On April 2, 2012, the American Association of University Professors and Pennsylvania State University faculty hosted a symposium--The Future University: Academic Freedom, Shared Governance, and Contingent Faculty.
This post includes the conference program information, conference program and the text of my presentation to the conference: Between Faculty, Administration, Board, State, and Students: On the Relevance of a Faculty Senate in the Modern U.S. University.
The Conference program provides:
Who is
really in charge of a university? The faculty? The President? The Trustees?
What are
“contingent faculty”– and how do their conditions of employment affect student
learning?
How are program openings and closings, and the creation
and elimination of majors and minors, determined?
What role should students play in the governance of
a university?
What is the AAUP ... and what is academic freedom?
______________________
These
and other questions will be discussed at the
AAUP Symposium at Penn State University
The Future University: Academic Freedom, Shared
Governance, and Contingent Faculty
April
2, 2012 9:30-5
________________
(From AAUP web site, May 2005)
The conference program included the following speakers:
AAUP
Symposium at Penn State University
The Future University: Academic Freedom, Shared
Governance, and Contingent Faculty
April 2, 2012
S5 Osmond
Laboratory
9:30 am Michael Bérubé
President, Modern
Language Association
Chair, Subcommittee of
AAUP Committee A on Program Closures
Opening
remarks
10 am John
Hinshaw
President, Pennsylvania
AAUP
AAUP
101, or, Why Are We Doing This?
11 am Susan
Squier
Brill Professor of Women's Studies and
English, Penn State University
“Something
of an Academic Orphan”: The Closure of STS (Science, Technology, and Society)
and the Gendered Corporate University
12 noon Larry
Catá Backer
Professor of Law and International Affairs, Penn
State University
Incoming Chair, Penn
State Faculty Senate
Between
Faculty, Administration, Board, State, and Students: On the Relevance of a Faculty Senate
1 pm Lunch*
2 pm Gary
Marotta
Professor of History,
Buffalo State University
The
Arrogance of University Administrations: Tales of a Recovering Administrator
3 pm Elizabeth
Landers
Assistant Teaching Professor in French,
Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Languages, University of Missouri-St.
Louis; co-chair, Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession, Modern
Language Association
Contingent
Labor: National Perspectives, Local Solutions
4 pm Rodney
Hughes
Ph.D. candidate in
Higher Education, Penn State University
Member of Phi Beta Kappa
Faculty,
Staff, and Student Participation in Higher Education Governing Boards
5 pm Michael
Bérubé
Wrapup
_______________
What follows is the text of my presentation at the conference, revised slightly to fix typos from the original and to add a few explanatory footnotes that might prove helpful to the reader:
April 2,
2012
Presentation of Larry Catá Backer
W.
Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar & Professor of Law,
Professor
of International Affairs
Pennsylvania
State University
239
Lewis Katz Building
University
Park, PA 16802
1.814.863.3640
(direct), lcb11@psu.edu
Let me start with thanks to the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP)[1]
and to the faculty, staff and administrators who helped make this conference
possible. I also want to thank you for
your willingness to hear us out, to permit us, each in our own small way, to
offer perspectives and ideas that, taken together, might suggest the norms,
structures, and cultures of governance that are central to the legitimate
operation of the modern university. This occasion comes at a particularly timely
point, providing me with an opportunity, as the incoming chair of the
Pennsylvania State University Faculty Senate[2]
to present my views about the state of shared governance and to suggest the
policy issues that will be important in the coming years. I also offer an apology: in events like these, people like me are
usually called upon to describe a problem, posit a theoretical basis or model
for approaching analysis, and then apply that model to produce a sometimes
elegant solution to the problem.
Lamentably, I come to you today with no answers. Age
and experience have given me enough sense to realize that answers are always a
reflection of the way in which a question is framed. To produce the right question is more
important than to extract an answer from the wrong question. And so, rather
than try to produce answers to questions fashioned for that purpose, I hope,
instead, to suggest the problem and to consider whether there is even a way to
consider approaches to analysis. For
that purpose, what I will offer are observations of the articulation of power
and power relationships within an institution that is at once neither organ of
the state, economic corporation, civil society organization or charitable
apparatus. I will suggest the fragility of
power within complex organizational structures and lament the push,
increasingly institutionalized, in the construction of a-symmetrical power
relationships in which the appearance of participation is heightened while its
actual effects are diminished, in which servility increasingly comes to
represent the most rewarded form of service.
And so, at last, to the problem, and the topic of my
remarks—shared governance.[3]
I will consider shared governance within the increasingly contested governance
space of the U.S. public research university.
My contextual focus will be on its most fragile element, a faculty
senate. This organ of governance is
sometimes trotted out for photo opportunity moments as proof of democratic
engagement within non-profit organizations with a teaching and research mission. On some occasions it plays a formal role as a
source of advice and consultation on matters of direct concern to faculty, the
substance of which might or might not be embraced in whole or in part to by
those with authority to act. More rarely, some of its members could be invited
to play a critical role, though one usually behind the scenes and limited to the
expression of faculty sentiment with a chance of influencing decisions or
influencing thinking about potential action by those with power. On the rarest
occasions, some members of the Senate may find themselves permitted a very
small space in which to hear and speak to the most pressing matters of
administration in the wake of crisis.
Most of the time, however, the reality is quite
distinct. I recall more than one
occasion where members of faculty and administration (usually unit
administrators) will ask pose questions going to the relevance of the faculty
governance organization—for example, is a university faculty senate relevant to
the modern public research university? What can a university faculty senate do that
can’t be more effectively undertaken by efficient and well-meaning unit
administrators and their entourages or by local unit faculty? This position is
made stronger where administrative entourages are growing at faster rate than
faculty hires. I have also heard of unit
administrators and their subordinates who mock the Senate and sometimes seek to
impede its work. The best expression of
their sentiment went something like this: “There is no bigger waste of my time
than having to deal with the Senate.”
Faculty members are increasingly understood as units
of production—factors in an human production line that is meant to apply
processes to students that stamp out graduates of uniform quality who are fit
for specific purposes, and also to produce knowledge of some utility to the
currently favored crop of knowledge consumers—commercial enterprises and the
state.[4] In this factory setting, faculty governance
participation appears to be a distraction valued mostly as gesture. Reduced to the service component of mandatory
faculty responsibility,[5]
it remains a marginal element of everything from annual reviews to the review
of the sufficiency of tenure files, reflecting and simultaneously deepening the
production line mentality that is usually clothed in more elegant
language. Its exercise can result in
retaliation, sometimes of the most sophisticated and subtlest kind, sometimes
quite crude, especially far from the eyes or cares of even
governance-sympathetic central administrators. Faculty governance is sometimes
thought to serve best when its ambitions are quite humble—for example when
governance is understood as service to low level administrators, or when it
serves to more efficiently respond to issues of administrative organization and
rule implementation for the management of students, staff and faculty
themselves.
