Haltom's Eighth Law & The Offense Card

   

At a recent meeting of the Faculty Senate, a colleague pronounced a survey of the faculty "offensive."  What offended our colleague?  Not necessarily anything.
 
 
The minutes of the Faculty Senate for 25 November 2013 disclose that a colleague "... viewed a survey structured in the way the Senate was proposing as demeaning the expertise that the Burlington Northern Group brings to the issue of power, privilege and diversity and makes it into 'either/or.' He stated that the survey undermines faculty expertise and that he found it to be borderline offensive." After cringing, I began to consider what his gambit may have betokened.
     
Was he sincerely offended?  I neither know nor care.  My Eighth Law reminds us all that "No one may be offended;  one may only take offense." http://rumpparliament.blogspot.com/2008/02/haltoms-eighth-law-no-one-may-be.html  Our colleague took offense.  He played "The Offense Card."  That public act makes his private state(s) irrelevant.
   
"The Offense Card" is almost always a stratagem or plea in lieu of effective, rational argument.  Logic will not avail you?  Go for an emotional ploy.  In the instance last November, there was no reasonable argument that the faculty should not be surveyed regarding a requirement that the faculty are asked to impose on all Puget Sound students.  Our colleague and others might reasonably discuss wording, sequence, or other methodological or logistic issues.  Senators might decide whether a survey was an appropriate way to elicit what ordinary faculty think or whether other means might work better or might have been working well already.  To play "The Offense Card," by contrast, was to short-circuit an attempt to find out what colleagues think.  Manufacturing offense—sincerely or slyly—amounts to telling the assembled to STFU.
   
This pitiful and pitiable episode of taking offense while blustering expertise was itself offensive, if one elects to regard it as such.  The faculty have before them a proposal to force all Puget Sound students to take one or more courses.  No one can honestly state of what such courses will consist.  The inchoate requirement, the colleagues who will be importuned or authorized to teach authorized courses, the materials and lessons to be employed, and almost every other characteristic of the proposed requirement remain unsettled at best.  Yet our colleague takes offense that the Senate might ask faculty what faculty, rather than an élite coalition professing specialized expertise, thought students might be forced to endure.
 
Still, the episode is not exclusively cringeworthy.  It is instructive as well.  One or more of the proposers who would conscript our students barely deign to converse from their lofty expertise with faculty who can scarcely appreciate the knowledge and virtuosity of the proposer(s).  Our better(s) find it insulting to have to explain themselves to the rest of us, let alone to listen to what we might have to say under circumstances not under the control of the élite(s).
 
So the comments of our colleague are instructive and perhaps revealing.  I have heard the "appeal to expertise" voiced by other proposers before the Faculty Senate and elsewhere.  I have chosen to laugh it off rather than take offense.  It is sad if one chooses to see it that way.  It is insulting, if one opts to be insulted.  I prefer to regard it as entertaining self-parody.
 

One or more self-appointed tell elected representatives not to inquire of colleagues what colleagues might think about requirements and curriculum.  Instead, the diversity overlord(s) proclaim their openness and transparency while insisting that diversity thralls defer to the overlords' authority.
 
Enjoy this burlesque!  This was a mean ploy in a sense, but it was no mean ploy in another sense.  It was an audacious tossing off of "The Offense Card."
 

Name the Faculty Club, Bub

What Should We Call the Faculty Club?


A little birdie told me that hierarchs of The Faculty Club would like to name The Faculty Club.  This, of course, perplexed me.  I thought "The Faculty Club" was the name of the establishment.  A plaque on Niwa House lists when "The Faculty Club" was established.  Moreover, "The Faculty Club" is a dandy name: somewhat accurate, elegant, and easy for faculty to pronounce.

Hence, my entry in the contest will be "The Faculty Club."  Gee, I hope I win!

