Seeker wrote:

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 Being that I from MS and you are not, I understand that I may not have the intellect to communicute with you, but I will try. 1) It is my understanding that many on and off campus percieve most AAUP members to be liberal - socially and politically. Is that a bad thing? That is for you to decided. I am a conservative, so I have little use for their ideology. 2) It is not my job to convince anyone that AAUP members at USM are normal. Frankly, I don't think they are for the most part. Plus, I don't live in Hattiesburg.

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Not from Mississippi wrote:

So I will ask another question with the hope you will continue the dialog.   What did the (some) faculty do that makes you say, "Frankly, I don't think they are for the most part", as far as faculty acting normally? My understanding is that very unusual things have been going on administratively at USM.
 

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Seeker wrote:

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  I believe I can only answer this question in two ways. The facutly and AAUP at USM are probably "normal' when compaired to facutly at most other insitutions. If you use academia as a whole they are probably no different than facutly at most any other campus one can think name. But, when compaired to what the rest of us do in our jobs, nothing about academia is "normal" at USM or anywhere else. You guys will never understand that, because you don't want to understand it. Just telling people, well it's like this everywhere else, just dosen't cut it. The reason your cause will never be accepted by the community is becaue what you want and write letters to the editor about would get the rest of us fired. If I shot off a letter simular to what Peter Burko sent to the HA, I would be in the unemployment line the next day. So, would 95% of the people out there. But, he can trash his boss in the newspaper and nothing. Regular Joe citizen dosen't understand that. Then you complain about salary at USM, some full professors make what $40k, which seems low until you realize the average go in Hattiesburg is happy to make $28k.

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1.  Yes, universities and colleges are different from most businesses.  So are hospitals.  So are any institutions in which making money is not the bottom line.  Universities exist to preserve, promote, and discover knowledge.  They do not exist to produce or sell widgets.  Professors are fellow-professionals; administrators are just professors who have (temporarily) adopted an administrative role.  In an institution committed to the advancement and preservation of knowledge, the idea of a "boss" (who is committed to maximizing financial profit) is not relevant.

2.  Even in most profit-driven businesses, seeking the "input" and "feedback" of employees is a sound management practice.

3.  I suspect that any person who makes $28k per year has not put in ten years of advanced study (typical of those who earn doctorates).

4.  You know all this, Seeker, but instead of acknowledging these distinctions, you continue to pretend as if they don't exist or don't matter.  In post such as yours, I always detect a faint whiff of envy: "I wish everybody felt as scared of his boss and as afraid to criticize his boss as I do."  That kind of fear is just not the way universities operate, or should ever operate, if they are to fulfill their basic missions.  That's the way universities DO operate in totalitarian societies, in which professors really DO have to be afraid of what they say.

 

Seeker wrote:

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Not from Mississippi wrote: So I will ask another question with the hope you will continue the dialog.   What did the (some) faculty do that makes you say, "Frankly, I don't think they are for the most part", as far as faculty acting normally? My understanding is that very unusual things have been going on administratively at USM.   I believe I can only answer this question in two ways. The facutly and AAUP at USM are probably "normal' when compaired to facutly at most other insitutions. If you use academia as a whole they are probably no different than facutly at most any other campus one can think name. But, when compaired to what the rest of us do in our jobs, nothing about academia is "normal" at USM or anywhere else. You guys will never understand that, because you don't want to understand it. Just telling people, well it's like this everywhere else, just dosen't cut it. The reason your cause will never be accepted by the community is becaue what you want and write letters to the editor about would get the rest of us fired. If I shot off a letter simular to what Peter Burko sent to the HA, I would be in the unemployment line the next day. So, would 95% of the people out there. But, he can trash his boss in the newspaper and nothing. Regular Joe citizen dosen't understand that. Then you complain about salary at USM, some full professors make what $40k, which seems low until you realize the average go in Hattiesburg is happy to make $28k.

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I'm thinking you have taken one category of work ("academic") which actually has many types of work within it . . . . and then made that a special category of work separate from the rest of the work day world. But in the normal workday world, there are also many different kinds of work, models of authority, etc. Those structureS tend to emerge and thrive based on how well they work -- if they don't work they change or businesses fail.

The command model may work for certain kinds of business -- it does not work well in most "creative" kinds of work. Creativity isn't something that can be compelled. Similarly, mission oriented occupations (occupations in which people work for motivations that go beyond simple self support) also require a different structure of authority. Academia is one of several kinds of occupations that are both creative and mission oriented -- hence the kinds of structures of authority that may work in a factory do not operate well there. But academia is not alone in this. Structures of authority in many other occupations bear a great resemblence to the university because they succeed in those occupations (check out how the computer industry works in the creative sectors; how the entertainment industry works -- how many laboratories work). Evenin the military, some of the most creative areas of research tend to have much looser structures of authority and heirarchy than the regular ranks -- because command discipline doesn't work in those areas.

Sounds to me like your problem Seeker, is that you either have had jobs requiring a command type hierarchy -- or you have had a series of bad employers.

Now, to demolish another myth -- do you think that all of us in academia were born in academia? I think we have been through this before. To say, as you do,

"But, when compaired to what the rest of us do in our jobs, nothing about academia is "normal" at USM or anywhere else. You guys will never understand that, because you don't want to understand it."

once again does not acknowlege that many of us know exactly that much of the world operates in the way you describe because we have, in fact, experienced it firsthand. I think you are correct that much of the community does not understand how things work in academia -- in most universities one of the jobs of a university president is to make that difference clear to the public and to rally public support to what a university is, rather than exploit those differences to drive a wedge between the university community and town community a university resides in. This administration has utterly failed in this part of its mission.

This university has faculty members who are Rotarians, leaders of Scouting organizations; active members of churches . . . .  and even people who own and run businesses or hold political positions by appointment or election.  Your depiction of a college faculty is outmoded and antiquarian -- you are truly setting up up a "straw man" argument which you may demolish on paper but it has no bearing on the reality of the academic community that exists.

The name of the faculty member is Peter BUTKO. And he was correct in presenting this as one model of an academic arrangement -- a fairly traditional one in the sciences which goes pretty far back. And you are correct -- if he had written that letter from outside the academic community then you are right, he might have been fired. But guess what? That is the marvel of a university -- we get to speak our minds. We will seldom speak so publically unless we are forced to do so -- but the circumstances organized by the administration have dictated where the conversation would take place. When the President presented the reorganization plan to members of the business community before he presented it to the faculty he doomed the university to a discussion that would inevitably go beyond the boundries of the campus -- because he himself had abridged those boundries.

I am quite sure that Peter would have been happy to keep his comments within the boundries of the academic community (these remarks were first made in a senate meeting). But I remind you that that at every turn, the first people to go to the press were not the faculty -- but the administration. Faculty responses in the media have been reactive -- a necessary defense against an administration that has, in effect, presented itself as a tonic to faculty indolence, resistence to change, and unconcerned for students. No faculty can see itself verbally attacked in public and institutionally behind the ivy walls and not respond.

I reiterate -- it is not the job of the faculty to explain its work to the public. We are ill-equipped to do that. Our best explanation can only be in our personal relationships within our community that we are, in fact, just as "normal" as anyone. That job is the job of an administration, and this one has consistently failed to do that -- because 1) it does not understand academic culture and 2) it is, at heart, anti-intellectual in nature.

Intellectualism ("the life of the mind") is the cornerstone of the university. That too, is not ordinary in the community outside the university. THAT IS WHY A UNIVERSITY EXISTS and it is the foundation of its activity.

Ditto NFM!

stephen judd wrote:

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Great post -- much more succinct than my own long winded (read "garrulous") response.

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