Compliance and the Cult of Personality in University Administration: Administrators and the "Army of Survivors" of Athletic Sex Scandals

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2018)

Once again the institution of the university--that newly refurbished battleship of compliance headed by heroic bands of well paid administrators  whose offices, so well larded with officials of all sorts of descriptions charged with the constant and comprehensive surveillance of university personnel and activities (other than those, perhaps, of the administrator class)--finds itself embroiled in scandal.  I am not speaking of the consequences of that scandal--in this case of the man who abused numerous young women who trusted him and who is now facing a lifetime in prison.  Rather I am speaking to the scandal of the university itself as the great exemplar of the compliance institution par excellence. I am speaking to the failure--again--of what has been sold to the public by university boards of trustees, by the political classes, and by  fat layers of well paid non-academic administrator "experts," as a university cultures built on compliance and deep surveillance, of monitoring and reporting, led by  "herioic" university presidents sitting astride their all-seeing mechanisms of control, of reporting, of surveillance, of socialization, and of record keeping.  

The model of administration that the political, economic, and intellectual classes have fashioned of the university over this past generation has resulted in the monstrosities that one sees emerging across the nation.  Bloated institutions that are more machine than human centered institutions, it is not clear exactly what it is that these factories are meant to produce other than stability, good order, and the manufacture of a product that can be consumed as it is produced.  And this new ordering is fueled by the cultivation of a cult of personality around university leadership and their managers; as if by virtue of their high salaries and august positions within hierarchically arranged employment relationships, they embody the university itself. The construct is simple and straightforward: (1) a high salaried leader (or sometimes leadership) who become the incarnation of the university--their heroic leaders whose vision, drive and charisma give life to the institution and lead it to new heights; (2) an aristocratic bureaucracy detached from from the operational hierarchies of production, whose role is to protect the institution and its leaders and to discipline the productive forces of the university through risk reduction compliance regimes; (3) a legitimating structure of "rule of law" regulations that actually legalize systems of administrative discretion against abuses of which there is little remedy.  This model is the most efficient way of coordinating the institution of the university with that of enterprises and the state to produce a useful interlocking governance mechanism.  

That combination of cult of personality around "leaders" and an institutional framework grounded in compliance as a bureaucratic organism has proven to be quite useful in managing the smaller irritations of institutional life--at great expense and against the increasingly fungible bottom layers of the academic employment pool.  It has not, however, proven particularly useful when deployed against itself--when it is tested against its greatest challenge--to monitor, report and contain reprehensible behavior at the highest levels.  Time and again, it now seems, over the last decade certainly, the most elaborate machinery elites create to enforce and socialize compliance with consensus norms can do little to protect us against the depredations of the elites themselves. It is not for nothing that the worst scandals of the last decade have tended to involve people at the higher levels of the machinery designed to contain their excesses and bad conduct.  And yet universities built on cults of personality and on aristocratic bureaucracy will inevitably fail to meet the objectives these elaborate and expensive institutional machines were meant to manage.   

Harsh words but to some extent well deserved. They are not targeted at a particular institution or a particular individual. Rather they reflect thoughts about general social and institutional movements throughout academia that show up along a broad spectrum of related behaviors  in many institutions. That prompts the hope that it may be time to consider dispassionately the model so dear to those with money and the power to shape the institution of the university.  That this will be done is unlikely, but that it ought to be attempted--and by without conflict of interest, is a hope that is worth retaining.  What we will get is more of the same.  The elite will sacrifice a President (the downside of cults of personality) and put up another along the same model--after a wrenching period of formal self examination that will produce even more aristocratic bureaucracy and precious little effective protection against the people now more empowered than ever to protect us against themselves. Reporting on a recent event that prompted these very general thoughts follows. 

From the AAUP: Resources Against Targeted Online Harassment

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has recently considered the wave of activity touching on the social media and online interactions of faculty with other stakeholders both within the public sphere and in the university itself. 

