Preparing to Fight the Good Fight: Advice from Two Associate Deans to Faculty Friends Author(s): Amy Fried and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh Source: PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan., 2009), pp. 149-153 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20452390 Accessed: 01-06-2016 17:53 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms
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THE PROFESSION .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Preparing to Fight the Good Fight: Advice from Two Associate Deans to Faculty Friends Amy Fried, University of Maine
Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, University of Connecticut
In our professional work, many of us are involved in university service and pol
itics and some of us enter administrative positions. As political scientists who became associate deans of colleges of liberal arts and sciences, our observations from our admin istrative perches and our disciplinary knowledge have provided insights on how faculty
can protect and promote academic values.
T h he authors of this article recently became associate FEDERALIST STANDOFFS: PAINFULLY REDISCOVERING deans at public research universities in New PLURALISM England. Each of us previously served on quasi administrative committees, such as the executive committees of our respective faculty unions and uni versity senates. Neither, however, had faced day-in and day-out the challenge of balancing demands from diverse academic units while advocating for the broad liberal arts.' This exposure has spawned some ideas about how to present cases for scarce resources that we would like to share with faculty in the humanities and social sciences in hopes that they can better foster the academic environment they and we desire.' We recognize that, even though scholars' academic lives are affected by conditions created by oth ers, many scholars do not think it is worth their time to try to influence those circumstances. Our message is that one can be effective in gaining institutional support without an undue invest ment of time if these efforts are strategic and mindful of dynam ics affecting university decision making. While the examples in this article refer to public research universities heavily dependent on taxpayers' and legislators' goodwill, the essay contains advice useful for scholars at all American institutions of higher education. Amy Fried is associate deanforresearchfor the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University ofMaine. Her administrativeportfolio includesgraduateprograms,pro gram development, research support andmentoring, and college communications and devel opment. Fried's current scholarly researchfocuses on links between polling, survey research, and market research in the 1930S and 1940S.
Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh isprofessor ofpolitical science and associate dean ofthe Col lege ofLiberalArts and Sciences at the University of Connecticut. He has written numer ous books and essays on comparative socialmovements and twentieth-centurypolitical
"A zealfor different opinions... have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than
to co-operatefor their common good."
-James Madison (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay 1961, 79) Our administrative work has reminded us that that because of differences in values and economic conditions, individuals define their interests differently, often leading to clashes in aims and priorities. Research universities are not classical democracies writ small in which citizens meet in large assemblies and make policy after public debate and discussion. Universities resemble small federal polities with numerous subunits, each seeking to further its interests. Leaders of established disciplines, interdisciplinary programs, research centers, colleges, teaching and learning insti tutes, residence-hall bureaus, museums, libraries, and outreach programs compete daily for scarce resources, including additional professional staff, new work space, and expansion of discretion ary funds for visiting scholars, conference travel, telecommunica tions equipment, etc. A few professional administrators decide how to distribute resources, but only after considerable discus sions, disputes, and debates with groups and individuals with het erogeneous priorities and motivations. In these pre-decision conversations, "the rule of localism" usu ally triumphs. Department chairs, program directors, and other local leaders ardently seek resources for their groups' needs regard
thought. His third book, Social Movements in Politics: A Comparative Study, received
less of the impact on other units of the university. This practice is
a 1998 Choice OutstandingAcademic Book award.
not surprising. As Hamilton put it in Federalist 17, "It is a known
doi:1 lo0o1017Sl49096509090P2X PS * January 2009 149
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Profession: Preparing to Fight the Good Fight ..............................................................................................................................
fact in human nature, that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object" (Hamil ton, Madison, and Jay 1961, 119). True, local leaders usually frame their requests in terms of the common good. They might claim that a new professorship in their discipline-say, biochemistry or early American studies-is necessary to cement the university's national standing or to win grants that, through indirect cost shar
ing, will benefit all campus units. Conversely, they often mini mize the risks of their ideas and play down opportunity costs. After all, every dollar spent on one initiative (say, the establish ment of a biomedical research center) is a dollar less available for another initiative (say graduate-student recruitment and training in the humanities). And why mention that the hire of an expen sive "rising star" may not necessarily lead to national luster for a department because of endless shifts in intellectual fashions or because of potential envy and bad chemistry among colleagues? To win resources, exaggerations of benefits and elision of costs seem wise tactics to any local campus leader competing against other departments and centers.