High-level and policy governance is beyond the usual
realm of the acceptable; as a consequence, faculty sometimes cultivate a
deferential attitude that can appear to slide toward a servility of a kind that
reminds more of the Commons in Tudor England than of modern notions of
participation and engagement. The tension between service and servility, and
the influence of faculty governance cultures that favor one or the other, complicates
the development of cultures of governance.
But this tension also reflects a reality in which the cultural
parameters of corporate governance and state administration practices—grounded
in power hierarchy, division of function, chain of command, and obedience—have
come to dominate thinking about the way a university, like a governmental administrative
agency or a large multi-unit corporation, ought to be governed. Within these
structures, the idea of faculty governance is a rare and sometimes
unappreciated thing indeed. It suggests a culture of governance that posits
more horizontal relationships among stakeholders in the enterprise, and a more
sensitive degree of commitment to consultation, inclusion, engagement, and
accountability, that is absent increasingly from emerging foundations of
institutional cultures, especially outside the university.
All of this I have come to understand better, and with
increasing alarm, since I began my service on the Penn State University Faculty
Senate, as I studied our behavior and that of faculties in our brother and
sister institutions against those ideal types proffered for our consumption. I have begun to understand this more formally
as a set of tensions inherent in the position of a university faculty senate within
a governance structure that places it between the hierarchical structures of university administration, the political structures of state and
federal governments, the fiduciary
structures of the Board of Trustees, and contested among them all, the academic structures of knowledge
production and sharing from which administrators, politicians, regulators,
board members and consumers (employers and alumni) derive benefits from which
the profitability of the enterprise is (un)conventionally but increasingly measured. That is, as the title of my talk suggests, I
will speak today about the Faculty Senate between faculty, administration,
board, state and students.
I will start with a very brief review of the
foundations. The conceptual structures
of shared governance are fairly well known but it is always useful to nod in
the direction of sources. I then
consider the realities of shared governance.
I will suggest the context and the difficulties of shared governance
within the a-symmetric power arrangements that are the hallmark of public
universities. What I hope to flesh out
is an outline of the context in which shared governance might be measured by
its form with little attention paid to the effectiveness of its function. I will then consider where a faculty senate
can fit into this governance enterprise.
I will consider whether shared governance has come to mean more a
sharing of the burdens of administration than a sharing of governance. I will end with a consideration of how I see
the Penn State Faculty Senate playing a more engaged role within the
constraints of shared governance.
The Framework of Shared Governance: Normative structure and Operating Principles.
The general principles that reflect the common culture
of shared governance in the context of universities are well known. The AAUP, of course, has been instrumental in
developing and maintaining a good part of this culture. I refer, of course, to the 1915 Declaration
of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, [6]
the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,[7]
the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities,[8]
and the 1994 Statement on the Relationship of Faculty Governance to Academic
Freedom.[9]
From the 1915 Statement emerged the modern
understanding of the special role of faculty within a modern research
university, one that resists easy conversion to the routinized hierarchical
relationship of employee and superior.
The 1915 Statement characterized the relationship between faculty and
the university as one in which the faculty “are the appointees, but not in any
proper sense the employees, of the [university trustees]. For, once appointed,
the scholar has professional functions to perform in which the appointing
authorities have neither competency nor moral right to intervene. . . .[10]
As a consequence, the relationship between faculty, administration and trustee
are necessarily not strictly hierarchical, but instead invoke a sharing of
responsibility for the work of the university:
A university is a great and
indispensable organ of the higher life of a civilized community, in the work of
which the trustees hold an essential and highly honorable place, but in which
the faculties hold an independent place, with quite equal responsibilities—and
in relation to purely scientific and educational questions, the primary
responsibility.[11]
That responsibility extended to the production of
knowledge based on independent inquiry, to the training of students, and to the
development of expertise for the advancement of the general welfare of the
state.[12]
The 1915 Statement, then, is grounded in another great principle of the
academic establishment—academic freedom,[13]
an explanation of which was the primary objective of that statement. While the normative conception and
operationalization of academic freedom was ultimately elaborated in the 1940
Statement, the fundamental conception of the nature of the relationship between
faculty and university—the idea of the academic as appointee but not employee,
of the autonomy of the scholar’s undertaking within the university—remains as
strong today as it was in 1915, as a matter of internal practice to which a
university may but need not subscribe as a matter of binding internal
organization.
That idea of the faculty member as appointee and
autonomous actor within the government of the university had another
significant consequence. Inherent in
that principle was another, that of shared governance—for if the academic was
not to be understood as being in a conventional employment relationship with
the university, and if the scholar was expected to contribute to the training
of students and the public good, then those interests would require
participation in the operation of the institution in which they conducted their
work.
The idea of the fundamental importance of governance
participation as central to the integrity of academic freedom was at the heart
of the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities. Its basic premise was what it called “joint
effort”: the necessity for joint action among governing board, administration
faculty and students to increase capacity to solve educational problems.[14]
It followed from this premise that governance principles are necessary to avoid
the confusion or conflict that would result from institutional usurpations by
one of the coordinate governance bodies.[15]
For my purposes here, I focus on the role of the 1966 Statement in clarifying
two distinct aspects of the faculty role in governance. The first is the normative standard—the
fundamental premises of the faculty role. The second is the operational
standard—the fundamental premises of the organization required to permit the
exercise of the faculty role in governance.