I hope the contest is open to all present and future members of "The Faculty Club."  Maybe members of the staff could suggest "The Staff & Faculty Club."  Staff who would like the prize should put the faculty first.  "The Faculty & Staff Club," anyone?  Staff who seek an edge in the contest should keep faculty sensibilities in mind:
       "The Faculty & Staff Club" might do the trick.

Perhaps, however, the hierarchs meant a contest to rename "The Faculty Club."  If so, faculty and staff should follow the habits of the administration at the University of Puget Clowns (© Susan Resneck PieRce 1996):  Name the club and its major features after the highest bidder(s).

I reserve to myself the naming of the bar, for I lent it to the club.  However, I am open to offers to rent or lease the bar—with the bidders' funds going to me.

"The Faculty Club" as a whole might be renamed controversially—"Whitey's Place" would comment on the diversity of the faculty, for example—but I do not like the prospects of "Club Notochord" or "The 39 Stepfords" to triumph.

Now "Greene Acres" might have a chance.

Commencement Speaker Fallout

"Enhanced Commencement Techniques" was the winning comment.

In response to my 27 February 2013 post "Commencement Speaker," the best comment was that Dr. Zimbardo might speak on "Enhanced Commencement Techniques."  Nyuk!  Nyuk!

Will Dr. Zimbardo get an honorary degree?  He has a Ph. D. in Psychology.  Perhaps the university could bestow a degree in Criminal Studies.  If the university is so eager to soil its reputation, my duty is to help out.  Thus:  "Philip George Zimbardo is awarded a doctor of criminal studies dedeci causa nunc pro tunc ["awarded now on account of dishonor then]."


The University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce  1996] -- no matter how cynical you get, you cannot catch up.

Commencement Speaker

Before I could delete a communiqué about commencement 2013, I saw that Dr. Philip B. [sic] Zimbardo would be the commencement speaker. The announcement noted among other accomplishments Professor Zimbardo's " ... groundbreaking research, The Stanford Prison Experiment."

I suppose the Stanford Prison Experiment could be called "groundbreaking."  I should prefer "heartbreaking," but why quibble?  To refresh your recollection of that experiment, please see 
http://www.prisonexp.org/ and/or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0.

I'd like to host a list of the best responses to this announcement.  Please reply to this posting, anonymously if you wish, with your response(s).

For example, you could respond with snark:   "Springing Bernie Madoff [or Jerry Sandusky or Charlie Manson -- suit your taste or lack thereof] for our commencement would be difficult."

Or you might note that "Dr. Zimbardo probably paid UPS to be rehabilitated as commencement speaker."

Or be sanguine: "It won't be boring."

Or turn a lemon into lemonade: "It's great to hear from an inadvertent founder of Human Subjects committees."


What is your response to Philip George Zimbardo's speaking at graduation this year?

Lest We Forget Too Soon

Five or more colleagues hope that we each and all forget the Starr Chamber -- The "Professional" "Standards" Committee of 2003-2004.  I reprint the following post so that we do not let the worst Faculty Senate committee ever escape infamy into oblivion too quickly.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 2007

On 14 February 2007, a mostly bygone Professional Standards Committee soiled itself over the slightest imaginable supervision by the Faculty Senate.



Lest we forget, two years ago the Professional Standards Committee from academic year 2003-2004 [hereinafter, the Professional Standards Committee will be abbreviated "PSC" and the PSC for the year 2003-2004 designated "the Starr Chamber" to commemorate the secrecy of their proceedings and decision-making and the inequity of their methods and reasoning] sent the Faculty Senate a mewling memorandum.

The Faculty Senate, by the barest of margins, had passed a resolution in which the Senate took responsibility for mistakes made by the Starr Chamber in its annus horribilis 2003-2004. The Senate, deciding to exercise oversight just to see what it might be like, had appointed an ad hoc committee to investigate recent PSC [mis]behavior and to make recommendations to prevent violations of the Faculty Code and due process in the future. That ad hoc committee produced no findings. I do not know whether to attribute the ad hoc committee's misprision to cowardice, collegiality, collusion, cunning, cleverness, or some other word beginning with "c." What I do know is that the ad hoc committee insulated the 2003-2004 PSC and insulted the Faculty Senate. When seven senators responded to the absence of findings by acknowledging the errors and misjudgments of the Starr Chamber, that was entirely too much for the Starr Chamber [and for its chronic, conniving apologists on the Faculty Senate].