Over the last year, targeted online harassment of faculty has emerged as a significant threat to academic freedom. Fueled by websites such as Professor Watchlist, Campus Reform, and College Fix, campaigns of threats and harassment are directed against faculty members for what they are reported to have said in the classroom or posted on social media. (here)

AAUP has developed materials that speak to this targeting of faculty by those who may disagree with faculty views,writings or other work.   To that end it has developed an online Case Letters from the AAUP:A look at four of the recent harassment cases where the AAUP has intervened to protect academic freedom.

This post includes links to AAUP resources for faculty who believe they may be the target of harassment set out in a press release from the AAUP, which follows.  Also below the AAUP's one page "What You Can Do About Online Targeted Harassment." The AAUP is also interested especially in assaults against faculty on the cntemporary political left.  Its latest edition of Academe includes several articles that provide useful insights whatever the political source of attack.

Shared Governance and the Managerial Character of Faculty in the Evolving University: Dueling Amicus Briefs From University of Southern California v. National Labor Relations Board, No. 17-1149 (D.C. Cir. 2017)

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2018)

University administrations have, quite correctly, sought to have it both ways.  On the one hand they continue to peddle the narrative of the idealized university of autonomous professionalized faculty deeply involved in the governance of the academic mission of the institution.  On the other hand they have increasingly moved to administer a very different reality where behind the slowly fading institutional veils of faculty involvement in governance has been created a factory environment in which the university serves increasingly as a means of preparing its tuition payers for insertion into increasingly well designated portions of the global wage labor markets.  For some elite universities the factory produces (and protects the status) of the highest level jobs at the pinnacles of the governmental and non governmental institutions of power. (For my discussion of this trend see, "The University in the Age of the Learning Factory: Dueling narratives in the culture war around higher education," here, and here)

To this end the character of utility of the faculty has changed dramatically.  And that transformation has especially evident for institutions that are been designated to serve the "lower" levels of the wage labor markets.  It has changed both the character of teaching, the connection between knowledge production and knowledge dissemination (in ways that will have long term impacts on both--the character of which has yet to be fully understood),  and has changed the way the university values faculty production. Tenured faculty are expensive--both in the allocation of their time,  and in the way that tend to be less flexible objects of production (in the sense that they cannot be easily moved from one form of production (e.g., German studies) to another (e.g. engineering) to suit value maximizing (to the university) change sin the demand for labor inputs (e.g. students). Contract faculty are eminently flexible in the sense that they might be kept forever if suitable but can also be shed when necessary.  Their time can be adjusted to suit the teaching research mix needs of the institution and while they can be easily disciplined if they annoy their managers (with the ultimate power to choose to not renew a contract).

These issues are not confined to the writings of an academic posting to a blog but has increasingly appeared at the center of litigation designed to acquire recognition in law for the vast changes in the realities of the relationship between emerging classes of faculty and university administrators. At issue is an effort for courts to reconsider the premise narrative of the university that lay at the foundation of the germinal cases (of a generation ago) which based a conclusion that faculty were managerial employees on an increasingly abandoned premise that the old shared governance system deeply and effectively embedded them within university governance.

A recent case worth noting is University of Southern California v. National Labor Relations Board, No. 17-1149 (D.C. Cir. 2017).  The case represents a challenge by the university to a decision of the National Labor Relations Board that determined that USC's contract faculty were not managerial employees.  This post includes the amicus brief of the American Association of University Professors in that case as well as the AAUP Press Release relating to the case which takes one side of the narrative argument (and points to the legal effects of the changes to the university since 1980).  It also includes the amicus brief of the American Council on Education, an industry group representing university administrations and their boards.

The most interesting parts of both arguments, produced by some of the finest advocates on both sides of the issue, is the way that the arguments highlight the extraordinary transformation of the both the notion of "shared governance" in the university and the context in which it can be exercised.  Both sides exclaims that the other "does not understand shared governance" (AAUP Brief pp. 11-28; ACE Brief pp. 18-27)--the reality is that both understand quite well--but the conclusions to be drawn are as highly contested as is the size of the conceptual divide between traditional and contemporary ways of understanding the university itself. Both sides seek to leverage that reality--the AAUP by suggesting that change has altered legal reality and the ACE by suggesting that the changes do not alter the underlying relationships among faculty and administration.

