SHARED GOVERNANCE MEANS FACULTY GOVERNANCE.

Matt "Dean Dad" Reed reflects on the administrative turnover at Portland State University. “In 18 months on the job, he went through four provosts.”

Perhaps it's time for Portland State to think about its mission and purpose.  It sometimes gives the impression of being a state-supported version of Brown (or Reed) without the starlets paying bribes to get their underprepared spawn in, or perhaps of Oberlin with a less upscale food court, or perhaps Evergreen State with a broader offering of courses.

Thus, it might appeal to trustees to bring in somebody from the private sector, perhaps somebody who is not afraid to kick a few and take a few.

The onus, though, is on the faculty to take back the responsibilities that are rightly theirs.

Is the college worth extra effort, or have you been burned enough times that you only feel like working just hard enough not to get fired? (And any self-proclaimed “change agent” is in for a rude shock the first time he tries to fire somebody with tenure.)

For a Board to let a president go as far as that one did suggests either inattention or a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the institution.  Undoing that damage will take time, but not only that; it will take some folks rethinking what it is they’re trying to do. After a rogue president, the temptation will be to clamp down and micromanage, but that’s exactly the wrong thing.  To the folks who’ve stuck around, it adds insult to injury. They need to bring in someone who understands the big picture, and then back off and let them work. That’s a tall order for people who think of themselves as hard-charging leaders, but it’s the likeliest way to get a good, sustainable outcome.

Or they can churn through another half-dozen provosts, looking for magic, and wondering why everybody seems angry all the time.  Their call.

As there is accumulating evidence that the intersectional crazies on the faculty will turn on their own after they have driven all the classical liberals and Tories out or into deep cover, perhaps an incoming president who will encourage the remaining academic wolves among the classical liberals and Tories to show their fangs will discover that, in choosing to restore the faculty stewardship, he will not have to micro-manage.