The fundamental normative standard is grounded in
stakeholder engagement, understood as both an institutional commitment to
transparency and an equally strong commitment to engagement in decision-making.[16]
Transparency is understood in its dual role—the provision of meaningful
information at a meaningful time and in a meaningful form—and transparency as a
mechanism for effective participation in governance. The 1966 Standard, for
example, speaks to “Effective planning demands that the broadest possible
exchange of information and opinion should be the rule for communication among
the components of a college or university.”[17]
For faculty, the principal substantive governance role centers on “such
fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction,
research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the
educational process.”[18]
The operational standard consists of two
requirements: first, an institutionalized participation in decision making,
either in an initiator or consultative role, and second, a principle of
deference where the decision falls closest to the heart of the core governance
role of the stakeholder. In the case of
faculty, primary responsibility for decision-making, and the greatest deference
by governing boards and administration, center on the core normative governance
role of faculty relating to curriculum, instruction, research, faculty status
and educationally related student life.[19]
In these areas, the faculty’s role in decision-making should be at its
strongest and both governing board and administration should defer to the
greatest extent. With respect to other
aspects of university governance, where the responsibilities of governing board
and administration are paramount—strategic planning, legal compliance and risk
management, budgeting, selection of administrative personnel, physical
resources management and the like—faculty engagement remains significant but
deference to faculty views might be sometimes significantly reduced. The degree
of deference, or put another way, the degree of responsibility for governance, is
a function of the subject for decision and the context in which decision-making
occurs—or as the 1966 Statement suggests, “differences in the weight of each
voice, from one point to the next, should be determined by reference to the
responsibility of each component for the particular matter at hand.”[20]
The 1966 Statement also speaks to the organization of
the faculty voice in governance—after all there is little value in vesting
authority without institutionalizing its exercise in some sort of efficient and
representative manner. That institutionalization calls for the creation of a
government internal to faculty so that the views of the body of the faculty
could be articulated, presented and advanced effectively. In the words of the 1966 Statement: “Agencies
for faculty participation in the government of the college or university should
be established at each level where faculty responsibility is present. An agency should exist for the presentation
of the views of the whole faculty.”[21]
These agencies, then, can be constituted as faculty senates at the university
level and as local faculty organizations within departments, colleges and units
in a multi-campus, multidivisional research university—like Penn State. These institutions, like the faculty they
represent, are meant to be constructed as autonomous entities, governed by
their own terms and without interference by the coordinate governing
groups—principally administration, governing board, or the organs of state
government when acting as an internal stakeholder—though created in
consultation with and jointly approved by all stakeholders.[22]
With the 1994 Statement, the AAUP added the last
layer to governance within the university.
In the context of institutionalizing shared governance and deepening its
normative framework, the 1994 Statement sought to expand on the meaning of
deference in shared governance. It was
meant to remind all stakeholders, in part at least, that deference was not an
invitation to ignore a coordinate partner in governance. It also reminded that the object of the
shared governance model of the 1966 Statement was not to cabin, and by
cabining, reduce the role of the faculty to a very narrow slice of university
life—such as the construction and offering of courses. Instead, tying together the 1915, 1940 and
1966 Statements, it made a case for the broad construction of the faculty role
in governance and the importance of faculty engagement in most aspects of
university governance, even as that role varied from consultation to a
principal role in the fashioning of rules and policy. It also included a
warning, taken in part from the 1966 AAUP Statement on Professional Ethics, a
warning that has been increasingly overlooked to the detriment of shared
governance in this century—“’Professors accept their share of faculty
responsibilities for the governance of their institution.’ If they do not,
authority will drift away from them, since someone must exercise it , and if
the members of the faculty do not, others will.”[23]
The Reality
of Shared Governance: Is Authority
Drifting Away?
A very pretty picture of governance emerges from this
review of a century of AAUP Statements.
Governance at the university is not grounded in the principles of the
organization of economic enterprises or even of charitable and religious
institutions—grounded in hierarchy, obedience, and power based differentiation
of function and control. Instead, the
university is conceived as a collaborative enterprise to a greater extent, one
in which its coordinate branches—the governing board, the administration, the
faculty and students, work together, exercising their authority in harmony and
for the greater glory of the institution for whose interests they all
work.
But reality sometimes paints a less gloriously bright
picture.[24] And it may be time to consider more carefully
the warning in the 1994 Statement. Let
me suggest some clouds on the shared governance horizon that apply generally to
all university institutions and that in some form might also represent the
experiences of some here at Penn State.
My focus is on six (6) challenges to faculty governance, though some of
these also touch on the integrity of governance by the board and leadership by
the administration.
1. The
role of the state is changing and the courts provide little protection through
the application of law. For almost a
generation, political leaders have increasingly viewed the administration of
the university, and the management of its product—research and teaching—as an
increasingly important focus of state policy.
This interest is not unique to this era—in periods of crisis or
instability, the political branches have always focused on managing the levers
of social, cultural and economic controls, including the university. But
the character of the current wave of state interventionism also has substantial
effects on the organization of university management. These include a number of
issues that remain unresolved. One is
the potential conflicts of interest in the role of political officials in the
internal management of the enterprise—these more directly affect the governance
role of boards of trustees. For example,
when an elected official or an appointed official who serves at the will of an
elected official acts as a member of a board of trustees, is that person bound
to act solely in the best interests of the institution or may that official
breach that duty because of the overriding duty to the electorate? If the latter is the case, then it is no
longer clear that the board of trustees can be understood as acting in the
interests of the university it is meant to serve but instead that the
university has dissolved and become an appendage of another organization. Another is the role of the representative
bodies of the state and federal governments to more precisely manage the form
and content of education. It was not all
that long ago that state legislators oversaw the content of materials used in
the classroom and insisted that certain courses be taught or taught in a
certain way.[25] While the power of the state is largely
beyond question in these respects, principles of transparency might dictate
more clear and full disclosure of the role of the state in the operation of the
academic enterprise, and perhaps even a more transparent justification for its
exercise.
Equally important, governance remains almost entirely
a matter of internal organization developed through and enforced under the
rules and other contractual relations that were created in furtherance of the establishment
of the organization of the university. Though there is some law, especially
constitutional law, that at times protects the speech of faculty,[26]
the application of that law provides little comfort. It is grounded in an assessment of the value
of the speech outside the academic community and involves a post facto
balancing of interests that are of little help in determining before the fact
whether actions taken in a governance capacity will be protected against
retaliation.[27] Indeed, from the court’s perspectives, the
AAUP’s 1915 vision of the role of the academic is rejected as a matter of law.[28]
The judiciary has resisted calls to read into law any form of special
relationship between academic and university, instead starting from the
presumption that there is substantially no difference in the main between
faculty and any other employee of any other enterprise.[29]
Though the Supreme Court has left open the question of the applicability of the
recent Garcetti case,[30]
the courts have in the usual course treated internal governance matters and the
protection of conduct related thereto as an employment issue. As a result, and
giving substantial weight to managerial and administrative concerns centered on
the smooth running of an organization,[31]
this approach has encouraged some in the business of education to treat the
role of the university academic as little more than another cog in an education-industrial
complex and subject to the same rules of chain of command and production line
efficiency as people who are employed in a production line assembling goods for
sale. Yet, the courts have also shown a
wiliness to respect the adoption of the vision of the 1915 Statement as a
matter of internal university corporate governance and enforce those
understandings in contract.[32]
For faculties, those mean the need to more aggressively and precisely ensure
that the vision of university governance espoused in theory becomes written
into the law of university organization and enforceable as such, for example,
as in binding job descriptions or terms of employment.[33] For that purposes, whistleblower statutes are
rarely enough both because they tend to be narrowly applicable and are easily
contested on the facts.[34]
Failure to institutionalize protections for faculty exercising their governance
roles makes cultures of impunity and bullying, treated next, easier to sustain
and harder to eradicate.
