Power and Protest at an American University: No Confidence, No Fear 2020023013, 2020023014, 9780367861704, 9781003017332

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Power and Protest at an American University

This book examines the successful no-confidence movement led by faculty at Saint Louis University in 2013 in an effort to unseat the university president, considering the reasons for success when similar movements often fail. Through a series of chapters written by faculty from many disciplines at the university, it uses a particular episode of faculty protest to shed light on wider issues concerning the circumstances in which faculty are likely to be motivated to protest, the institutional frameworks that make protest possible and the strategies that get results. As such, it will appeal to scholars of social movements with interests in protest and mobilization in the field of education. Ellen Carnaghan is Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University, USA, and the author of Out of Order: Russian Political Values in an Imperfect World. Kathryn E. Kuhn is Associate Professor of Sociology at Saint Louis University, USA.

The Mobilization Series on Social Movements, Protest, and Culture Series editor: Professor Hank Johnston, San Diego State University, USA

Published in conjunction with Mobilization: An International Quarterly, the premier research journal in the field, this series publishes a broad range of research in social movements, protest and contentious politics. This is a growing field of social science research that spans sociology and political science as well as anthropology, geography, communications and social psychology. Enjoying a broad remit, the series welcomes works on the following topics: social movement networks; social movements in the global South; social movements, protest, and culture; personalist politics, such as living environmentalism, guerrilla gardens, anticonsumerist communities, anarchist-punk collectives; and emergent repertoires of contention. Nationalist Movements Explained Comparisons from Canada, Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland Maurice Pinard Racialized Protest and the State Resistance and Repression in a Divided America Edited by Hank Johnston and Pamela Oliver Power and Protest at an American University No Confidence, No Fear Edited by Ellen Carnaghan and Kathryn E. Kuhn Exiled Activism Political Mobilization in Egypt and England David McKeever For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ The-Mobilization-Series-on-Social-Movements-Protest-and-Culture/book-series /ASHSER1345

Power and Protest at an American University No Confidence, No Fear

Edited by Ellen Carnaghan and Kathryn E. Kuhn

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Ellen Carnaghan and Kathryn E. Kuhn; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ellen Carnaghan and Kathryn E. Kuhn to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Carnaghan, Ellen, editor. | Kuhn, Kathryn E., 1963- editor. Title: Power and protest at an American university: no confidence, no fear/ edited by Ellen Carnaghan and Kathryn E. Kuhn. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. | Series: The mobilization series on social movements, protest, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020023013 (print) | LCCN 2020023014 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367861704 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003017332 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: St. Louis University–History–21st century. | St. Louis University–Faculty–Political activity. | College presidents–Dismissal of–United States. Classification: LCC LD4817.S52 P69 2021 (print) | LCC LD4817.S52 (ebook) | DDC 378.778–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023013 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023014 ISBN: 978-0-367-86170-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-01733-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

For the rebel alliance

Contents

Contributors Preface Acknowledgments 1

Introduction: power and protest at an American university

ix xii xv 1

ELLEN CARNAGHAN

PART I

Power

15

2

17

The rise and decline of a university DAVID E. RAPACH AND BONNIE WILSON

3

Postscript to a deanship

36

ANNETTE E. CLARK

4

Unmasking administrative evil in academia

51

ROBERT A. CROPF AND KATHRYN E. KUHN

PART II

Protest

61

5

63

The power of the powerless faculty member ELLEN CARNAGHAN

6

Contested frames and the role of the media in the no-confidence movement KATHRYN E. KUHN AND MARK EDWARD RUFF

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viii Contents

7

Almost empty places: Jesuit mission and identity as rhetorical Topoi

108

PAUL LYNCH

8

(K)No(wing) confidence: a feminist epistemological consideration of suspicion, credibility, and reflexivity in progressive movements for political change