Yet the case, and the arguments, would have been incomprehensible when the original legal rule was pronounced in 1980.  And the reason has little to do with the understanding of shared governance (and its "mis-understanding;" though that is what all sides hope to keep centered in the judicial proceedings. Rather, and something both sides might downplay, is not that shared governance has changed but that the character of faculty have changed--and that change ought to produce legal consequences (but it also produces substantial challenges to faculty solidarity). And indeed, it might be possible to understand the nature of changes to shared governance not merely as a function of changes in university administration, but also as a function of changes in the composition of faculty.  Faculty who are not protected by tenure and whose contract may be terminated by administrators are in a fundamentally different position with respect to governance than tenured faculty.  The Industry association seeks to make the best case for the continued application of the rule which can apply equally to tenure and non tenured faculty (the difference in the character of the employment relationship would not change the underlying normative principle supporting it); the AAUP argues that the underlying normative principle, as well as context, has now changed so dramatically that the original premise framework just does not work for this new class of faculty. Whatever happens, this will not be the last case in which university stakeholders will seek to bend the law to their own views of the reality of the university in this age of great changes. 

Higher Education Trends for 2018: Relfections on " Saddle Up: 7 Trends Coming in 2018" Plus Six of My Own

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2018 ("The Chariot" Visconti Tarot))

It has become something of a ritual for  people to engage in prediction--what I call the oracular function of influence or drivers--in virtually all sectors of production, including the higher education industry.   Prediction serves a variety of functions--it draws attention to specific issues; it helps order these issues into hierarchies of importance; it helps to frame the narrative, that is the way in which such issues are understood and discussed; it provides a window on the issues that those in control of the affected institutions are worried about--it reveals institutional fears;  and of course it enhances position of those in the business of prediction within the webs of influence in the sectors in which they are embedded (or through which they are trying to make a living). 

Julie A. Peterson and Lisa M. Rudgers (co-founders of Peterson Rudgers Group, a consulting firm focused on higher education strategy, leadership and brand) recently considered a set of important trends in the higher education business for 2018--"Saddle Up: 7 Trends Coming in 2018," Inside Higher Education (2 Jan. 2018). This complemented their oracular efforts of 2017 (trends coming for 2017).  Their predictions are worth considering carefully. They hit the mark in several important ways: (1) identification of key issues that university officials will likely confront; (2) the way in which such official will likely approach the issues and their "resolution"; and (3) the narrative around the issues from out of which an understanding of how to think about these issues are developed.  Identification, response, narrative control are the three key elements that will define  the administrative "to do" list and control the orthodox way of understanding, thinking about and speaking to those issues. 

This post briefly considers the seven issue identified by Peterson and Rudgers and then offers additional trends that will have a high impact on the education business in 2018. 

Call for Papers: 14th Annual Conference of the European Society of International Law and ESIL Young Scholars Prize

I am happy to pass along the call for papers of the 14th Annual Conference of the European Society of International Law. It will be held in Manchester, United Kingdom, under the auspices of the Manchester International Law Centre (MILC). The conference begins on Thursday 13 September and ends on Saturday 15 September 2018.

Deadline for submission of abstracts – 31 January 2018
Deadline for submission of full papers – 15 July 2018
The conference begins on Thursday 13 September and ends on Saturday 15 September 2018
Deadline for submission of final papers (to be included in the ESIL SSRN series and/ or a future conference publication) – 1 November 2018

The  Conference Concept Note (Theme: International Law and Universality) follows along with information about the ESIL Young Scholar Prize and submission info and links. 

Download here:  ESIL conference 2018 – Call for Papers (PDF)

Word Violence and the Weaponization of Narrative-A view From Cuba on the Violernce of Words and the Control of Narrative; Thoughts on "Ni 'gusanos' ni disidentes: respuesta a una publicación católica cubana"

(Pix credit: By Michael Linnenbach - first upload in de wikipedia on 09:58, 16. Feb 2005 by Michael Linnenbach, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105418)

Americans have their foibles; especially those that emerge from out of the Academy.  But this is not one of them.  I am speaking of the eruption (again) of national discussion about the use of words and their presentation before audiences (willing or not)--the encouragement of free speech and the suppression of words and speakers in the name of the protection of the innocent from the violence of words.