2. Cultures
of impunity are sometimes tolerated.
The role of the state may be a destabilizing force but not an
unprecedented one in the operation of the academy and the distribution of
governance power within it. More troubling
are deviations from the idealized model of governance. Among the most serious
are the cultivation and tolerance of cultures of impunity, supported by
administrative governance models that do little to provide avenues for
remediation. Impunity takes three major
forms at the university: first administrative overreaching, and second
retaliation and bullying.
A. Administrative overreaching is a significant threat to shared governance. These can include deliberate avoidance of
consultation, or accidental failures to consult on matters of shared governance,
or even attempted and sometimes successful intrusions of administrators into
the heart of the administrative organs of faculty governance. Since consultation is at the heart of shared
governance, the management of that process, and the control of the use of consultation,
both without accountability for abuse by administrators of that management and control,
can significantly skew the contributions of faculty to discussion. If
administrators can determine the time, place and manner of consultation by
faculty, consultation itself becomes little more than theatre, and in this case
theatre for the amusement of the governing board. If the governing board encourages this
stage-managing, it suggests commitment only to consultation in form, not in
fact. Indeed, it is not clear why consultation should be managed and thus
controlled at all in the context of shared governance, It is true that
sometimes administration officials know what is best—but many times
consultation provides additional perspectives that might challenge even the
most absolutely certain knowledge. Even
the easy case, the low lying fruit, of administrative decision making might
profit from the sort of consultation that could lead to better or better
accepted decision-making that preserves the integrity of the process of shared
governance. Moreover, failures of consultation can have a significantly
demoralizing effect, eventually corroding shared governance so that it remains
a formal husk covering a rotted and shriveled body.
Yet equally damaging to the body of shared governance
is what appear to be overt and covert efforts to usurp and corrupt the internal processes of faculty governance. Overt usurpation usually involves
administrative efforts to expand control in matters where faculty authority is
traditionally at its greatest. There is a
noticeable tendency among university officials at the middle levels of
administration—deans, chancellors, and their subordinates—to move to usurp the
faculty role in governance. This can be
effectuated formally—we have heard of cases in which such officials have
insisted on the need for them to become leaders of the faculty governance
organization, or where officials have insisted that they should have full
authority over the development of courses and curricula. Covert overreaching is more insidious. It can appear through a strategy of primus
inter pares projection of administrative voices into policy and governance
debates within faculty organizations. I
have understood the way in which administrative voices—and administrators
cannot serve two masters, they will serve the master who can terminate their
administrative position[35]—purporting
to speak as colleagues have sought to privilege the administrative perspective
(their own) in faculty debates about an issue. Debate is chilled where
administrators become too eager to share their views within the debates of
non-administration colleagues. Where
participation might dictate self-control, an over-eagerness to project voice
and manage outcomes becomes clear and clearly troubling. Both formal and informal intrusion by
administrative officials in the internal governance of faculty organizations
corrupts the integrity of any shared governance system as surely as any
assertion, for example, by the U.S. President of power to appoint members of
Congress ex officio to participate in their activities.
B. Retaliation
and Bullying are closely tied to cultures of impunity. Drawing on the 1915
Statement, the 1994 AAUP Statement reminded of the intimate connection between
faculty governance and academic freedom.
“Protecting academic freedom on campus requires ensuring that a
particular instance of faculty speech will be subject to discipline only when
that speech violates some central principle of academic morality, as, for
example, where it is found to be fraudulent.”[36]
More importantly, the 1994 Statement takes what for some is a radical
position—that it is for faculty in the first instance to assess whether faculty
speech constitutes such a violation of a central principle of academic
morality.[37]
Yet, most of us live within academic cultures in
which the subject of administrative, or much more rarely governance board or
political branch retaliation, is a constant topic of conversation. Faculty in
any institution will know which dean has what sort of reputation for punishing
dissent. Faculties tend to know which
administration official is a bully, and more importantly, which administration
official appears to be more successful at bullying not merely their own faculty
but also central administrative officials themselves. Quid pro quo retaliation
is the most pernicious, but consequential retaliation is not uncommon, the “if
you fail to approve ‘X’ then you can be sure I will do nothing to prevent bad
thing ‘Y’ from happening” is also not uncommon.
A sustained hostility to the
governance work of the faculty can also have important repercussions, from the subversion
of efforts to provide faculty leadership support by way of teaching relief to the
promotion of dismissive attitudes toward the work of faculty governance
organizations. Retaliation chills discussion not merely between administration
and faculty but also among faculty themselves.
It has a strongly toxic effect upon the operation of the university, yet
university officials prefer to turn a blind eye to the cultures of retaliation,
relying instead on the assertion by individuals of Faculty Rights and Responsibilities
proceedings when administrators were careless enough to leave sufficient
evidence that in individual cases they might have crossed the line.
Cultures of retaliation, especially at universities
run on a diffuse administrative governance model like Penn State, are sustained
principally by a lack of substantial attention from central administration
officials. One wonders whether
retaliation, something easy to assert and difficult to prove, is usually
undervalued especially where an administrator is able to meet some other and
more administratively valuable goal. But
the toleration of retaliation has a powerfully corrosive effect on
governance. And it has an even more
corrosive effect on the integrity of the university and the protection of the
research and teaching missions of its faculty.
But faculty organizations sometimes share blame in
equal measure for retaliatory practices.