We readily concede that sometimes members make argu ments about general benefits in good faith. Deans and provosts nonetheless often suspect the worst. They therefore conduct their own analyses of local leaders' arguments and supportive data, which, on closer examination, can appear suspiciously one-sided, if not cooked. Thus cautious deans and provosts usually meet peti tioners only part way. Faculty leaders should therefore always anticipate reluctance, regardless of the apparent merits of the argument, and prepare fallback positions. Stated differently, use big dreams to convey excitement and potential benefits, but be ready to build upon modest foundations. For example, at one of our universities, an interdisciplinary committee of social scientists desired a costly social science research center that would support interdisciplin ary research teams, host visiting scholars, and fund course release for faculty members preparing grant applications. Full realiza tion of the plan would require considerable office space, an expen sive professional staff, and an enormous operating budget. To get a foot in the door, the committee smartly included in their proposal a series of five more modest two-year projects that
prioritizing the requests before approaching the provost, presi dent, and board of trustees for supplementary funds, we have redis
covered the obvious: under-funded public research universities resemble struggling firms in capitalist economies. Universities badly need the dollars that legislators, parents, alumni, and phi lanthropies can choose to spend on other worthy purposes and causes. Provosts and deans therefore will channel initiatives toward potential donors' stated interests. Campus leaders know that uni versities, like private businesses, need a constant influx of capital or they will die. The materialist base of educational institutions sometimes annoys those faculty members who want scholarship and teach ing to be viewed as the university's raison d'etre. They recall pub lic statements by university executives about the intrinsic delights
of a liberal arts education, the unsurpassed nobility of the life of the mind, and the need for citizens to acquire both capacities for critical thinking and persuasive skills in communication. Conse quently, they are disillusioned by administrators' decisions to con stantly expand enrollments, contain spiraling upwards library expenditures, and hire low-paid graduate student employees and adjunct faculty to cover courses. University leaders who use lofty rhetoric about scholarship and teaching often mean what they say (partly because a goodly number were full-time faculty members). However, to meet the
campus payroll and building needs (in part, so that faculty members can pursue their research and scholarship), top admin istrators keep in mind parents' ambitions for their progeny, legislators' desires for their constituencies, and donors' often non-academic agendas. Economically powerful off-campus con stituencies expect a research university to do more than transmit knowledge and understanding and to nurture curiosity and won derment. Business groups want the university to contribute to the
local labor market by pursuing research that generates jobs andby preparing a new generation of workers with a modicum of techni cal skills. Parents also want students to grow in a comfortable phys
ical and social environment. When decisions are made about new buildings, new faculty lines, and new research centers, the agendas of these outsiders compete with the scholarly ambitions of faculty.