126

WYNNE WALKER MOSKOP AND PENNY WEISS

9

Contentious faculty: theory and practice

151

ELLEN CARNAGHAN

Coda: the idea of a university

164

SILVANA R. SIDDALI

References Index

169 187

Contributors

Ellen Carnaghan is Professor and former Chair of Political Science at Saint Louis University and studies the roles citizens play in political change. Her book, Out of Order: Russian Political Values in an Imperfect World (2007) examines how the political values of Russian citizens were shaped by the disorderly conditions produced by the political and economic transformations that followed the collapse of communism. She is presently working on projects related to opposition in autocratic regimes in the post-Soviet region. Her articles have appeared in Comparative Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics, Slavic Review, Democratization, Europe-Asia Studies, and Post-Soviet Affairs. Annette E. Clark is Dean and Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Formerly, she was dean of Saint Louis University School of Law. Clark has an MD from the University of Washington School of Medicine and a JD from Seattle University School of Law. She specializes in civil procedure, medical liability, bioethics, and legal education. Her scholarship operates at the interface of health care, law, and health policy. She has published articles in the New York University Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Tulane Law Review, among others. Robert A. Cropf is Professor of Political Science and former Chair of Public Policy Studies at Saint Louis University and conducts research in the areas of e-government and public policy. Dr. Cropf is associate editor of the International Journal of Electronic Government Research and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development. He is the author of E-Government for Public Managers (2016), American Public Administration: Public Service for the 21st Century (2008), and The Public Administration Casebook (2011), as well as journal articles on e-government and public administration. Kathryn E. Kuhn is Associate Professor of Sociology at Saint Louis University and President of Missouri Conference American Association of University Professors. Her research interests include organizations and bureaucracy, gender, popular culture, material/visual culture, and mass media. She is currently doing research on public and media responses to the Virginia Tech, Newtown,

x

Contributors and other mass shootings and is engaged in a project studying the resettlement experiences of Bosnian and Somali immigrants in Saint Louis, Missouri. She has published in a variety of journals including International Journal of Business and Social Research and Internet Journal of Criminology.

Paul Lynch is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Prison Education Program at Saint Louis University. His area of interest is rhetoric and composition, with particular attention to religious rhetoric. He is the author of After Pedagogy: The Experience of Teaching (2013) and coeditor of Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition (2015). His articles have appeared in College Composition and Communication, College English, Contagion, Pedagogy, Present Tense, Rhetoric Review, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Wynne Walker Moskop is Professor and former Chair of Political Science and Affiliate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Saint Louis University. She focuses on political theory, especially American political thought, feminist theory, and the relation between virtue and politics. Her book Jane Addams on Inequality and Political Friendship (2020) examines Jane Addams as a first-rate practitioner of cross-class political friendship. Her articles have appeared in edited volumes on political leadership and several journals, including American Political Thought, Journal of Political Psychology, American Quarterly, American Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Ideology. David E. Rapach is Professor of Economics in the Chaifetz School of Business at Saint Louis University. His research appears in leading scholarly and practitioner journals in finance and economics, including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of International Money and Finance. Dr. Rapach is currently an associate editor for the International Journal of Forecasting and has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and St. Louis. Mark Edward Ruff is Professor of History at Saint Louis University. His research is in modern European history with a focus on 20th-century Germany and the locations of religion in politics and society. His monograph, The Battle for the Catholic Past: Germany, 1945–1980 (2017) engages the debate over the Roman Catholic Church’s relationship to National Socialism. He has also published The Wayward Flock: Catholic Youth in Postwar West Germany, 1945–1965 (2005) and two edited volumes as well as numerous articles and essays in journals and edited volumes. Silvana R. Siddali is Eugene A. Hotfelder Professor of Humanities in the History Department at Saint Louis University, where she teaches courses in American history. Her books include Frontier Democracy: Constitutional Conventions in the Old Northwest (2015), From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts (2005), and Missouri’s War: The Civil War in Documents (2009). Her articles have appeared in Western Historical Quarterly, Annals of

Contributors

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Iowa, American Nineteenth Century History, Civil War History, and History of Education Quarterly. Penny Weiss is Professor and former Chair of Women's and Gender Studies at Saint Louis University. She is the author of Feminist Manifestos: A Global Documentary Reader (2018), Canon Fodder: Historical Women Political Thinkers (2009), Conversations with Feminism: Political Theory and Practice (1998), and Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics (1993). Dr. Weiss has also coedited Feminist Reflections on Mary Astell (2016), Feminist Reflections on Emma Goldman (2007), and Feminism and Community (1995). Bonnie Wilson is Associate Professor of Economics at Saint Louis University. Her research interests lie primarily in the field of public choice, with focus on special interest groups and on economic freedom. Recent publications include articles in the European Journal of Political Economy on regulation, and in Public Finance Review on diversity and economic freedom. Along with Greg Beabout, she also recently curated a special edition of the journal Jesuit Higher Education and produced a leadership ethics case based on the events of Occupy SLU.