It is not unknown among faculties, and every faculty member is aware of
instances of faculty bullying and mob behavior.[38] These include instances of covertly enforced
isolation, a disinclination to respect the views of colleagues, usually
marginalized as offbeat, the social marginalization of the “cranky” or
“unusual” colleague, and the cultivation of academic judgments based on notions
of political advantage within a faculty. My personal favorite are those
faculties where an isolated faculty member becomes invisible—forgotten, not
spoken to, and even lower level administrators feel no shame in walking by them
without even the courtesy of an acknowledgement or “hello”. Where these efforts
are undertaken to curry favor with administration officials the corrupting
effects are horribly pernicious. We all
know of instances where faculty groups will seek to curry favor, sometimes with
the encouragement of administrative officials, by marginalizing the dissident
voice. Interestingly, these instances of bad behavior are usually understood in
hierarchical terms, something for a superior to control (even when she is the
problem) and not a matter for faculty governance.[39]
Important as well might be the criticism that Nancy Rappaport gently
made—because there are few consequences for irresponsible actions by faculty
organizations, there is a tension in shared governance that is hard to avoid.[40]
Not all of these problems lend themselves to
institutional correction through rules.
Some depend on the maintenance of cultural standards that require people
to live up to their social and governance obligations. Yet, as
the judiciary has mentioned in more than one case, it is within the power of
the university to extend a substantial measures of protection to those of its
stakeholders exercising governance power.
This, most universities have not done this well, if they have done it at
all. Penn State is no exception.
3. Cultures of impunity and the threat of
retaliation are not the only factors undermining the effectiveness of the ideal
of shared governance. Over the last
several decades, structural changes in
the constitution of faculty have themselves provided significant new
challenges. I will touch on two of
them: first the rise to prominence of
fixed term faculty within faculty ranks; and second, the construction of
faculty status hierarchies in multi-campus universities.
The idealized model of shared governance is grounded
on the assumption of a system in which virtually all faculty are tenured and
virtually all administrative personnel are drawn from the ranks of tenured
faculty. That combination is meant to assure common and shared values that make
the management of shared governance feasible.
The increasing use of non-faculty administrators has put substantial
pressure on this model, injecting into administrative ranks people with
substantial authority in governance and no evidence of shared cultural
values. But the predominance of faculty
with no hope or expectation of tenure, or of the full protections of academic
freedom that are grounded traditionally in tenure—faculty that now make up
almost 50% of the instructional and research faculty at Penn State, for example—has
significantly affected both the organization and operation of the internal
governance of faculty organizations.[41] More importantly, it has substantially
affected the issues of policy that are given priority. Issues of retaliation become more prominent
and assume a different character.
Likewise interference with activity and the scope of work duties also become
more common. The possibility of conflict
in the interests among faculty grow—tenured and fixed term faculty have
sometimes distinct interests and distinct priorities with respect to issues of
policy, instruction and expectations of service. Yet
virtually every university or college has managed to avoid a sustained and
critical discussion of these issues and their ramifications for governance.
Equally important are the role of faculty and the
evolution of faculty status hierarchies within multi-campus universities. At
multi-campus universities like Penn State, the ease with which faculties can be
divided along locational lines presents an ever present danger. It is altogether too easy to divide a faculty
along status lines dictated by the campus location where one teaches. Even the usual language describing a
multi-campus university can be telling—where a university labels the main
campus the “flagship,” where it begins to charge differential tuition or
permitting different standards for tenure and the like for “market” or other
reasons, all of these can begin to suggest a difference in quality and thus of
status within the university. I understand that there may be situations that
arise where faculties turn on themselves in this way to the advantage of one or
another group, or where they are encouraged to do this by administrators,
usually quietly. In the process, of
course, effective governance power flows out of faculty hands and into those of
unit administrators. A unified faculty requires a culture that embraces a
culture of equality among faculties in the various campuses of the
university. To the extent that Faculty
Senates fail to encourage this culture and to the extent that others seek, by
word or action, to undermine this sense of collective equality corrupts shared
governance as surely as those who would distinguish between tenured and fixed
term faculty in the constitution of a faculty voice in governance.
4. Ironically enough, emerging cultures of assessment and benchmarking
may also serve to diminish governance, and especially the governance role of
faculty. Assessment cultures use metrics
to end-run discussion on policy by hiding policy determinations behind the
bland façade of information collection and monitoring. Yet assessment is itself
a values and policy-laden exercise.[42] Its conceptualization and execution
incorporates sometimes-important policy choices; referring back to my opening
remarks—skillfully constructing questions can provide you the answers you want
and avoid those you do not. What makes assessment cultures more dangerous is
the unthinking willingness of administrations to assign these as purely
administrative tasks, and to employ academics, staff and other administrators
as the technicians who are meant to operationalize assessment along the lines
conceived by administration. The
blandness itself is meant to provide strong argument against interference with
purely technical matters of data harvesting and neutral assessment.[43]
To avoid faculty consultation and engagement in those matters because of the
technical nature of the exercise can have a substantial chilling effect on
governance. The fact that assessment
might be required by outside accrediting agencies or others is hardly an excuse
to subvert governance by converting it into a technocratic exercise.
Likewise, cultures of benchmarking tend to hide as much as they purport to help decision-making. Its greatest effect, however, is to remove
policy discussion from the table in favor of a mindless obsession with
imitation and the comfort of protection in numbers. We are all aware of the power of
benchmarking, and of the increasing use of benchmarking as a substitute for
discussion. But governance by pack
behavior is hardly what anyone had in mind when constituting the academy as a
site for shared governance and it would be useful to avoid using benchmarking
as either a shield to protect against consultation or as a sword to evade governance. All too often, benchmarking serves as an excuse for timidity and a justification for
inertia, paralysis and an avoidance of policy discussion.
5. Narrowing the Scope of Faculty Governance, from engagement to sharing
the burdens of low level administration and the remoteness of the Senate
organization reduce the quality of faculty governance. The move to disengaged technocracy evident in
the effort toward regimes of assessment and benchmarking has an overt character
as well. That character is marked by the
move to substantially narrowing the role of the faculty senate to a technical
one centered on the administration of courses.
The effect, of course, is to remove faculty more and more from the
center of discussion of policy and more toward the role of helpmate to
department heads and other front line administrators concerned with the smooth
operation of the course delivery system and the mechanics of degree
production. Where a faculty senate
confines the bulk of its work to this goal, as worthy as it is, to the
exclusion of others, it substantially reduces it governance role. More importantly, the character of that role
changes substantially—from an autonomous voice representing those producing and
conveying knowledge, to a mere appendage of the administration of the
university.
