institutions of higher education.” This too is highly inaccurate. The University of California has never made an official pronouncement condemning or even calling attention to the systematic violations of Palestinian rights to education (never mind all the other even more basic violations they are subject to). How is engaging in long-term collaborations worth untold millions of dollars with a country engaged in an illegal occupation while remaining utterly silent about its actions against the occupied population in any way equatable to a “championing of open discourse and collaboration” in a fair and balanced manner? Of course, it is not. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nYou conclude you letter by “urg[ing] Association [of American Anthropologists] members to consider the boycott’s potentially harmful impacts and oppose this resolution.” Again, you make no mention of the harsh conditions faced by Palestinians as part of their daily existence attempting to participate in their education system. No discussion or even recognition of the incredibly “harmful impact” that clearly exists because of Israel's actions, and nothing that suggests you are in any way interested in offering a balanced view that actually takes into consideration the very real and substantial issues that the call for a boycott is intended to raise. Let's be clear: the merits of the BDS strategies certainly warrant discussion and debate. But this letter engages in neither; choosing instead to make what are essentially partisan political pronouncements based on assumptions that do not bear even the slightest scrutiny.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nPresident Napolitano, you have stated that “UC is the gold standard. Together, we must ensure that this standard is upheld.” This letter violates the spirit and letter of this pledge, as it is ethically and empirically flawed, engaging in a misleading attack on a specific strategy of non-violent resistance that has a long history of successful deployment by oppressed peoples around the world (including African Americans), misrepresenting the opinions of the UC community, of the AAA, and ignoring the large-scale injustices suffered by the people on whose behalf the BDS movement is acting. All of this done on UC letterhead acting in your official capacities as the leadership of the University. I urge you publicly to withdraw your ill-conceived attempt to interfere in the democratic deliberations of a learned society and consider how the leadership of UC can better reflect, or at least not interfere with, the diverse opinions of our community, while using the immense power of the University to help advocate both for those suffering and fighting against injustice and oppression, not just in Israel\/Palestine, but globally."},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/feeds\/8205624083224918176\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/two-faculty-letters-to-uc-president.html#comment-form","title":"3 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/8205624083224918176"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/1170716682680204889\/posts\/default\/8205624083224918176"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/utotherescue.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/two-faculty-letters-to-uc-president.html","title":"Two Faculty Letters to UC President \u0026 Chancellors on AAA \/ BDS Controversy"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Chris Newfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/01078395415386100872"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"16","height":"16","src":"https:\/\/img1.blogblog.com\/img\/b16-rounded.gif"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ZMuo7LPf5MI\/Vx5L8w93NKI\/AAAAAAAADII\/GcvwnpCJFhA8-lOXxZkqAElWZTx8MrQWACLcB\/s72-c\/YesMen.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"3"}}]}});