One of the things going on in modern academia is an overt attempt to change facts on the ground with regard to power dynamics. Deans (provosts too) have always needed the senior faculty to some degree in no small part because the higher up the ladder a faculty member is, the less power those administrators have over them. A dean can basi…
One of the things going on in modern academia is an overt attempt to change facts on the ground with regard to power dynamics. Deans (provosts too) have always needed the senior faculty to some degree in no small part because the higher up the ladder a faculty member is, the less power those administrators have over them. A dean can basically tell a lecturer or an adjunct what to do. junior faculty are wise to listen to their deans and take their requests/demands seriously, though even by that point, there might be tenured faculty and especially senior faculty members willing to run interference. By the time someone is tenured, and in particular by the time someone is a full professor, the dean and provost become akin to what some political scientists say about the American president: That their power is basically the power to persuade. A dean can tell a full professor to do something, point blank. But in all but the most narrow cases, the full professor can say "I'm not doing that; good luck." Because the implicit follow-up is "or what?"
But administration across the country is trying to change that. Now, whether they can at a place like Harvard is very much up for debate. If Jill Lepore asks her dean, "or what?" there is likely to be a whole lot of stammering and walking back from that dean. But increasingly at state universities, there can be real consequences for things that used to be up to faculty. I know as well as anyone that many of us can be difficult. But these efforts to ride herd are usually about wanting to apply authoritarian structure in the face of ANY opposition, not just the most (and frankly relatively few) brazen cases that most of us would say "yeah, that's a problem."
One of the things going on in modern academia is an overt attempt to change facts on the ground with regard to power dynamics. Deans (provosts too) have always needed the senior faculty to some degree in no small part because the higher up the ladder a faculty member is, the less power those administrators have over them. A dean can basically tell a lecturer or an adjunct what to do. junior faculty are wise to listen to their deans and take their requests/demands seriously, though even by that point, there might be tenured faculty and especially senior faculty members willing to run interference. By the time someone is tenured, and in particular by the time someone is a full professor, the dean and provost become akin to what some political scientists say about the American president: That their power is basically the power to persuade. A dean can tell a full professor to do something, point blank. But in all but the most narrow cases, the full professor can say "I'm not doing that; good luck." Because the implicit follow-up is "or what?"
But administration across the country is trying to change that. Now, whether they can at a place like Harvard is very much up for debate. If Jill Lepore asks her dean, "or what?" there is likely to be a whole lot of stammering and walking back from that dean. But increasingly at state universities, there can be real consequences for things that used to be up to faculty. I know as well as anyone that many of us can be difficult. But these efforts to ride herd are usually about wanting to apply authoritarian structure in the face of ANY opposition, not just the most (and frankly relatively few) brazen cases that most of us would say "yeah, that's a problem."