This narrowing of the role of the Senate has a more
perverse effect—it tends to change the sense among the Senate of the
stakeholders whose interests the Senate represents. More like an institutional department head,
the Senate can begin to take on administration culture and outlook. But worse, the Senate and its leadership can
grow remote from both its members and the faculty unit organizations that are
its lifeblood. I have more than once
heard whispered, and not unreasonably, the sentiment that the Senate leadership
tends to treat its members as objects to be managed, and that they have lost a
vibrant connection with either the members or more importantly the units.
6. The
role of students on governance and the classroom has been changing appreciably. The 1966 Statement spoke to the emerging
trends of listening to students so that they might speak without institutional
reprisal, increasing the space for student participation in governance,
ensuring academic due process to students and to participate in the knowledge
production life of the university. Most
of these aspirational ideas have become a reality. Students have assumed a greater ownership
role in their education; increases in tuition, among other things, have ensured
this result. Greater investments through
tuition and the larger stakes for students in the quality of education and the
reputation of the university into which they enroll have also heightened a
willingness to increase the scope of participation. That has required a greater willingness on
the part of faculty to be more responsive to student needs, or to engage more
aggressively in better-shaping the understanding of those needs by students and
others. Sometimes faculty have been less
than gracious in sharing this core responsibility, even as they clamor for a
greater role in those areas of responsibility nearer the heart of the
administrative and policy roles. In
this context, faculties have become somewhat protective, in everything from
general education to the development of curriculum and programs. This must
change.
How does a Faculty Senate Fit in Between State,
Board, Administration and Students.
In the face of these challenges how should one
approach the role of the faculty senate as idealized in the AAUP
Statements? Is there a real and
substantive role for a faculty Senate that is not obviated by local governance
or the good intentions of our friends in the administration, government, student
dorms and board of trustees? Should we be content to shape ourselves through
assessments constructed by administrators, benchmarking that aggregates
administrative and governing board priorities, and student evaluations that
seek to maximize student interests in self-advancement at the smallest possible
cost? Should we accept the realities of managerial abuse through retaliation
and interventions in governance? Should
we embrace the corporatist employee model requiring academic quietism and
obedience to those who know better in the service of the uniform production of
factors in the machinery of economic, social and political life?
By now you can imagine that this is hardly the path I
will urge. At the same time I understand
the constraints of shared governance: institutions change slowly, faculty
institutional leaders change with great frequency, faculty governance leaders
receive some but not sufficient institutional support, support that is
sometimes undermined by unit administrators, administration and board sometimes
presume that faculty interests are inherently interest-conflicted so that they
cannot perform governance tasks neutrally, a representative body like the
Senate cannot speak as clearly with one voice as can an individual
administrator clothed with substantial authority to speak, and outside actors
have an increasingly large voice in the operations and outcomes of university
governance. But I am also encouraged by
the positive—the good faith of many in the central administration and among some
unit administrators; the energy and commitment of a new generation of governing
board members committed to preserving the ideal of shared governance in a
dynamic environment that is in some aspects hostile both to the university and
to shared governance.
At Penn State, there are good governance “bones” and
a deep culture of respect for shared governance principles within the highest
levels of our administrative apparatus.
Under the leadership of Rodney Erickson, first as provost and now as
President, the central administration has affirmed its fidelity to general
principles of shared governance both privately and publicly. The University has undertaken to include
faculty in many of its administrative committees. The administration has worked hard to become
more transparent and inclusive. The
University President has a long tradition of reporting and standing for
questions at formal meetings of the University Faculty Senate and has
reaffirmed a commitment to more open governance.[44] The introduction of the Faculty Advisory Committee
to the President permits more intimate conversation on a regular basis between
President, Provost and selected Senate leaders.
The board of trustees under the leadership of Karen Peetz has reached
out to the Senate and has been undertaking a broad review of its operations.[45] I anticipate a closer working relationship
with the board in the coming years. The
Senate itself has slowly begun to shed some of its remoteness, encouraging
broader and deeper participation among its rank and file, and promoting closer
ties to unit faculty governance organizations. This deserves high praise.
Yet, as I suggested, there is still room for
improvement. The institutional role of
the Senate as faculty representative is sometimes ignored in administrative
efforts in which faculty is selected without consultation or connection with
the Senate. Administrators will
sometimes intervene where retaliation is overt but they can do more to instill
in their administrative personnel a commitment to shared governance and cultures
that do not tolerate retaliation. This includes a clearer and more enforceable
set of protections of faculty in their exercise of shared governance. Transparency
can be more robust, moving from mere reporting of events and programs to
providing information to enhance engagement.
Let me suggest some small steps
that the Penn State faculty Senate might undertake in the service of shared
governance during the very brief year I will serve as Chair of the University
Faculty Senate. These programs can
be organized into four broad categories.
The first
are programs to enhance
engagement. The University Faculty
Senate must shed its increasingly single-minded concentration on issues of the facilitation
of administrative mandates. For that
purpose the Senate must begin to more consciously participate in dialogue at
all levels of university decision-making.
Additional avenues of consultation and engagement need to be
pursued. The mechanics used for the
closure of the Science, Technology and Society program, where consultation was after
the fact at the central levels and virtually minimal elsewhere serves as a
reminder of the perils of adhering to the forms of engagement while avoiding
its real effects. Engagement is not
useful when limited to being the first to hear about decisions that have
already been taken.
The second
are programs to militate against retaliation. Retaliation affects all faculty in a governance role, but most
especially it is the principle focus of the problems of engagement by fixed term
faculty. But it also goes to the extent
to which the university is willing to provide real protection, enforceable
against its officers, for faculty exercising their shared governance duties—for
example by the adoption of a code of governance rights. It has a cultural
element as well—there ought to be as great a focus on cultures of retaliation
as there is about the culture of drinking at public universities.[46]
Changing cultures of impunity, especially in the form of retaliation and
overreaching is a critically important task.
That requires some additional sensitivity on the part of the
administration and less tolerance for the overreaching exuberance even by administrators
that are otherwise meeting other goals and objectives dear to central administrator’s
priorities. Programs implementing 360-degree review of administrative personnel
would be useful.[47]
The third
are programs enhancing transparency. I have suggested that there is no effective
governance without thorough and effective transparency. But transparency, both understood as data and
assessment, can sometimes be employed as a weapon to sharpen the disadvantages
among parties to decision making. Where
there are a-symmetrical power relationships—where administration controls the
levers of access to information, it does little good to provide a certain
enhanced level of information and data to administrative personnel and another,
and less enhanced level of access to faculty engaged in governance. In that
context, the excuse of privacy or sensitivity is hardy worthy—such data was not
private enough to prohibit its use in making a determination, by some,; if you
use it you should be prepared to share it.
