'Cause you gotta have faith...

I’d like to think I have a thick skin. Not as thick as it should be, maybe, but in our profession, everyone critiques us—students tell us their perceptions of our teaching, supervisors evaluate us, anonymous reviewers criticize our work, etc. But when I read, with increased trepidation, the Tallahassee Democrat’s Gerald Ensley’s article[1] that basically says, face it, the university is a corporation that relies on football for its national reputation and needs a (political) CEO, and faculty members are just rank and file who apparently should accept that their fate is in the hands of the BOT and should trust the procedures of what many of us perceive as a flawed (at best) process that only invited one candidate—who frankly doesn’t meet the criteria voted upon by the Search Advisory Committee—to be interviewed, I choked on my coffee.  Sorry, folks, but if we wait until the process plays out, it might be too late.

As one of those faculty members who is obviously opposed to the way the process is playing out, perhaps I’m taking this description of faculty too much to heart.  But based on the texts and emails I received yesterday about this article and the “our opinion” editorial that also asks us to rely on faith (rather than logic, which would suggest that the process hasn’t been honest), I am not the only one who finds these arguments offensive at worst and ill-informed at best. And Ensley is probably not the only one who holds them, so I’m not just taking him to task here.

I would like to remind those who remind us that Senator Thrasher steers money to FSU that Senator Thrasher was in a leadership position when we suffered massive budget cuts. I cannot accept the premise that the only thing a president should do is be able to use his political power to finagle money from the Legislature. A university president should be a leader in his/her academic field, have established academic leadership credentials, be a strong listener and able to work with various constituencies across campus, and cherish and protect the mission of higher education. Fundraising is certainly important when Legislatures like Florida’s cut educational funding and call it reform or whatever they like to call it, but a strong academic leader increases the reputation of a university, inspires people to want to give money to the university, and increases opportunities for external funding (as a colleague reminded me yesterday, a politician without academic experience couldn’t even submit a grant through FSU).

And most faculty agree that academic credentials are key: in our 2014 UFF-FSU poll, an overwhelming 87% of faculty members hope our next president is an academic (fundraising experience was a distant second at 33%; legislative experience was nearly last at 15%). As a friend exclaimed, it's almost impossible to get 87% of people to agree on anything!

 

Further, controversial partisan politicians have not really demonstrated an ability to listen carefully to those with alternative views, work with various constituencies, or raise the academic reputation of a university.  I have watched person after person after person stand up and oppose a bill in the Legislature and the committee still votes yes. That’s the way it works in politician land. In university land, faculty governance is sacred. And when faculty morale is low due to the leadership ignoring faculty governance and academic integrity, the university suffers.  Many of us remember those days not so long ago.

I am also disgusted by arguments equating university presidents to CEOs. The mission of a corporate entity is to make money. That is its sole function: to make money for shareholders. The mission of a university is quite a bit different. Note the mission posted on FSU’s website:

The Florida State University preserves, expands, and disseminates knowledge in the sciences, technology, arts, humanities, and professions, while embracing a philosophy of learning strongly rooted in the traditions of the liberal arts. The university is dedicated to excellence in teaching, research, creative endeavors, and service. The university strives to instill the strength, skill, and character essential for lifelong learning, personal responsibility, and sustained achievement within a community that fosters free inquiry and embraces diversity.

Tell me where making money is listed here!?  

If hiring a politician is the only way this university can get money from the Legislature, then we live in a very, very disturbing time. How is it that the University of Florida BOT recognizes that distinguished academic credentials are vital for the leader of its university but FSU must hire a politician?[2] 

We need a strong academic leader with a national or international reputation who values the role of the university to advance knowledge, to support and sustain ground breaking, cutting edge research, and to teach our students how to be critical, creative, innovative, independent thinkers and leaders in all fields, including the humanities as well as the sciences and who values and protects diversity, academic freedom, and faculty governance. Period.  And if someone outside of the university system tells faculty again to basically sit down and shut up and accept that universities are corporations and politicians are the wave of the university future, I'll scream. And cancel my subscription.