Preface

“Disrespected, disdained, and devalued.” These are words I used to describe my own and others’ feelings in the fall of 2012. I had never anticipated nor sought the opportunity to stand in front of a couple of hundred students, faculty, staff, and at least one prominent administrator and give an impassioned speech on what many of us by then were calling the climate of fear at Saint Louis University. While I had been quite active in shared governance over the years, I did not consider myself to be a political activist. Yet, there I was, speaking my truth even as my voice shook. What I did not fully realize then, although hindsight lends the situation an air of inevitability, was that my nascent activism would come to dominate much of my life in the years to follow. My personal biography and history did not merely intersect; rather, they collided. And I became an active member of what would become the no-confidence movement at SLU. When the university proffered policies that would, among a host of other questionable things, eliminate tenure, my first reaction had been a mixture of cynicism and learned helplessness. I resented this end run around shared governance and the administration’s abandonment of principles it had openly embraced. At the same time, I had seen similar chains of events unfold numerous times before. The university would offer a plan, faculty would protest, perhaps even call on the help of the American Association of University Professors or other professional organizations. Sometimes the plan in question retreated quietly to wherever it is that unfortunate decisions languish. Too many times, however, the plan would be enacted despite faculty protest, despite violations of shared governance, as administrators claimed that, having “consulted” faculty about the decision, their obligations had been met. Why, then, was this case different? The proposed policies put forth in the summer of 2012 not only eliminated tenure, but also contained a series of metrics by which programs, departments, schools and colleges could be judged and possibly eliminated. Yet it was the tenure policy and all that it entailed that pushed so many of us to act. Did we fear for our own job security? Undoubtedly many did. Did we fear for the job security of others? Absolutely. Did we think a few brave people would take up the cause? Yes. Did we think that we could just leave those brave few to it after wishing

Preface xiii them every success? No. I know I am not alone when I recall having an internal dialogue with myself and asking if I could face myself and anyone else knowing I had done almost nothing to fight for the foundational principles of higher education. I simply could not do it. So, when asked to participate in a university teach-in, I agreed. As I spoke, I looked up and saw that the author of the much-hated proposals stood in the back of the room, taking notes and frowning. The scene was both intimidating and energizing. Clearly, faculty opposition had hit a nerve. And with that I became an activist. Not long afterward, faculty and students held a protest march on campus. Students, always organized, carried a variety of handwritten signs. One of them read “Disrespected, Disdained, and Devalued No More” in bright red, white and blue. Knowing that my words had resonated with at least one student was a rare pleasant surprise in a tumultuous period and encouragement to continue. In the spring of 2013 two of us decided to attend a student government meeting in order to hear what the president had to say. Student government meetings are, as mandated in the group’s constitution, open to anyone at the university and the public as well. I arrived early and took a seat at the side of the room. My colleague, Greg, arrived a bit later, just as things were getting started. Finally, the president arrived, accompanied by at least one staff member and, more ominously, by an armed security guard. He glanced around the room and noticed Greg and me. We had said nothing, and had no plans to do so. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispered to the SGA president, “Tell them to leave. Make Kathryn and Greg leave.” The SGA president turned and did, in fact, ask that we leave. We looked at each other, donned our coats, and left the room, with the armed security guard walking beside us. I experienced a mixture of incredulity, disappointment, fear, and anger. I could not believe this was happening. I could not believe that we were considered such a threat as to require armed security. I was disappointed although not surprised that nobody in the room said a single word of protest. And I was disappointed that things had reached the point where professional courtesy and basic human respect had been lost. Most of all, and I realized this fact only much later, I was angry. Angry that such a petty abuse of power was not only tolerated, but also backed up by armed guards. Angry that I was thrown out of a meeting that is open to anyone who wishes to attend. And angry that nobody, including me, fought back. I had misjudged the ingenuity of some of the students, however. By the time I had made the six minute drive home, news of the incident had hit the student-run Facebook page, and I had emails from a couple of local news outlets. The story was told and retold so many times that by the next morning, when, as luck would have it, I had a meeting in the same room and made a joke about having been thrown out the night before, I was greeted with a chorus of “Oh! That was YOU?” from several other faculty members. My 15 minutes of fame were not quite over. My colleague, Robert Cropf, and I wrote an op-ed that appeared in the online version of the local newspaper. Titled, “Who’s on First,” it provided details, all of which were substantiated by multiple

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Preface

people, of a Faculty Senate meeting at which administrators had appeared. They had refused to answer some questions and had ducked others. We were careful to avoid using anyone’s name so as not to embarrass them in such a public forum, but the administration was less kind. In a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, both of us were called out by name and charged with going “to great lengths to misrepresent the work” of the administration. Six of the vice presidents of the university signed the letter, among them the then interim vice president for academic affairs. Being rebuked is one thing. Having your work called “inaccurate, irresponsible and damaging” to the university was something else entirely.1 As difficult as those two situations had been, however, they effectively illustrated the faculty’s point that the administration fostered and thrived on a culture of fear. Ironically, the two incidents, added to a host of others, also pointed to the dismantling of that same culture. After what happened to me, some faculty groups sent letters of support, others sent letters of censure. I tell my story here because, while some details are uniquely mine, in broad strokes it is the story of many of us in the no-confidence movement. It is the story of the authors of the chapters in this book. Although we came from a wide array of disciplines our group had a strong sense of solidarity, fueled in large part by the shared conviction that a fundamental trust between faculty and administration had been broken. The chapters in this book analyze how faculty defend themselves in these circumstances. Kathryn E. Kuhn

Note 1 Philip Alderson, Ken Fleischmann, Jay Goff, Ellen Harshman, David Heimburger, Gary Whitworth, “Faculty Members Misrepresent the Work of SLU Administration,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 7, 2013. https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/mailbag /faculty-members-misrepresent-the-work-of-slu-administration/article_a8aba6a4-795 c-5bf4-9168-5014ce4cefe0.html (accessed February 15, 2020).

