HOW TO WRECK AN ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT. Professor Palmer has the Western Ontario method.

Just to be really clear, it is the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, which houses the economics department, that is killing us; he is 99% responsible for our problems.

Other departments grew considerably in size in recent years while we shrank (despite the fact that we were adding a lot of students and they weren't). We were in the worst shape in Social Science before the budget crisis and now are taking the biggest hits. A few years ago, we had commitments in place that we could expand, and now that the crunch has hit, we are being told we must cut back from our current position, not from our larger, promised position.

The dean spent a lot of short-term money on other departments. Then, when he woke up one day and realized he had no way to meet future obligations, he instituted a policy of no replacements, no growth, and essentially 100% tax on any other money raised in a department. Surprise, surprise, it has been our department that is generating most of this money, and we have been told we cannot keep any of it.

I feel your pain.

No doubt, somewhere in Cambridge sits an REMF with a spreadsheet detailing precisely how enrollment-impacted the economics department is, and how high its cost per student credit hour is, and how far from the threshold for a new hire those figures place it.

(That was a shot at Harvard, with an implied dig at similar thinking in DeKalb.) At Western Ontario, however, Atlas may be shrugging.

The dean has now appointed an "interim ... acting ... chair" who will try to hold things together; i.e., the department has gone into receivership for now. Apparently the better-qualified members of the dept who would have (and have in the past) made good temporary chairs either would not take on the task this time or were not approached by the dean.

Two possibilities come to mind: a dean that is intent on wrecking the department is not going to ask people who would push back, or John Galt will not work for Wesley Mouch.

Western Ontario's report on the situation in economics suggests the Wesley Mouch scenario.

[Nathan] Sussman resigned from his position as chair effective Wednesday, April 1, however he remains a professor in the department. He says he doesn’t want to decide who may lose their job,and what research cutbacks need to be made.

Associate Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences Julie McMullin will be interim head of the department until an acting chair has been appointed. The selection process for a new full-time chair will follow.

Sussman says he felt a need to express his position. “I think there is another way,” he says. “You also have a responsibility as a leader to say, ‘I don’t think this is the right thing.

“It’s just my own personal, conscientious objection.”

Faculty of Social Science Dean Brian Timney says he is “disappointed.”

“Right now the university needs strong leaders who can help guide us through the current financial problems across the university,” he says.

“I rely on the support and advice of my chairs to ensure that we can make the decisions that will be best for all members of the faculty and that has included extensive discussions as to where we might find funds to minimize layoffs.

“While I recognize Professor Sussman’s views concerning the origin of the university’s financial difficulties, in Social Science budget cuts were inevitable, even without the downturn.”

The dean proposes an equivalence between "strong leader" and "doing what the dean wants". It's a bit more polished than "I'm the decider" but otherwise it's "I'm the decider". Then the decider has to get the cooperation of people he's been disrespecting. Chortle.