The communiqué from the Starr Chamber was a marvel of haughtiness and misdirection. Having committed undeniable errors, the Starr Chamber, like mafiosi, pointed out that the Senate had not proved the errors. Even that subterfuge was not quite true. For one thing, senators had noted that the Starr Chamber had proceeded in very different ways to deal with two grievances, one in Fall 2003 and one in Spring 2004. When the Academic Dean, a member of the Starr Chamber, was the respondent regarding a grievance, he and the grievant received the report of the Starr Chamber at about the same time that the President received it. The Starr Chamber after the second grievance sent its report to the President but denied the report to the second grievant and to the second respondent. Logic dictated that at least one release had to be contrary to the Faculty Code, which had not changed in the interim. Senators therefore concluded that the Starr Chamber had committed at least one mistake.

Pesky, punctilious senators! Why can't they mind their own business? Why do they oversee the Starr Chamber when they could be banning Pass/Fail or addressing plagiarism? Don't they know with who [sic] they're messing?


The Senate had had noted other errors or irregularities that even the Starr Chamber could not have denied had members of the Starr Chamber deigned to speak with senators. It cannot be disputed that the Starr Chamber conducted the second grievance hearing more than fifteen days after it received the grievance from the Dean of the University. It is beyond dispute, therefore, that the Starr Chamber tarried past the Faculty Code's deadline. That was a first violation of the Faculty Code, a violation that one hopes was mistaken but may have been deliberate. To cover its mistake or misstep, the Starr Chamber "interpreted" the Faculty Code to set the deadline at fifteen working days, an interpretation that negated the mandate in the Faculty Code. That is a second incontrovertible error or evasion. It is not only beyond dispute but beyond belief that the Starr Chamber then blew by the "reinterpreted" fifteen working days -- a third incontestable violation of its duty. When the second grievance was eventually heard, one of the two claims advanced by the grievant was more than thirty working days in the past according to the grievant's own complaint. Despite the code's "statute of limitations," the Starr Chamber entertained that grievance. This fourth violation senators did not have to investigate or to prove; a calendar proved that nonfeasance or malfeasance.

Senators may be able to count, but they do not count. The Starr Chamber is far too important to be bothered with calendars or duties or instrumentalities of lesser beings, especially when the Starr Chamber dispenses justice and rights wrongs and picks favorites and follows decanal directions. Besides, for all outsiders know, the Starr Chamber interpreted thirty working days as thirty-three working days because thirty-three made a prettier number and allowed the grievance to be entertained.


The Valentine's Day greeting from the Starr Chamber to the Senate featured other deceptions. The most inept PSC in recent memory objected that the Senate had not carefully investigated mistakes. As noted above, the Senate's ad hoc committee had investigated mistakes and malfeasance, so the mistakes of the Starr Chamber were carefully investigated. Because that ad hoc committee issued no findings, neither senators nor members of the Starr Chamber could know what the ad hoc committee might have found. Senators knew that each member of the ad hoc committee admitted before the senators that he or she had discovered mistakes, however. The Starr Chamber phrasing was thus cunning but misleading. The Senate as a whole had not investigated, but the Senate's ad hoc committee had discovered that "mistakes were made."

"Mistakes were made!" That passive construction does not hide agents effectively enough. The Starr Chamber deserves greater camouflage. Maybe senate proceedings should be confidential.

The recklessness of the Starr Chamber in conducting its proceedings in 2003-2004 made the Starr Chamber's call for careful work ironic and amusing, not to say hypocritical. The hypocrisy followed: "In our opinion, the Senate passed its motion without exercising due process, without gathering evidence from all parties involved, and without assuring itself that it had received an impartial and complete account of events." Shall we peel this onion and weep at the double standards employed by Starr Chamber apologists?

