Last night, the UC Davis English Department put a call for Chancellor Linda Katehi’s resignation on their homepage, most likely to back one of its untenured professors who had openly criticized Katehi.
Screen cap of the UC Davis English Dept. page, 11/21/2011
The English department’s move was impressive, on several counts — a department made a decision, that quickly? Nothing short of a miracle. Will it help the colleague? Not sure about that. I’ve lost count of how many times whole departments have voted a prof up for tenure, unanimously, only to be denied by the upper admin. That’s how hierarchy works, the upper levels don’t have to listen to the lower levels. That’s why, no matter what anyone says, speaking out can and will get you in trouble, and could sure as hell affect a tenure case. (We are men of action here, lies do not become us.) That’s also why, As Lee Bessette points out, there needs to be an examination of the oppressive culture within the walls of academia; right now it simply isn’t democratic, by any stretch of the imagination. Still, the decision to openly rebel was a refreshing departure from the fear and cowardice that pervade so many institutions.
Last night I did my part to spread the word, re-posting the link on Twitter and Facebook; when the site went down (it still is, I think), I directed people to Student Activism, who had wisely captured the words of the original statement.
Now, I should add that I don’t actually agree with anyone’s call for resignation. I believe in the need for centralized authority, much more than a lot of left-leaning types, and even Gloria Steinem has noted that hierarchy is necessary in times of crisis. I think we’ve got just that, and if Katehi resigned, it would just mean a drawn-out replacement process that would benefit no one in the end. But I also think we shouldn’t have police pepper spraying kumbayah kids on campus. On camera, no less. If Katehi is to be an effective leader, she needs to step up and USE her power — to regulate the police presence on campus.
But whether I agreed with the call itself didn’t matter. We can use media to spread information that matters to other people, not just stuff we agree with. (Fox News, CNBC, please take note.) Dissent is allowed. That’s the freaking point. And it’s what we seem to have forgotten, both as a society and as academics.
Dear God, shades of Voltaire.
Thank you for sharing that screen capture. It was a powerful image, and made me feel…hopeful. And I agree with you wholeheartedly: we have forgotten that dissent is okay, not something to fear.
I find myself in a weird, Python-esque situation, defending their right to call for resignation while not supporting their call for resignation. But I do think great leaders know how to deal with dissent – squashing it outright never works in the end.
in the last ten years or so, we seem to have lost our cultural appreciation for questioning of the rules. and our tolerance and protection for those who do.
i’m in Canada, and it’s a little less blatant here, though not so much in academia as in our political culture: we neither experience 9/11 nor its aftermath. but even in the most mundane places i see it all over: danah boyd’s most recent piece about FB was published on BlogHer and the responses were overwhelmingly about “but the rules say kids shouldn’t be on until they’re 13!” rather than taking up ANY of danah’s points about whether those rules make sense. i think we’ve blackboxed rules and forgotten that they’re cultural contingencies.
Too true, at large. But it’s a particularly…funny? sad? when academics, who excel at deconstructing societies and their rules, can’t see the irony of being hopelessly devoted to hierarchy!
I’m with you (and Dean Dad) when it comes to calling for her resignation; I think it’s the easy way out to a certain extent, will distract from the issue (in, as you put it, a prolonged hiring process), and does nothing to address the systematic problems (structural and otherwise) that higher education is facing. Reorganizing the deck chairs, etc.
Here’s the link to Dean Dad’s post (in case you missed it):
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/open-letter-chancellor-katehi-university-california-davis
And thanks for the shout-out. I think that this is a “perfect” opportunity to really re-examine who we are and what we are here for and how we are going to do it better.
The page, with message, is back up, looks cobbled up from screen captures. Keeping the page down when saved elsewhere would make both admin and ucdavis.edu sys admin look more than a little silly … not to mention other less kind descriptors. The department web page manager may be somewhat chastised, page approval procedures in place. The slip, ironically, may have been due admin having overlooked that obvious and common remedy.
I’m cheering for Nathan Brown too. Hope his creds and supporters add up to a cloak of invisibility if needed, but I’ll do my part to spread the word too.
Thanks, and good on ya!