But transparency means more than merely sharing
selected information with groups of people.
Transparency means opening proceedings to all stakeholders and engaging
stakeholders through consultation; it means accountability to those in whose
service one acts. It also means that
Senate meetings might cease being well-managed staged affairs that make good
theatre, and which follows corporate models, but which also discourages
participation. Greater opportunities for
comment on proposed action by Senate, board and administration would serve
transparency well. But so would an HR 40
style requirement that front line administrators list their annual goals and
account for their attainment.[48]
The fourth involves
flexing atrophied muscles. A very conservative and conventional
colleague of mine here on the Senate was fond of reminding me, as he tried to
teach me the ropes of governance at Penn State, that the greatest power of the
Senate lay in exposing problems in a clear and systematic way. The Senate is at its strongest in its governance
role when it carefully considers an issue.
For that purpose the Senate can make greater use of its forensic powers.
Some examples of ways in which the forensic power can be more usefully deployed
include seeking to assess administrators informally through the application of
its own metrics; producing programs discussing cultures of retaliation at the
University, and discussing institutional approaches to equity for fixed term
faculty and protection against overreaching by administrators.
Conclusion: It is Time to Return to Core Values in
Governance.
Almost a hundred years ago the AAUP began to describe
the role of the faculty in the administration of the modern university. It adhered to the idea, more ancient still,
of the academic as an institutional appointee with a substantial amount of
autonomy in her work and a necessary role in the governance of the
institution. It championed the integrity
of educational institutions grounded in the production of knowledge and its
dissemination free from the control of other actors. Faculty do not own or run the university but
neither are they owned or run by it.
Sadly, over the last century, radical ideologies, disguised as new
notions have sought to abandon this basic relationship between the university
and its faculty in favor of some flavor of paternalism. It remains to us, faculty, in concert with
our like minded brothers and sisters in administration and our governing
boards, among students and state officials, that we can reject these radical
incursions into the governance life of the university and preserve its role as
an authoritative site for the production and sharing of knowledge.
[1] The AAUP is a member driven
organization, the purpose of which “is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to
define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and
to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.” AAUP, About the AAUP, available http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/.
[2] From its web site: “The University Faculty Senate is the
representative body of Penn State's faculty with legislative authority on all
matters pertaining to the educational interests of the University and all
educational matters that concern the faculties of more than one college. In
addition, the Senate is recognized by the University as an advisory and
consultative body to the President on all matters that may affect the
attainment of the University's educational objectives.” Pennsylvania State University, University
Faculty Senate, available http://www.senate.psu.edu/.
[3] The idea of shared governance has
become both complicated and subject to substantial treatment by scholars and
others. For my purpose, I like to start
with Gary Olson’s approach:
The phrase
shared governance is so hackneyed that it is becoming what some linguists call
an "empty" or "floating" signifier, a term so devoid of
determinate meaning that it takes on whatever significance a particular speaker
gives it at the moment. Once a term arrives at that point, it is essentially
useless. . . . "Shared" governance has come to connote two
complementary and sometimes overlapping concepts: giving various groups of
people a share in key decision-making processes, often through elected
representation; and allowing certain groups to exercise primary responsibility
for specific areas of decision making.
Gary A. Olson, Exactly What is ‘Shared Governance’?, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23, 2009, available http://chronicle.com/article/Exactly-What-Is-Shared/47065/ .
See also Michael Shattock, Re-Balancing
Modern Concepts of University Governance, 56(3) Higher Education Quarterly 235-244 (2002); Judith Areen,
Accreditaiton Reconsidered, 96 Iowa L. Rev. 1471, 1475-77 (2011); .
[4] Consider a recent student critique
of assessment metrics at the University of Texas, Matt Daley, The University Assembly Line, The Daily Texan, Aug. 30, 2011,
available http://www.dailytexanonline.com/opinion/2011/08/30/university-assembly-line (“This predictable, mechanical
style of operation would certainly please a factory’s shareholders. But
students are not widgets, and universities of the first class are not factories.”).
[5] See Franklin
Silverman, Collegiality and Service for Tenure and Beyond (Westport, CT:
Praeger Books, 2004).
[6] American Association of University
Professors, 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic
Tenure, AAUP Bulletin, Volume I, Part 1 (December 1915): 17–39, reproduced
in AAUP
Policy (10th Ed., 2006) App. I, pp. 291-301 (hereafter the
“1915 Statement”), available http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/1915.htm.
[7] American Association of University
Professors, 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, in AAUP Policy (10th Ed., 2006),
pp, 3-11 (hereafter the “1940 Statement”), available http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/1940statement.htm.
[8] American Association of University
Professors, 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, in AAUP Policy (10th Ed., 2006),
pp. 135-140, available http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/governancestatement.htm.
[9] American Association of University Professors,
Report: On the Relationship of Faculty
Governance to Academic Freedom (June 1994), in AAUP
Policy (10th Ed., 2006), pp. 141-144, available https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDMQFjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fportfolio.du.edu%2Fportfolio%2Fgetportfoliofile%3Fuid%3D139295&ei=A1p6T9nZCsjf0QGy29D1Aw&usg=AFQjCNGnUJD7BXYJ7YGTsCQ7e9dOFcA3EA&cad=rja.
[10] 1915 Statement, page 294.
[11] 1915 Statement pg. 294.
[12] Ibid, pages 295-96.
[13] See, e.g.,
Matthew
W. Finkin & Robert C. Post, For The Common Good: Principles Of American Academic
Freedom (Yale University
Press 2009).
[14] 1966 Statement ¶1.
[15] 1966 Statement ¶ 2.b.
[16] 1966 Statement ¶2.a.
[17] 1966 Statement ¶ 2.c.
[18] 1966 Statement ¶ 5.
[20] 1966 Statement ¶ 2.a.
[21] 1966 Statement, ¶ 5.
[23] 1994 Statement quoting in part,
American Association of University Professors, 1966 Statement on Professional
Ethics, at ¶ 3, available http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/statementonprofessionalethics.htm?PF=1.
