O! To be Mentored by Mental Midgets now that Spring is Here

Why do we let "souls undone undoing others" on the Faculty Advancement Committee preach at naifs?

A member of the faculty for almost two years went to a meeting with erstwhile members of the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] to hear their advice for faculty who will undergo their third-year assistant professor review, the first full-scale assessment of their teaching, service, professional growth, and likableness. She learned so much that she returned to her department asking if one really cannot have an open file for tenure.

Well played, FAC authorities! The faculty have in this century made ONE change regarding tenure files, and you clowns managed to fuzz it up so that a PhD walks away from "mentoring" confused about a matter that she understood correctly when she entered the room. And you teach for a living?

That some former members of the FAC push closed files cannot surprise us. Members of the FAC have complained that since 2005 -- when candidates for tenure were permitted to select an open file -- letter-writers have been guarded in their assessments. [Can't have guarded letters. Calumnies provide the FAC "complete" information.] Now FAC emeriti instruct virgins that closed files are truly advisable. Maybe the "sophomore" who spoke to me misunderstood, but how coincidental that she misunderstood in a manner that suited the view of some FAC conspirators of recent years. And what a coincidence that, according to one or more attendees, each FAC veteran present indicated a strong preference for closed files.

To get, through deception of the uninformed and unwary, what they cannot get through meetings of the faculty, will closed-minded FAC bunko artists stop at nothing?

I do not blame the selected FAC alums alone. I also blame the decision-maker(s) who selected these closed-minded FAC alums for this forum. More important, I blame faculty who larded the FAC with fatheads. Those who have made careers from duping naifs in classrooms can scarcely be expected to develop new skills and proclivities once appointed to the FAC. When we faculty nominate shuckers and jivers to the FAC, we enable blatherers to bamboozle the gullible.

Not content to muddle through evaluation of personnel for three years or less, the few, the proud, the cloying suffuse campus with their baleful blarney even after their terms have ended.

Once deceivers and believers make the FAC, misdirection and bad faith become part of the way of working if not the way of life. The bylaws require the FAC to appoint one chair; the members of the FAC knowingly ignored the bylaws for years, then engaged in the subterfuge of naming every member of the FAC chair. This flouting too may be blamed in part on the faculty, for the Faculty Senate knows that the FAC is rejecting a mandate for which they do not care. Chairs of the Faculty Senate and senators do nothing about it.

But of course colleagues pretend to believe the FAC when the FAC says it assiduously adheres to authority.

On the FAC colleagues exemplify Orwell's proposition that the great enemy of clarity is insincerity. Like essays from desultory students, FAC letters celebrate murk and sloppiness as if they were virtues. Euphemistic encomia laud for their excellent professional growth evaluees with no professional growth but friends on the FAC or patrons in high places. Disfavored evaluees find their students' evaluations categorized in ways obviously at variance with the most straightforward readings to conjure an "excellence gap" in teaching. [Why should the FAC limit its bad faith to readings of the code or the bylaws?] The FAC then stonewalls the president on the rare occasions when he troubles himself to inquire into their "reasoning" and why it makes little sense.

Thus do "made men" unmake themselves.

None of the above should surprise anyone who has been at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] for even a few years.

As a prior entry in "Rump Parliament" [1-14-10] counseled, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

What may surprise even jaded veterans, however, is just how doltish FAC parolees can be. Did a recent member of the FAC truly say that he advises colleagues to select closed files for the same reason that he advises his students to waive access to letters of recommendation? He claimed that he tells faculty and student alike that readers take confidential letters more seriously, did he?

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Please permit me to advise Dr. Dumkopf about colleagues and about students/advisees in turn.

Favoring or disfavoring colleagues because they selected open or closed files flouts the Faculty Code. If one makes a habit of violating the code, I suppose that admitting violations forthrightly is more virtuous than concealing one's misdemeanors.

As for advisees or students, counsel your recommendees to waive their right to see the letter, then give them copies. That way, you protect your students and advisees both against the prejudices of the closed-minded and against any temptations to write what you would just as soon the subject of the letter not know you wrote. If you would not have your advisee or student read it, do not write it; if you must write what you would not have your student or advisee read, do not agree to write "for" the student or advisee.

Why do the simplest professional and ethical puzzles stymie the simple-minded?

I admit readily that the FAC might advise naifs to go with a closed file for their first FAC evaluation. That is one way to smoke out the assassins in the ranks of a program, department, or school. If mentors communicated that stratagem clearly and repeatedly, they might assist tyros.

However, if we advise newcomers to choose closed files to elicit negatives while probationary faculty may remedy defects real or concocted, wouldn't probationary faculty immediately infer that come tenure time they must select open files to be able to counter negatives that dissemblers will pour into the process?