To simultaneously please outsiders and insiders, academi
the dean and provost could review biennially and, if disap
cally committed deans, provosts, and presidents play a sort of
pointed with the institute's progress, use as grounds to termi nate the initiative. The sequence of incremental proposals proved acceptable to the relevant dean and provost, who opposed the more ambitious and long-term project that could tie up valu
shell game. They first try to secure and spend funds for the goals
that legislators, trustees, parents, and alumni clamor for. They then use freed-up funds to aid scholars with arcane research and unpredictable intellectual journeys that have minimal money
generating potential and miniscule direct impact on economic able resources for many years. If the social scientists would have insisted on all or nothing, they would have ended up with development. Over the long run, this arrangement does not favor most schol nothing. Additionally, achieving this sort of success showed fac ars in the social sciences and humanities. New campus invest ulty that involvement can be productive, thus helping to over ment usually goes first to disciplines and interdisciplinary fields come the tendency to eschew involvement in campus policy matters. with technological applications. Likewise, within social science and humanities departments, there is a bias in favor of more THE CAMPUS AND THE MARKETPLACE applied and topical subfields-say, terrorism research-than on "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hith contemplative and universal themes that create more questions erto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has con than answers-say, the visions of a tormented soul in Augustine's verted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of City of God. The tendency over time is for more resources to be science, into its paid wage-labourers." placed in the life and physical sciences, while relatively fewer resources (ofice space, professional staff, and teaching posts) are -Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1978, 476) channeled toward scholars of society and humankind. Every week, we receive large and small requests for money from What is to be done? First (as most department heads know already), less privileged faculty should try to make clear and departments, interdisciplinary programs, and research centers. In 150 PS * January 2009
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convincing arguments about the ways that their fields train peo
and social sciences must become more interested and fluent in
ple for the workforce. In a globalized world in which rapid change
the ways of non-academics both on campus and off. But this under
and multiple careers in a lifetime are the rule, an education
taking is not easy. We found that more than a few scholars believe
grounded in the liberal arts and sciences arguably gives graduates
that successful professional and business leaders cannot compre hend the benefits of social sciences and humanities. We also have
the ability to pivot and to grasp new opportunities. As the Asso ciation of American Colleges and Universities (2007, 16) reports,
found a goodly number of scholars who commit the opposite sin: they prematurely assume that the social benefits of their teaching "employers are urging more-and better-liberal education, not and research are so obvious that patient communication and dia less. Because employers view innovation as their most important comparative advantage, they seek to hire graduates who can think logue are not necessary. Parallels to Plato's allegory of the cave beyond the routine, and who have the ability not just to adapt to may clarify some aspects of this problem. Scholars, at least since graduate school, spend countless hours.staring at books and com change, but to help create it." But this line of argument, by itself, is not enough because some puter terminals. They, arguably with good reason, see themselves variant of it is used by almost every discipline in almost every as selfless thinkers who have sacrificed more lucrative careers in school and college. Schools of business, engineering, and environ legal, business, and other professions for the life of the mind. mental sciences also know how to package the multiple benefits Meanwhile, the workplace habits they have acquired over the of their styles of reasoning. decades (including fluency in their disciplines' technical vocabu
To be effective in making even incremental andpartialgains,faculty members must put together internal and external coalitions and alliances. These depend both on having built relationships in other settings and in spreading clear, concise information to the various
participants. Faculty must adopt a mode of persuasion that involves more particular and less abstract interests-say a legislator's family expe riences with poverty, bigotry, inadequate health care, or war. This
requires, among other things, meeting with donors, legislators,
and guardians face to face. It also entails a set of activities chatting with parents at open houses, speaking over the phone with publicists, and dining with donors-that often fall outside scholars' comfort zones and that can feel like distractions from scholars' vocations rather than necessary preconditions for schol arly security. Instead of forging ties with the non-academic sides of the uni versity and connecting with outsiders, talented faculty members often pooh-pooh the task of cultivating non-academic acquain tances and partnerships. This silence is counterproductive, in our opinions, because we cannot expect non-social scientists to spon taneously understand the relevance and value of our disciplines. Without our involvement in conversations, top administrators, fundraisers, and external constituencies will likely construct a rhe torical framework that does not benefit the humanities and social
sciences. Conversely, we have observed at both of our universities
that when social scientists and humanists meet with legislators and donors and discuss topics, such as human rights programs and internship possibilities, mutual interests are uncovered and productive partnerships are created. In one case, a benefactor's desire to highlight his legacy of public service led to new streams of support for scholars and students, and the realization of com mon projects and dreams.
HELPING FACULTY ESCAPE A CAVE OF IGNORANCE "How could they ever see anything but shadows if they were never
allowed to move their heads?"
