From the Editor: In It Together
Ellen Schrecker
A month before the deadline for this issue, Luther F. Carter, the president of Francis Marion University, told Academe that he could not turn in his assigned article. The governor of South Carolina had slashed the budget by 15 percent, forcing Carter into an endless round of meetings and hearings that consumed the time he had set aside for writing. Larry Gerber, who stepped into the breach, was still working on his piece when his university's board of trustees fired the president and plunged the entire campus into turmoil.
Fortunately, Gerber finished the article, but the crises he and Carter confronted reveal just how vulnerable the academic community has become to outside pressure. In a world of tightfisted politicians, micromanaging trustees, and an increasingly unsympathetic public, professors and administrators can no longer afford intramural squabbles. Cooperation is essential if the two groups most concerned about American higher education are to have any say over its future. Recognizing that exigency, the AAUP and the American Conference of Academic Deans cosponsored a conference last October to explore the problems of shared governance. This issue of Academe grew out of that event.
Shared governance is easier to advocate than to implement. Goodwill often exists on both sides (all agreed that malevolence is rarely at issue), so obstacles to effective collaboration are more often the product of systemic defects and cultural barriers than any explicit desire to undermine the relationship. Recognizing that reality, the proceedings avoided both platitudes and recriminations, allowing Academe's contributors and other participants to concentrate on real-life nuts-and-bolts issues.
Perhaps because of its pragmatic emphasis, the conference had a surprisingly upbeat tone. Yes, most panelists contended, shared governance works; goodwill and common sense can prevail. Participants like Radford University's Ann Ferren and Susan Barnard talked about how they worked together to transform potentially disastrous cutbacks into creative programmatic reforms. Patricia van der Vorm described how collaboration results in successful job searches. Such stories remind us that, despite its problems, the system of shared governance is still, as Larry Gerber explained, the best way to run a university.
But for that to happen, Philip Glotzbach and William Tierney pointed out, everyone involved in the decision-making process must know how to make it work. Attitude is important; all parties must respect the others and be willing to submerge their own interests to the pursuit of the common good. But they must also pay attention to seemingly minor technicalities like establishing a workable agenda and communicating with the rest of the campus. If they don't deal with such matters, committees may not reach consensus or gain support for their recommendations.
Ultimately, however, building the structures that encourage meaningful collaboration between faculty and administrators can occur only if the culture supports that kind of collaboration. Tierney is optimistic, suggesting that the adoption of good practices will create a culture that fosters innovation. David Hollinger is more cautious. He attributes the unique system that allows Berkeley's faculty to help run the university to a tradition of solidarity he doubts other schools can replicate. But like the other contributors, he sees no alternative if the university is to retain its educational mission and not be torn apart by external pressures or internal fissures.
An editor ordinarily refrains from endorsing her own product. But the last time Academe published an issue devoted to governance, the AAUP was deluged with so many requests for it that we ran out of copies and had to order a special reprinting. This issue should be just as useful. I've already been photocopying its articles and circulating them to my colleagues and administrators. I only hope they read them.
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