Couldn't have said it better myself

As some of you know, I am friends with Dean Dad in real life, and he is as wonderful in person as he is to read online. But he has outdone himself in his critique of Stanley Fish, who honestly drives me CRAZY!

Do yourself a favor. Read Dean Dad's latest entry.

DD, you rock!

Sad news

It has happened again...a murder on the Virginia Tech campus. Students were warned that someone was stabbed in the new graduate housing area. They have not disclosed who was the victim or the assailant. They have arrested someone for the murder and told the students that they could resumed moving around campus. I can hardly imagine the trauma and backlash of another tragedy in such a short time.

I am always a little scared that violence will happen on my campus. It makes sense, really, when you have so many people living and working together in a small space. The odds are that untreated mental illness, poor anger management, relationship issues, and/or substance abuse will lead someone to engage in illegal and violent behavior.

I have had times when I have been concerned about a student's behavior. When those issues arise, I have reached out to university law enforcement and student services staff members--just to stay safe and get help for students in need.

Universities can only do what they can do. We can prepare, train faculty and housing staff to recognize students in trouble, and put emergency systems in place, but we cannot preclude violence from happening. Sometimes, all we can do is pray.

I will keep the Va Tech community in my prayers tonight.

We are (missing) one

Okay, I very much enjoyed the "We are one" concert inauguration event yesterday, but I was kinda aggravated that the Inaugural planners decided not to air Bishop Gene Robinson's invocation at the beginning of the event. It came across as a needless kick in the teeth on a day we are supposed to feel more connected to the rest of America. I never in my life thought I would say this, but I am with Dan Savage, who wrote: When you're throwing folks a bone, it's a good idea to make sure they can, you know, see the bone.

As a Jew, I would rather none of our events had invocations or any religious exercise, but I have learned to accommodate our civil religion, as long as "in Jesus' name" is not part of the prayer. So, I would like to have had the prayer televised and broadcast on NPR.

For those of you who also wanted to see his prayer, you can watch it on Christianity Today's website or below. It isn't perfect--shot from pretty far away--but the sound is great. You can also read the text below. His words are brave and pretty progressive. I came away impressed.

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack
Obama

By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...

Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

Musings on sabbaticals

Sabbaticals are one of the rewards of the academic life. That is what my mentors told me.

Other professions occasionally get sabbaticals--there are companies that offer sabbaticals to employees in the private sector (see Fortune magazine's list); some religious denominations offer leaves for their ministers. Some have argued that military leaders should also get paid leave.

The purpose of the academic sabbatical is straightforward, as MJ Perry from Carpe Diem notes:

Faculty time at research universities is allocated among teaching, research
and service, but what often happens is that teaching and service become so
time-consuming that it detracts from scholarly research. Having a semester
every seven years without any obligations for teaching and service allows
research-oriented faculty an opportunity to devote full-time attention to
research projects that are often impossible to complete with teaching and
service obligations, e.g. write a book, or travel internationally to collect
scientific data or conduct scientific studies, etc.

Thus, the benefits of the sabbatical are straightforward:

• Paid time to focus on the topics and activities of your choice
• No service responsibilities
• No teaching responsibilities
• Chance to travel and spend time in new places
• Opportunities to study/work with colleagues in new places
• Time to focus on large projects

Those of us academic administrators can also use this sabbatical time to participate in an administrative training program, like the ACE Fellowship Program.

Unfortunately, like every other aspect of faculty life, sabbaticals are widely misunderstood and, in many forums, resented. I mean, who are faculty to get some special perk that "real people" don't get.

My gf raised the issue when I started visualizing my own sabbatical (still a couple years away, unfortunately). If I got a paid year "off" to do research, travel, or gain administrative training, what would SHE be doing? Would she be travelling with me, or would she be at home, alone and working, to handle things here?

I raised this to a friend who had a recent sabbatical, asking how his wife felt about it. His face dropped. "She was pissed!" was his quick response. Pissed during the whole sabbatical. Suspicious of how he was using his time...Was he really working, or was he screwing around and watching Prime Time in the Daytime? And if he was home, shouldn't he be taking on more chores?

It is hard to communicate the concept of a "working leave" to someone who works everyday on a more regular schedule and has no chance of ever getting a leave from any of their activities. It is easy to see why partners thus employed might be resentful. So, how do we woo the partners and convince them the sabbatical is a good thing?

And another question: Is it better for a future higher ed administrator to do an ACE Fellowship, or to focus on writing and publishing to up the number of pubs, the research money, and such to raise her status to full professor? I am considering both of these options, assuming I don't take another position that pushes the sabbatical even further in the future. Obviously, I could do the research one first, and wait for the administrative one until after I have reached full professor status. But that seems to drag everything out so long...

Ah, well. Enough of that. Back to the everyday, beginning-of-the-semester grind.

How the Jews handle the holidays?

By shopping after the Christmas rush is over! I don't mean to feed into a stereotype (i.e., Jews are cheap). Honestly, there are plenty of goyim hitting those post-holiday sales. But we decided to forego "gifts" and just go shopping for things we needed once the holidays were done.

On top of the necessary purchases (new longjohns, gloves, and a recycling center for the kitchen), we have both been thinking about 1 larger "gifty" purchase. I have been contemplating getting a Kindle. Obviously, there is a waiting list, and there are rumors of a 2.0 version in the offing. Any advice, pro or con?