• The Starr Chamber violated due process repeatedly in 2003-2004 beyond what I have listed above. For one thing, the Starr Chamber so constructed a list of charges that an accused colleague had to prove her innocence rather than the accusers having to prove her guilt. The Starr Chamber's product passes for due process but the Senate's motion does not?

• The Starr Chamber repeatedly insisted that a confidentiality found neither in the Faculty Code nor in the bylaws prevented them from speaking with the Senate about their activities despite the Senate's oversight capacity and duty. Hence, those who protested that evidence had not been gathered were themselves parties who refused to provide the evidence that they then said had not been accumulated. [Please consult the very first posting in "Rump Parliament" to see that two members of the Starr Chamber had explicitly informed the Faculty Senate that no member of the Starr Chamber would break confidentiality to speak to the senate or to its ad hoc committee.] Having obstructed the investigation, the Starr Chamber then protested that the investigation was incomplete. The effrontery of the Starr Chamber recalls the classic definition of chutzpah: A son kills his parents then demands mercy because he is an orphan.

• A final hypocrisy: the little information the Starr Chamber had released was partial and incomplete, not to mention every bit as misleading as the Starr Chamber's Valentine's Day memorandum.
  
  Let senators have their truth. The Starr Chamber will settle for arrogance and presumptuousness. All hail the Starr Chamber! The Few, the Proud, the Unelected Elect. By appointment to the Dean, Chief Privy Attendants!
  
  Had anyone with even the slightest common sense counseled veterans of the Starr Chamber, he or she would have noted that defensive over-reaction to the merest hint of oversight and accountability did not become the Starr Chamber. It did, however, show what the Starr Chamber had become.
  
  Senators are just jealous. Senators must work in open meetings and must account to faculty for their decisions and activities. The Starr Chamber, like President Dubya, answers to a Higher Power. It does not account for itself or its actions to ad hoc committees, to the Faculty Senate, or to hoi polloi. The Starr Chamber transcends mere faculty governance and accountability. The Starr Chamber rules!The Faculty Senate drools!
  
  
  Still, the 2006-2007 Senate weathered the whining duplicity and hypocrisy of the Starr Chamber. Thus, the Senate was steeled when the 2006-2007 PSC was found to have issued a major interpretation that it had sent forward neither to the Senate nor to the trustees. The Faculty Code requires the assent of the trustees to a major interpretation. It also requires that the Faculty Senate be notified of the interpretation. The PSC once again had ignored or forgotten elementary demands of the Faculty Code, just like the Starr Chamber.
  
  Faculty Code? Bylaws? Authority? Due Process? What were those to the Starr Chamber? What are those to any elect on a mission from God or the Dean, to cite a distinction of which the Starr Chamber proved incapable?

Translating the Trustees

A report on the most recent meeting of trustees of the University of Puget Sound included the following:




“Workshop: Brand Strategy Update



“Over the past year, Puget Sound has engaged in an initiative to strengthen its identity and visibility in an increasingly competitive environment. The goal of this work is to more clearly, accurately, and compellingly present Puget Sound to all audiences—internally and externally—in alignment with our institutional mission, values, and personality.



“In February 2012 the trustees participated in a workshop with consultants Maguire Associates and Pyramid Communications, who have been engaged to guide Puget Sound in the development of a brand strategy. During the May session, trustees reviewed a summary of findings based on a thorough analysis of previous research; interviews on campus with students, faculty, and staff; a comprehensive survey of current students; interviews with college counselors at private and public high schools; and an analysis of branding and positioning at six peer institutions. Trustees discussed opportunities for differentiating Puget Sound in an authentic way and reviewed next steps, which include delivery of brand strategy, positioning statements, and graphic standards during summer 2012.”