As I have noted elsewhere, it is not words that are at the center of the controversy--it is the narratives to which these words may be deployed ("The University in the Age of the Learning Factory: Dueling narratives in the culture war around higher education,"). This becomes clearer when one stops for a moment indulging a hyper focus on the national discussion within a peculiar segment of American society and considers the issue in a different national and political context.

This short essay considers the current battles over the control of the narratives to which words are deploys, suppressed and managed--but from the context of Cuba, a nation where one might take state control of those battles for granted but within which even there, the state appears merely as one of several actors  in the battle for control of the way orthodoxy is constructed and protected through the deployment of words. My purpose here is neither to take a position on the opinions of others (on every side of this issue here and elsewhere) but merely to note the difficulty of speaking to these issues outside of politics. Perhaps there is no "higher law" of free speech--there is merely the recognition that the ideology of speech is itself an expression of the orthodoxies that ideology is meant to protect.

An additionla  POSTSCRIPT, a March 2018 letter from Jaime Leygonier directed to the Father Superior of the Jesuit Order in Cuba on the same themee  (Carta 2da. a Superior Jesuitas de Cuba: Sancione subordinado libelista según Derecho Canónico)

Conference announcement and call for papers. "New Frontiers: Technology, Finance and Regulation" for the Annual Conference of the Journal of Financial Regulation (Oxford June 2018)

I am delighted to pass along a Conference announcement and call for papers. "New Frontiers: Technology, Finance and Regulation" for the Annual Conference of the Journal of Financial Regulation (Oxford June 2018). Details follow below.

From Academy to Enterprise; the Transformation of the University, the View From the U.K.: Ben R Martin, "What’s happening to our universities?"

(Pix © 2017 Larry Catá Backer)

For years now I have been speaking to the corporatization of the American university.  I have suggested the way that this shifting of the American university model has begun to shape the educational mission as well (e.g.,Made to Market Education and Professionalization in University Education).  The university has become a creature of its compliance officials--and as a consequence has sought to inhibit risk taking (e.g.. The Riskless University and the Bureaucratization of Knowledge: From "Indiana Jones" to Central Planning; What is the University?: De-Centering Education in an Age of Risk and Regulatory Management). And it uses the cover of the market to make decisions that substantially change the character of the institution (Economic Determinism and the University--Considering Voluntary "Early Retirement Packages" to Tenured Faculty).

The move toward hierarchy and the autonomy of an administrator class increasingly remote from the production and dissemination of knowledge has changed the nature of shared governance ( "Now THIS is Shared Governance"; "NOW this is shared Governance"; "Now this IS Shared Governance": Embedding Faculty Within the Bureaucratic Machinery of Authoritarian Regimes; Presentation at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 2013 Annual Meeting: Shared Governance Under Stress).  It has produced incentives toward the de-professionalization of the professoriate (Irony and Incoherence in the "Professionalization" of University Education; ). But de-professionalization and the construction  of autonomous and remote administrator cultures make the basic character of enterprise culture easier to realize--the substitution of centralized planning for shared governance, and the shift in the driving force of university organization from the faculty to the financial officers of the university (Central Planning and the University: What is So Bad About Administrative Management of Knowledge Production and Dissemination?).

And, of course, with the move toward a corporate model comes the natural consequences. First there is a tendency to expand the disciplinary authority of administrators and based on an obedience model (The Disciplinary University Factory--Faculty Discipline and De-Professionalization as Officials move to Expand Faculty "Misconduct" and Its Control).  Second, there is a move toward the limitation of access to information (Limiting Access to Faculty Organization Archives and Records--When Administrative Gatekeepers Abuse Their Authority and Undermine Shared Governance);Outcome Measures, Transparency and the Failure of Universities to Cultivate Effective Service Missions). Related to this is the development of a host of techniques designed to undermine governance even as they appear to enhance it (At the 2015 AAUP Annual Conference: Remarks, "Undermining Academic Freedom from the Inside: On the Adverse Effects of Administrative Techniques and Neutral Principles" and PowerPoint of Presentation "Developing Social Media Policies for Universities: Best Practices and Pitfalls"). 

