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One Hundred Semesters
Faculty Getting in the Way
Reviewed by Richard P. Mulcahy
William M. Chace.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006
I came to this memoir with high hopes, and in some respects I was not disappointed. William M. Chace writes beautifully, and a number of his remembrances will strike a chord with colleagues of a certain age. Especially striking are his comments about his undergraduate days at Haverford College, where he received such things as “intellectual passion” and an understanding of what good teaching could achieve. Also interesting are Chace’s discussions of the corrupting nature of Division I sports programs and their drain on university resources, as well as the problems created by the inflated salaries drawn today by many college and university presidents.
Unfortunately, these good qualities are outweighed by the book’s single greatest negative feature: its distorted portrait of college and university faculties. I do not believe that Chace set out to be a faculty basher. The book does not contain the invective in which other critics have indulged, and in places the author gives high praise to individual faculty members. But these characteristics notwithstanding, the overall impression of faculty given by the book is not one of learned people doing learned things, but one of a faceless mass of cowardly narcissists who are indifferent to each other, as well as to their institutions.
This exercise in faculty deconstruction begins innocently. While a tenure-stream assistant professor at Stanford University in 1971, Chace witnessed the case brought against professor H. Bruce Franklin by university president Richard Lyman. Franklin, a self-styled Maoist and Chace’s colleague in the English department, was suspended from teaching because of the disruptive and violent tactics he advocated in his opposition to the Vietnam War. Franklin was given a hearing before Stanford’s advisory board, an elected faculty body consisting of seven scholars, who handled faculty appointments and the granting of tenure. By a vote of five to two, the board recommended Franklin’s dismissal.
Chace believes that the board did the right thing, and the decision was eventually upheld by the courts. However, Chace asserts that “in a time of political stress and conflict, professors only rarely act courageously.” Later in the book, Chace claims that tenure has outlived its purpose, since faculty are unlikely now to write or say anything “politically or socially offensive.” With this claim, tenure is indirectly characterized as “obsolete.”
All of this is news to me. In the current political environment, where intellectual intimidation is a principal tool of shrill, well-organized, and well-financed reactionaries, the assertion of tenure’s obsolescence strikes me as a trifle premature. Also, what is or is not “politically or socially offensive” is in the eye of the beholder. If the beholder happens to be a right-wing zealot, then even the most innocuous of statements may be misinterpreted.
What Chace forgets is that in 1971, McCarthyism was fresh in many minds. Merely having the wrong group of friends could end an academic career. Political questions, such as those raised by the Franklin case, were regarded as so poisonous that no one wanted to deal with them. In my own career I have seen cowardice among my colleagues, but just as often I have seen great strength and fortitude. Chace seems to have forgotten that faculty are human beings, and as in any other group, one will find everything from self-preservation to self-sacrifice.
Interestingly, in describing his work as a university president, Chace does not turn the same critical eye toward his fellow administrators. The deans and vice presidents are never overbearing, nor abusive of their authority. Chace presents himself as a long-suffering, powerless figurehead, who kept his universities (first Wesleyan, then Emory) running while trying to make the higher education system do some good.
Taking the measure of this book, I have no doubt that Chace sincerely believes he writes the truth. Unfortunately, rather than giving a nuanced portrait, he perpetuates certain common stereotypes about faculty, and does not offer any great new insights about the current state of instruction or where higher education might be headed. Despite these problems, the book is worth reading. At the very least it provides a look at how a top-level university administrator thinks, and how he views himself in relation to his institution as well as to the wider world.
Richard P. Mulcahy is an associate professor of history and political science at the University of Pittsburgh’s Titusville Regional Campus. He is the author of A Social Contract for the Coal Fields, and is currently vice president and president-elect of the Pennsylvania division of the AAUP.
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