-Plato (1961, 747)
laries) have gradually separated them from others in society and inhibited them from seeing "sideways" and looking thoughtfully
at their neighbors. To help colleagues see their professional lives as linked to the people outside their departments and professional associations,
deans and associate deans persistently identify promising schol ars for committees and task forces, cajole them to join (despite the opportunity costs for research and teaching), and patiently educate faculty members about different offices, bureaus, person alities, and jurisdictions within the university. Sometimes faculty volunteers discover that their participation at meetings with non scholars makes a palpable difference (say, in the acquisition of office space for emeriti faculty or securing travel stipends for grad
uate students). Often, however, faculty volunteers will initially feel frustrated-for example, when after the first few meetings, non-academics either ignore recommendations from professors or, perhaps worse, selectively use unrepresentative parts of fac ulty reports to pursue non-faculty agendas. One of us recalls being baffled at a trustee dinner party when raising the topic of addi tional funding for a small, high-quality graduate program in the humanities and receiving silence. As associate deans, we try to reduce the sting of such disappointment by reminding colleagues that not every committee meeting will result in a successful con version of others' thinking. Batting 0.300 is considered commend able in baseball. It is also a realistic and praiseworthy performance
at meetings with non-academics in which the dispensation of resources is the subject of conversation. Those scholars who persist in meeting people from other parts of one's institution, and outside campus, learn over time some elemental yet important facts about (1) who does what on cam pus, (2) the long train of formal and informal decision-making processes by which any policy is initiated on campus and imple
mented, and (3) the economic pressures behind policy develop To this point, we have argued that to increase their clout in the ment. Such learning never occurs quickly because it arises only battle over scarce resources, faculty members in the humanities from experience. But the lengthy and arduous education about PS * January 2009 151
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Profession: Preparing to Fight the Good Fight life outside one's department is necessary if faculty members are to break from an isolated understanding of their situation and are to impart their unique values to people with different
outlooks.
mittee lacked formal authority to destroy, combine, and redefine
departments, the number of reorganization proposals advanced by upper administration declined sharply after this new commit
tee demonstrated the seriousness with which it took its task. In
To be effective in making even incremental and partial gains,
another case, department chairs in a college inserted themselves into the process of choosing an interim dean. Although they had
faculty members must put together intemal and external coali tions and alliances. These depend both on having built relation been told that the provost alone would choose the interim dean ships in other settings and in spreading clear, concise information after receiving nominations, the chairs requested and obtained to the various participants. One of our universities recently imple the power to screen and limit the pool of candidates considered mented new work-family policies that allow faculty who become by the provost. The chairs thus were able to indirectly but effec parents to extend the tenure clock. Although earlier but still recent tively shape their fates. Finally, faculty can also employ the politics of coercion and discussions of similar proposals had encountered resistance, this threat. It is worth recalling that medieval academics belonged to time those seeking change used a process that generated broad guilds that checked the exercise of authority based on tradition consensus for change. A small group of faculty gathered informa tion about policies at other universities, then wrote a draft pro and charisma (Clark 2006). Modem universities are obviously more posal, and then convinced a number of senior faculty and bureaucratized than their progenitors (Kaplan 2006, 220). Still, through collective bodies-such as unions and senates-faculty mid-level administrators to sign a letter of support. Changes that have improved the lives of faculty would not have been adopted members continue to defend their time; and the standards of mod
without the patient cultivation of a coalition among individuals ern academic guilds (disciplines) remain central to teaching, hir who do not normally communicate and work with each other. A ing, and peer evaluation. The guild-based traditions of universities similar coalition-building dynamic enhanced the lives of gradu provide legitimate bases of collective action. Administrators who refuse to take seriously faculty voices risk ate students, including increasing graduate stipends. uprisings. They therefore tend to listen whenever a department head or center director has patiently gathered allies from across BUREAUCRACY AS A SPECTER? and outside the campus. At both of our universities, efforts by "The non-bureaucratic administration of any large social struc titular leaders to close an economically "weak" academic program ture rests in some way upon thefact that existing social, material, were staved off by angry faculty who publicized their concerns at orhonorificpreferences and ranks are connected with adminis public forums on campus and who communicated with potential trativefunctions and duties." friends off campus.3 In short, faculty members have more potential to shape their -Max Weber (1946, 224) destinies than the bureaucratic nightmare ofWeber suggests. Pol A skeptic might respond that the onerous process of learning itics of argumentation, negotiation, favors, and tumult are all the interests and priorities of groups on and off campus is un options if faculty members choose to become savvy practitioners necessary. It is easier to see administrators as unthinking paper of the political arts, both within and outside of their institutions.
pushers, who roughly resemble Weber's classic portrait of a bureaucrat-a follower of standard operating procedures who con scientiously and uncritically obeys fixed processes. This bureau crat "cannot squirm out of the apparatus in which he is harnessed ... he is only a single cog in an ever-moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed route of march" (Weber
1946, 228). This fatalistic view of university politics is partly true, of course.