Looming over these changes is the phenomenon of the unionization of the student--the inevitable consequence of the transformation of the university:

 In these contexts, unionization seems inevitable: for the graduate student seeking to protect the integrity of her study objectives against exploitation; for the adjunct and contract faculty member seeking to compensate for precarious working conditions in markets where instructors are fungible commodities; and for the student athlete seeking to reduce exploitation and capture some of the value added to the university through sports. Graduate student unionization might well be only a harbinger of the changes in labor relations that senior administrators have effectively brought on themselves. Indeed, the new narrative was built, brick by brick, by a generation or more of administrators whose choices were justified at virtually every step on the basis of the “market,” the “regulator,” the “alumni,” and so on. That the reaction among graduate students and faculty have neither come sooner nor been more aggressively pursued speaks to the extraordinary staying power of the idealized master narrative of the university even in the face of changing realities. (The University in the Age of the Learning Factory: Dueling narratives in the culture war around higher education," Academe (American Association of University Professors (Nov/Dec 2017)))

Similar changes appear to be coming to universities in the U.K. as well. Ben R. Martin has written a marvelous essay considering the challenges that face U.K. universities:  "What’s happening to our universities?", SPRU Working Paper Series (SWPS), 2016-03: 1-26. ISSN 2057-6668. The article appears in Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation Volume 34, 2016 - Issue 1

The article is worth a careful read.  The Abstract and introduction follow. The article generated some interesting discussion also well worth reading. Links to those articles also follow.

Two Exciting PhD Opportunities at Alliance Manchester Business School UK

I am happy to pass along two exciting opportunities for students interested in a business and human rights focused PhD. Both are offered through the University of Manchester, Alliance Manchester Business School. These provide the chance to work with some of the most innovative researchers and forward looking institutions around. 

PhD Scholarship: “Modern-day Slavery: Accountability in Supply Chains and Procurement Processes” The University of Manchester - Alliance Manchester Business School

 PhD Scholarship: “How Multinationals Manage Human Rights” The University of Manchester

Information about both follows below.

Final Report: Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville Virginia

There has been a lot of coverage about the recent disturbances around Charlottesville, the home of the University of Virginia.  These disturbances had a fatal result--both as to loss of innocent life and as to our innocence in this contemporary age. 

In 2017, a series of events in Charlottesville made this community a flashpoint in a larger American discussion about race, history, and the challenges of free speech. When our City Council voted to remove two statues of generals who fought for the confederacy during the Civil War, the action triggered a series of events that brought hatred, violence, and despair to our community. Three people lost their lives, and numerous other lives were dramatically and unalterably changed by what happened in our community. (Nunton & Williams, Final Report: Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville Virginia (Nov. 2017))

Indeed, as has been much of the case this century in this Republic, we continue to reap the seeds sown  since the time that international ascendancy won through war thrust this Republic into a political-cultural space our capacity for which  was uncertain. 

This Post includes the Preface and Executive Summary of the Final Report: Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville Virginia (Nov. 2017) (including its recommendations). Its conclusions I leave to readers. It is posted to this blog because of its importance to the way in which the Academy may well have to face its own approaches to the management of discourse in a context which, like that of the larger political arena, must balance robust principles of open discourse (even with respect to ideas abhorrent to contemporary majorities) while maintaining the peace and safety of the spaces under the care of the institution. This Report has less to say about the views of the protagonists and more to the the larger issues of preserving enough order in the discursive spaces of our Republic to protect discourse and the core premises of the Republic--until, at least such time as its people choose a different way of approaching each.  And that later point, is of course, very much on the table today, in politics and in the academy.