[24] The recent role of the Cornell
faculty Senate and its efforts to engage in shared governance in the creation
of eCornell provides a nice example. See, Risa L. Lieberwitz, Faculty in the Corporate University:
Professional Identity, Law and Collective Action, 16 Cornell J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 263,
306-310 (2007).
[25] Course
on Anti-Communism Upheld for Florida Schools, New
York Times, June 1, 1983 (“Amid cheers,
jeers and scattered choruses of the national anthem, the Florida House killed
an attempt today to do away with an ''Americanism versus Communism'' course
that had been a required part of the state's high school curriculum for more
than two decades.”).
[26] See, e.g., Pickering v. Board of
Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968).
[27] See, e.g., Edwards v. California
University of Pennsylvania, 156 F.3d 488 (3rd Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 525
U.S. 1143 (1999).
[28] These are touched on in Donna R.
Euben, Academic Freedom and Professorial Speech, Presentation to the 25th
Annual Conference on Law and Higher Education, Stetson University College of
Law, Feb. 2004, available http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/programs/legal/topics/prof-speech.htm.
[29] See, e.g., Boring v. Buncombe
County Board of Educ., 136 F.3d 364 (4th Cir., 1998) (but contrast the strong dissent,
id., Motz, J., dissenting, at 375); but note some willingness to concede a
governance space base don the traditions of the university related to academic
freedom, e.g., Mailloux v. Kiley, 323 F.Supp. 1387 (D.Mass,1971). d.
[30] Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410
8(2006) (“Justice Souter suggests today’s decision may have important
ramifications for academic freedom, at least as a constitutional value. See
post, at 12–13. There is some argument that expression related to academic
scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional
interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary
employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide
whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case
involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.” Id., at )
[31] See, Michael A. Olivas, Opinion
Piece: Garcetti: More Chilling Than the Unabomber, AAUP,
Protect the Faculty Voice Program, available http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/programs/protectvoice/opinions/Olivasop.htm.
The majoirty opinion suggested: “Government employers, like private employers, need a
significant degree of control over their employees’ words and actions; without
it, there would be little chance for the efficient provision of public services.” Garcetti, supra, at Section II.
[32] See, e.g., Greene v. Howard
University, 412 F.2d 1128 (D.C. Cir. 1969).
[33] This is a point emphasized in Garcetti, supra, Section III.
[34] For example, the Pennsylvania
Whistleblower Law (43 P.S. Sec. 1421 to 28) protects employees against
retaliation for good faith (understood as reasonable cause) reporting of waste
or wrongdoing, but defines wrongdoing narrowly to include only violation of law
designed to protect the public interest and not merely technical or minimal in
nature. They offer less than perfect
protection. See, Scott James Preston, Whistleblowing in
INtercollegate Athletics, University Business, March 28, 2012, available http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/whistleblowing-intercollegiate-athletics
(discussing Glenn Hedden v. Kean University, Case No. L 002278-11 (N.J. Super.
Ct., complaint filed June 13, 2011).
[35] This is of course both well known
in the corporate fiduciary duty rules of economic corporations and suggests the
importance of power relationships in organizational speech. See, e.g.,
In re Oracle Corp. Derivative Litigation, 824 A.2d 917 (Del.Ch. 2003)
[36] 1994 Statement at 143.
[38] See, e.g., Darla J. Twale and Barbara M. de Luca, Faculty Incivility: The Rise of the Academic Bully Culture and
What to Do About it (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 2008); Noa Davenport,
Ruth D. Schwartz and Gail Pursell Elliott,
(Civil Society Pubs. 1999).
[39] For helpful “how to” manuals
directed at the academic “boss”, see, e.g., Jeffrey
Buller, The Essential Academic Dean (Hoboken, NJ, Jossey-Bass, 2007); C.K. Gunsalus, The College Administrator’s
Survival Guide (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2006).
[40] “If a faculty votes to cut the size
of the entering class or eliminate a program beloved by the alumni, the faculty
suffers no consequences (at least not directly), but the department chair or
dean certainly does.” Nancy B. Rapoport, Academic Freedom and Academic
Responsibility, 13 Green Bag 2d 189 (2010) (reviewing Matthew
W. Finkin & Robert C. Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American
Academic Freedom (Yale University Press 2009)). Of course, as I suggest above, disciplining
administrative personnel may be as noteworthy as disciplining irresponsible
faculty organizations.
[41] The AAUP has developed a variety of
resources in this area. See AAUP
Contingent Faculty available at http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issues/contingent/.
[42] See Larry Catá Backer, Global Panopticism: Surveillance Lawmaking by Corporations,
States, and Other Entities, 15(1) Indiana
Journal Of Global Legal Studies 101 (2008).
[43] See, Larry Catá Backer, Ruminations
XXXVII: From Regimes of Law to Systems of Assessment, From the Outlaw to
Deviant, Law at the End of the Day, Jan 26, 2012., available http://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/ruminations-xxxvii-from-regimes-of-law.html.
[44] Rodney Erickson, Interim Penn State
President Rodney Erickson Issues Statement Expressing Pride in Penn State
Community, Discusses Way Forward, Fox News Insider, Nov. 14, 20911, available http://foxnewsinsider.com/2011/11/14/full-text-interim-penn-state-president-rodney-erickson-issues-statement-expressing-pride-in-penn-state-community-discusses-way-forward/.
[45] Andrew McGill, For Penn State, Going Private an Option, The Morning Call, March 14, 2012, available http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-penn-state-trustees-meeting-sandusky-20120314,0,5678669.story; Genaro C. Armas, Penn St. Trustees Seek to Rebuild
Communications, Boston.com,
April 1, 2012, available http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2012/04/01/penn_st_trustees_seek_to_rebuild_communications/.
[46] On the latter, see, e.g., Larry Catá Backer, The University and the
Panopticon: Naturalizing "New" Governance Forms for Behavior Control
Beyond Law, Law at the End of the Day, Sept. 17, 2010, available http://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/university-and-panopticon-naturalizing.html.
[47] Joann S. Lublin, Transparency Pays Off In 360-Degree Reviews,
The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 8,
2011, available http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203501304577086592075136080.html.
[48] Penn State Human Resources Policy
40, available http://guru.psu.edu/policies/OHR/hr40.html,
“provides the process
for an evaluation of the performance of each member of the faculty at least
once each year. Each tenured faculty member will be evaluated with an extended
review every fifth year after the most recent promotion decision.” Id. Its central element is the self-production of
an annual report.
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