But it is also misleading. True, legal, and contractual protocols guide hiring and tenure processes and administrators sometimes inflexibly adhere to past procedures and precedents when allocat
ing resources. Still, as we have stressed at the outset, the univer sity also contains multiple groups and power centers, and therefore
opportunities to create alliances and combine resources. More over, many initiatives, such as the establishment of a new inter disciplinary program, continue to be decided the old-fashioned way: through persuasion, promises, and favors. Bureaucratic pre dictability and conformity exist alongside (and in tension with) the dialogue and glad-handing. At the same time, faculty members can take advantage of the bureaucratic aspects of academic life. As every political scientist knows, power is imbedded in the rules of the game. Preserving and changing procedures are ways of gaining influence or even control. For instance, at one of our institutions, the Faculty Sen ate created a new process and new committee to investigate and evaluate reorganization proposals. Although this assessment com
CONCLUSION To win resources, faculty members need to recognize the values and interests of the non-academic world, to appreciate incremen tal growth and patient coalition building, and to be aware of insti tutional opportunities and traditions that previous generations of scholars have established. Battling for resources can be a time consuming (and therefore unwanted) undertaking that distracts one from research, students, and study. Few of us entered gradu ate school to hobnob with administrators, professional publicists, fundraisers, and other riffraff. Of course, many academics may continue to decide that they want to refrain from the fray. But
from our (perhaps compromised) positions as associate deans, it appears that if scholars in the humanities and social sciences are to be politically effective within their workplaces, they must under
stand their economic environment and its pressures, and become friends with non-academics on and off campus. In other words, faculty can better advance their values and interests by embrac
ing pluralism, appreciating the goals and priorities of non academics, and combining a spirit of citizen activism with democratic humility. NOTES i. For some perspectives on the experience of holding administrative posts, see Dowdall and Dowdall (2005), Durfee (2003), Thies (2003), and Waltzer (2000).
152 PS * January 2009
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2. Our ideal academic environment provides support for the work of broadening and conveying knowledge, promotes critical and analytical thinking, respects traditions of thought and inquiry even when there is no overt practical applica tion of those traditions, employs peer assessment of research and teaching, and protects academic freedom. 3. While faculty can take severe actions with difficult administrators, including passing a vote of no confidence, those steps have their own dangers. Adminis trative upheaval can create a chaotic environment that undermines positive relationships and plans in progress, and the replacement administrator may be
no better.
Durfee, Mary. 2003. "Name This Job: A Faculty Member Becomes a Novice Admin istrator." PS: Political Science and Politics 36 (October): 805-06. Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. 1961. The Federalist Papers. Ed. Clinton Rossiter. New York: Penguin Books.
Kaplan, Gabriel E. 2006. "Institutions of Academic Governance and Institutional Theory." In Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, Volume XXI, ed. John C. Smart. The Netherlands: Springer. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1978. The Communist Manifesto. In The Marx Engels Readers, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: W.W. Norton.
REFERENCES Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2007. College Learning for the New Global Century: A Report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education & America's Promise. Washington, D.C.: Association of American
Colleges and Universities. Clark, William. 2006. Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dowdall, George, and Jean Dowdall. 2005. "Crossing Over to the Dark Side." Chronicle of Higher Education, September 23. http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/ 2005/o9/200509230ic/careers.html.
Plato. 1961. The Republic. In The Collected Dialogues of Plato including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Thies, Cameron G. 2003. "Reflections on Assuming Responsibilities as an Unten ured Assistant Professor." PS: Political Science and Politics 36 (July): 447-50. Waltzer, Herbert. 2000. "Take the Plunge: A Plea for, and Advice on, Entering University Administration." PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (December):
857-61.
Weber, Max. 1946. "Bureaucracy." In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.
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