I begin with the obvious. The marketing-speak and electioneering-speak of the second paragraph deconstruct and demystify the first paragraph. That second paragraph depends on the reader’s credulity. If amid the verbiage the reader accords the magic words “in an authentic way” the weight for which the experts in flim-flam hope and on which the bamboozlers depend — that is, that the word cloud of consumerist claptrap will shade some substrate of reality — then readers will not notice that actuality has been and will be overshadowed by appearances. The “authentic” Puget Sound, whatever it might be said to have been or be, will succumb to “brand strategy.”



Interviews, surveys, and analyses of peer institutions cannot yield genuine, sincere, and accurate views of “mission, values, and personality” as held by staff, faculty, and students. Real, authentic, and objective information about individuals does not come that cheap, that quick, or that facile [triple sic]. But please pore over the release carefully! Consultants can retrofit statements of "our" institutional mission, "our" institutional values, and "our" institutional personality to the branding strategy, positioning statements, and graphic standards that the consultants are hawking. Thus, one word in that second paragraph is perhaps as important as the phrase “in an authentic way:”  “institutional.”


Whipsaw yourself between the individual and the institutional or between the authentic and the authorized; you will come to read the report in a manner less credulous than the elevation of appearance or actuality presumes.
 
The trustees, administrators, and consulting flacks control “institutional.” Indeed, “institutional” seizes control from those who might imagine that they know something about “individual” values, beliefs, attitudes, or opinions. Any authenticity thus generated is synthetic authenticity. Any identity, personality, or essence that Puget Sound will be claimed to exhibit will be adjusted — sometimes subtly, sometimes grossly, and always mendaciously — away from the academic qualities of the individuals and toward the advertising claims of the institution.



Please re-read that second paragraph. Watch the authentic, the genuine, and the real enveloped by the artificial, the ginned-up, and the seductive. Behold the import of the report of the trustees.



Only naïfs would see the first paragraph as anything other than blather. For those naïfs, however, let us translate the first paragraph:



“Over the past year, Puget Sound has engaged in an initiative to strengthen its identity and visibility in an increasingly competitive environment.”

Translation: “To compete with other schools, Puget Sound must baffle prospectives and their parents.”



“The goal of this work is to more clearly, accurately, and compellingly present Puget Sound to all audiences—internally and externally—in alignment with our institutional mission, values, and personality.”

Translations: ”Puget Sound must transmogrify its image into something that sells better without wising up faculty and staff.”  OR  "Puget Sound must propagandize externally as well as internally."



Puget Sound is strengthening its identity, trustees? What would that mean in plain English? Might it mean that Puget Sound is adjusting its mission and values to suit new imagery and revamped propaganda?

Once the imagery has been perfected and the propaganda fitted to the imagery, won't the trustees and administrators then have to fit the staff and faculty to the images and the propaganda?  How will that be done and by whom?

Or do the consultants and trustees anticipate a "bait and switch?"  We get students through our positioning, then retain students by whatever means, but we never admit that much of our sizzle will never accompany a steak.

New Support for Haltom's Third Law

Andrew Sullivan at his blog [http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/license-behave-badly.html] recalls Haltom's 3rd Law: "No one who professes ethics has any."

Here is what Dr. Sullivan published on 4 April 2012:

Eric Schwitzgebel ponders studies suggesting that professional ethicists behave about as morally as people who aren't paid to think about morality:

[W]e might consider some countervailing forces. One possibility is that there's some kind of "moral licensing" effect. Suppose, for example, that a consequentialist donates a wad to charity. Maybe then she feels free to behave worse in other ways than she otherwise would have. Suppose a Kantian remains rigorously honest at some substantial cost to his welfare. Maybe then he feels freer to be a jerk to his students. One depressing thought is that all this cancels out: Our efforts to live by our ethical principles exert sufficient psychic costs that we compensate by acting worse in other ways, only moving around the lump under the rug.

This entry seems to me to track my third law [Rump Parliament, 20 January 2008] and a discussion from this blog dated 24 December 2009 ["Up Is Down"].