Beyond that, junior colleagues should seek colleagues with reputations for candor and awareness and should neither seek nor accept mentoring from the apologists or apparatchiks. How are inexperienced faculty to sort apologists or apparatchiks from candid and aware veterans? They should inquire of those who proffer advice the capacities in which they have served the university. Apologists and apparatchiks do not work for free. They work for patrons who sanction negatively or positively. Colleagues frequently appointed over the years to positions of responsibility owing to their reputations for reliability have, in effect, been outed by their appointers. [Re-read "Respectable, Reliable, Reputable" in this blog, 4 March 2007.] Many who have done time on the FAC are seldom or never paraded before junior faculty because of the likelihood that they will commit candor or acknowledge truths inconvenient for the powerful.

Joanne Herring: "Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?"
Charlie Wilson: "Well, tradition mostly."

Naifs: "Why do so many members of the FAC advise faculty so poorly?"
Wild Bill: "Well, tradition mostly."

Third-year assistant professors should never listen to FAC members who are ignorant of "local" presuppositions, habits, or traditions. The FAC members will argue for stripped-down files because that makes the work of the FAC easier. They are prosecuting their own lassitude and preserving their own latitude. Having counseled evaluees to "keep it simple," members of the FAC will then sniff that the code explicitly burdens evaluees with making the case for advancement and will resolve silences or gaps against those who have listened to FAC advice.

"And you'll be amazed at the gaze / On their faces as they sentence you"

Rather, preparation of the newbie's file should be informed by the newbie's "local" culture, peers in department, program, or school. The third-year assistant should ask those who will supply specialized, expert assessments what those evaluators would prefer to be available.

Don't tell anybody, but the members of the FAC read only a small subset of submitted materials anyway.

Oh? The FAC members did not make that tidbit clear while urging skinny files?

I am shocked and amazed!

Miscreants Out Themselves

What our colleagues decry, they often make needful.

Amid his monologue in the meeting of the full faculty held 6 April 2010, a colleague professed concern about the second duty proposed for the Faculty Senate's Committee on Diversity. He claimed that many colleagues or departments would object to the Diversity Committee's participation "... in the development of initiatives that enable the university to hire new faculty from historically under-represented populations and to support better the retention and success of such faculty."

Yes, at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] such a provision passes for audacity.

I suppose he was correct. Many colleagues would object to hiring from under-represented populations and supporting new faculty. After all, what we have done so far has worked so well! Do we have to keep priming the pump? And, of course, catering to social Luddites is the way to plan for the future.

That the speaker hailed from a department infamous for its shortcomings in hiring and support should have surprised no long-time observer. After all, faculty who object to scrutiny or assistance almost always come from departments, programs, or schools that should be scrutinized and assisted most.

To assist the objector and his department, I offer infra some generalizations about diversity at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce].


The more a department opposes scrutiny of any kind [not just diversity], the more that department should be scrutinized.

The more strenuously a department refuses assistance, the more that department needs assistance.

Departments, programs, or schools should have nothing to hide from colleagues or administrators. Indeed, competent departments, like competent scholars, welcome comments and criticisms because that is how competent scholars and competent departments perform their best. In evaluation of students or of peers, confident professionals welcome additional pairs of eyes because "outsiders" may catch errors or misjudgments that insiders missed.

In hiring as in scholarship, if you fear error or injustice more than criticism or questioning, you seek the opinions of other professionals. Referees for journals or publishers do not know as much about my data or topics as I do, yet they manage to alert me to missteps and misphrasings. Go figure!

When departments, programs, or schools hide from scrutiny or supervision, they invite us all to ask what they are hiding. If recruitment is on the up and up, why dodge review? If you believe you did your work well, why not have someone check that work? If candidates from chronically under-represented groups tend not to make the cut in your searches for good reasons, why not share those good reasons with others?

Experienced Puget Clowns faculty know that these questions answer themselves. Recruitment all too often is not on the up and up; the work was done sloppily or deviously; the reasons, far from good, would be unacceptable if known.

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By the way: Ever notice how perverse arguments and arguers become whenever diversity issues arise?

This colleague argues that BHERT [Bias-Hate Emergency Reaction Team] or something like it is utterly necessary. In the course of her argument, she makes it plain that she should never serve on BHERT because she is overzealous, self-righteous, and dopey.

After the meeting, another colleague argues that the meeting revealed the zealotry that makes diversity programs so dangerous. In making his argument, however, he reveals the atavism that makes diversity programs so necessary.

Am I the only one who notices these things?