Haltom's Fifteenth Law -- Academic sub-units can be inferior far longer than superior to their larger institutions.

It puzzles us more than it should that some departments have been sub-standard for decades yet no department is above-average for long. Judgments of departmental weakness usually are concrete and empirical; judgments of departmental strength usually are fanciful and dramaturgic.


Soon after one gets a job in the academy, one begins to form impressions of departments, schools, and other sub-units of the academic institution that hired one. A dust-up in a department induces old-timers to recall the department's chronic inability to handle conflict or to manage its own affairs. "That has always been a weak department" leads to multiple anecdotes or apocrypha about departmental dysfunction and personal dementia over a very long haul. When some largesse is conferred on another sub-unit, tongues wag to the effect that administrators or other benefactors have recently cossetted that sub-unit and esteemed it far beyond what objective assessments would justify. "They have been favored by the administration lately" leads to anecdotes and apocrypha to show how ill-deserved much of the uptick in favor actually is.

Jealousies and invidious distinctions aside, Haltom's 15th Law notes that identifiably weak departments seem to retain reputations for weakness while departments thought strong will not be thought strong for long. Why?

The short answer is that assessments of sub-units' weaknesses usually follow more from concrete observations and valid inferences than do assessments of sub-units' strengths. Assessments of sub-units' strengths often issue from rationalizations for distributions of favors and largesse. The rest of this entry elaborates on that short answer.

The credulous may believe that virtues lead to rewards and honors, but the savvy appreciate that rewards and honors more often lead to attributions of virtues than vice versa. Chronically fractious and feckless departments will continue to be divided and ineffective whatever subsidies or symbols patrons supply, so patrons invest collective resources and accolades in less risky departments. The distribution of collective spoils must be justified to an extent, so patrons conjure some collective strengths to rationalize the system of collective spoils. [To be sure, patrons also command individuated subsidies and sanctions with which to coopt members of weak sub-units, not so much in hope of improving sub-units as in pursuit of grateful, subservient allies. This entry is not primarily concerned with individual spoils, which will be a topic for one or more subsequent entries.]

When I arrived at the University of Puget Clowns, my mentors warned me of "the chosen ones," a department on which resources had recently been lavished out of proportion with visible accomplishments. As I came to understand how undeserved, even inexplicable, much of the praise of that department was, I came to recognize political-anthropologic patterns of command and cooptation [see F. G. Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils or Treasons, Stratagems, and Spoils]. The greatness of "the chosen ones" lay less in published scholarship or practiced pedagogy than in fulsome bluster emanating from Jones Hall and a succession [pun intended] of decanal appointments and other sway and swag. That almost none of "the chosen" even approximated Jones Hall's plaudits was crucial to the cooptation because Jones Hall always had the option of admitting observable facts if administrators became dissatisfied with returns on their "investments." It was, therefore, predictable that most of "the chosen" a) provided reliable votes and spokespersons for administrative schemes, b) garnered designations such as "distinguished professor" when no objective observer would have discovered much distinction [at least in a positive direction], and c) harvested more than their share of individual and collective honors and booty. The strength of the department and the designs of the administration were symbiotically articulated.

It should go without saying that such symbioses were most likely in departments in the humanities, for humanities [variously understood] suited the University's arriviste dedication to "liberal arts" [variously understood]. The more that a sub-unit exemplified or at least dramatized the teaching of works celebrated for being famous, the more probable it became that excellences would be discovered in the sub-unit and spoils dispensed.

Likewise it should go without saying that the superiority of "the chosen ones" was more apparent than real [cf. Haltom's Eleventh Law: Seeming Beats Being] because the actual department was in some respects mediocre. Had Jones Hall and other outlets of propaganda and flackery been restricted to the observable, the concrete, and the verifiable, no case for the superiority of "the chosen ones" likely could have succeeded. Because Jones Hall could indulge in self-validating flim-flam with little risk that anyone would commit candor [candor is so unprofessional!], it could continue both to buy the allegiance and support of "the chosen ones" and to instruct other collectivities and individuals about the benefits of sub-unit tractability and conformity as well as the costs of critical thinking or independence by sub-units. [As noted already, similar manipulations of costs and benefits applied at the individual level, but this entry is about collectivities.]

None of the foregoing implies that a sub-unit cannot be superior to its institution in one or more regards. If qualities are distributed across sub-units, some sub-unit's strengths minus its weaknesses may sum to some figure greater than the institution's aggregate "net." Rather, the foregoing suggests that supposed excellences are, like the glory of the world, usually temporary fictions constructed for the purposes and convenience of the managers and the credulity of the managed.

Strengths are usually more reputed than demonstrable; weaknesses are often [but not always] both demonstrable and reputed. If a sub-unit is both weak and seen to be weak, individuals in that sub-unit face at least a dichotomy: Does one chance improving the sub-unit or does one concentrate on improving one's own reputation? This dichotomy might seem false, a candidate for Haltom's Fourteenth Law ["Never Do Either/Or When You may Do Both/And"]. However, improving one's own reputation is usually realistic when improving one's department's reputation is dauntingly improbable. Cooperating with Jones Hall and other campus potentates will secure one individual awards with far greater probability than undertaking to elevate a chronically pathetic department. After all, if improving the sub-unit were easy, the sub-unit would not have langushed for years or decades. Moreover, whatever absolute personal advancement one may effect, advancement relative to one's substandard department is usually far greater and far more probable.

Indeed, some colleagues have discovered a way around the dichotomy defined above: They strive to be the best of a bad lot, which impels them not only to pursue self-advancement but simultaneously to keep their sub-unit as unprepossessing as possible. In recruitment and hiring, they fend off rivals and thereby preserve their relative, local superiority.

#####How awful to be somebody,
#####How public like a frog,
#####To tell your name the livelong day
#####To an admiring bog.

Those who aspire to be the most visible frog in a risible bog thus acquire an interest in keeping their sub-unit down to keep themselves above the sub-unit. In hiring, "the best of a bad lot" may prefer candidates who will not challenge or overshadow the sub-unit's best. Promotion and tenure decisions may turn on willingness to go along with some of the foibles that make a sub-unit substandard. They certainly will turn on evaluees' fidelity to the local great and, far more important, the greatness of the local great. These tendencies and others predict that departmental stagnation or decline will be sustained and departmental improvement will be rare and transient.

When sub-units are actually [rather than putatively] superior to some campuswide median or mean, look for happy accidents or altruistic behaviors. Since lucky streaks soon break and altruistic behaviors soon give way to habitual selfishness, sub-units cannot long remain above the norm. Hence, Haltom's Fifteen Law obtains.


Coming Soon -- Haltom's Sixteenth Law: Whatever is not as it seems is the product of calculated, crafted fakery far more often than of error.