My recommendations to you? Go see Milk and Frost/Nixon. Now. They are amazing.

Otherwise, I plan to go see a couple more movies, enjoy the shopping, and get started on the list of tasks that are cluttering up my Outlook task list.

Happy New Years, everyone!

Following procedure

A recent conversation with the gf about student situations I am dealing with, and a story in the Chronicle about a false sexual harassment proceeding, raised questions for me about the role and importance of establishing and following procedures.

In discussing a student issue, I noted that I would likely skip a step in a process for student complaints and meet with the student myself as the administrator, instead of sending him first to his advisor, because I was sure the advisor would hand it off to me. I haven't heard the complaint myself yet, but I have heard about it through the grapevine and know that it is not one the advisor can handle. It will get kicked to me anyway, so I might as well intervene now and see if I can manage it before it becomes an official grievance.

What is ironic is that I created this process myself and put it in all the student handbooks. I did it to keep trouble off my desk as much as possible, and to teach students about the proper process for complaints. Yet, it just isn't always worth it to follow the process, when you know where it will lead. Perhaps it is because it is the end of the semester, but there isn't a lot of time for the process to move forward. Might as well skip a step before we all leave town for the holidays.

I contrast this decision with the story of pseudonymous author of a Chronicle First Person story who was charged with sexually harassing a student (who was also a university employee) via email. It turned out that the student had emailed the professor at a personal hotmail address, but she had the address wrong, and so some random stranger had fun by sexually taunting the student via numerous email messages and signing the professor's name. The author notes that he was assumed to be guilty, not only by the student but by his dean and the ombusperson.

The process, as the author laid it out, was that the student complained to her department chair, who encouraged her to make a formal complaint. The dean and ombudsperson then scheduled a meeting with the professor to go over his "behavior." The author complains that everyone assumed his guilt; the department chair should have talked to him, the ombudsperson should have sought out his side.

I have to say, so far, the process sounds about right to me. The chair should encourage a formal complaint, not (as the author wanted) handle it by personally calling the instructor to find out what was going on. The instructor was not in his department, and that kind of personal "reaching out to handle things" can seem like men taking care of each other. You don't play with this kind of sexual harassment, especially when you have an email trail. The ombudsperson should contact the dean and set up a meeting with the involved professor. This doesn't indicate assumption of guilt, it indicates a proper process and procedure to protect students' and faculty's rights.

However, in my opinion, the procedure breaks down right there. They have the meeting, but the administrators are loaded for bear. They do not offer the faculty member a chance to explain his side of the story. The dean voices her disgust at the beginning. The ombudsperson is not an unbiased mediator; instead, she whips out an agreement for the faculty member to sign agreeing that he would seek psychological treatment. That is the moment, in my mind, where the faculty member is right in his critique.

Had they followed the procedure, I bet they would have been fine. The faculty member should be informed of the complaint, be able to respond with his side of the story, and then a discussion would ensue. All of this should have been kept quiet throughout--a private personnel matter--and the error would have been identified and addressed. A little embarassment for everyone, but a feeling that the process honored everyone. Instead, the author has a story he can retell that will be adopted by every man who has ever complained about attending harassment training.

Procedures matter. We set them up to make sure everyone's rights are respected, everyone knows how the process will go, and everything is clear. When we make changes to procedure or ignore one of the steps, these decisions need to be mindful and purposive. My small change makes little difference to anyone, except (as my gf reminds me) students might learn that they can just come take up my time instead of talking to their advisor. But I can head that off.

And if my student complaint becomes an official grievance, it goes by the book.

Notes for candidates coming to campus

Okay, we are well underway in the hiring season, and as a veteran of the hiring process and an occasionally irritated and disappointed search committee member, I have a few suggestions.

If you want the job, DO:

1. listen to what the committee asks you to do. Present on your research if we ask for that; if we ask to hear about teaching, describe courses you have taught and your teaching philosophy. Be specific and use examples. The search committee knows the audience, and we know what they want to hear. The committee is interested in you, and we want you to do well.
2. pay attention to time limits. We gave you an agenda with times on it. Part of the purpose of the agenda was to cue you to our time limitations. So, if we give you an hour to present, keep your talk to 40-45 minutes so there is time for questions.
3. listen as much as you speak. When you are at dinner or informal gatherings, be polite and ask your hosts about themselves. While they certainly want to learn about you, everyone likes to think they are interesting and wants to contribute.
4. come prepared with questions about your prospective institution. If you don't research us and bring some questions, how will we know you care?

DO NOT:

1. try to wing it. Even the best candidates have to prepare. A well-organized colloquium can make all of the difference, and a bad one can sink you. If you don't put the time in, we will assume that (a) you aren't very good, or (b) you aren't very interested. Either option bodes poorly for your chances.
2. bad-mouth your home school or current department. Every discipline is smaller than you could ever know. One bad word about an advisor or colleague can haunt you for a very long time. Everyone has a nemesis who makes them crazy; just don't give voice to yours while on your job interview.
3. be over-familiar with the faculty. Just because you met some of the faculty at a few conferences doesn't mean you are friends. No hugs or crude jokes; keep it to handshakes and pleasant conversation.

That is all for now. I am sure I will come back and add some more as we go.

Happy end-of-the-semester!