Acknowledgments

Both editors wish to extend our deepest thanks to the contributors to this volume. Your patience and good humor over the course of this book’s development will not be forgotten. We wish also to extend our gratitude to all of those involved in the no-confidence movement. Some of these individuals are well known on campus; many, however, have chosen to remain private. To all of them, however, we owe a tremendous debt. We also wish to thank Katie Alvarez, Meaghan Gass, Tesa Rigel Hines, James “Twigz” McGuire, Ivan Mugulusi, Ryan Norrenberns, and Rachel Santon for their invaluable assistance in preparing the manuscript. In addition, we thank the following people: Neil Jordan, Alice Salt, and the team at Routledge for their advice, assistance, and support. Robert Kreizer, Joerge Tiede, Gregory Scholz, Rudy Fichtenbaum, Howard Bunsis, Donna Potts, and others at the national AAUP for their support, wealth of knowledge, and encouragement. Our Jesuit colleagues who went out of their way to express their public support of faculty. The student group that ran the SLU Students for No Confidence Facebook page for their dedication, accuracy in reporting, and breadth of coverage. Faculty colleagues across the country and around the world for their words of support. The families and friends of those involved in the no-confidence movement for their amazing patience, their willingness to listen to the same story repeated ad nauseum, and their love and support.

1

Introduction Power and protest at an American university Ellen Carnaghan

“Back when we were rioting.” That is how one faculty member referred to the year-long mobilization of faculty at Saint Louis University (SLU) that culminated in the abrupt retirement of a long-serving president. “Rioting” might seem like the wrong word to describe decorous demonstrations, outdoor religious services, resolutions passed after endless debate by faculty assemblies, or a string of elegantly written op-ed pieces. But for a faculty used to expressing discontent only surreptitiously and behind closed doors, open resistance to a powerful president felt transgressive enough to qualify as a revolution. SLU’s faculty may not have been beret-wearing, Molotov-cocktail throwing agitators. But they did upend the existing order, creating new mechanisms to amplify faculty voices and new personal relationships to support people taking risky actions. This book draws lessons from that tumultuous year. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, participants in the movement analyze obstacles to faculty protest and strategies by which those obstacles can be overcome. Faculty protests against university administrations often fail. In the same year that SLU’s no-confidence movement arose, no-confidence votes also occurred at Emory, Marshall, Transylvania, Louisiana State, New York University, Occidental College, the University of Northern Iowa, and Cleveland State. Only SLU’s movement managed to unseat a president.1 Faculty protests fail for a variety of reasons. It can be hard to motivate large numbers of faculty members to act together, as issues that inflame one portion of the faculty often do not excite others. University administrations are frequently skilled at the kind of divideand-conquer tactics that win them at least some reliable and well-funded allies. Even angry faculty members have many reasons not to become engaged: organizing for resistance takes time away from the kind of projects that build scholarly reputations, and it tends to annoy the boss. Once started, faculty protests can be hard to sustain. Highly individualistic and opinionated scholars may not be the best candidates for collective action. Often the administration has only to wait as faculty protests disintegrate due to internal disagreements or exhaustion. Even if they overcome the mobilization and organizational challenges, faculty members protest within a distribution of power that favors their opponents. Faculty have few avenues of pressure that do not also hurt students or themselves. University administrators, on the other hand, have many ways to compel compliance: they

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can withhold funding or approvals to hire, for example, and they can threaten jobs. As a result, when faced with faculty resistance, university administrations usually win. It was surprising to many, then, that faculty protests at SLU achieved their goals and unseated a longtime president. At the start of the conflict, one senior faculty member intoned that previous efforts to take on the president always ended with blood on the floor, and the blood was not the president’s. Yet, by the end of the year, the president was out and the faculty was organized to defend themselves. This book aims to explain why faculty protest worked at SLU when it often fails elsewhere. In doing so, it draws general lessons about faculty activism as a distinct form of collective action. As Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly pointed out, good theories should be able to explain many varieties of contentious politics.2 Here we show the usefulness of theories of contentious politics in understanding protest within institutions of higher education. Indeed, the confined scope of our movement provides some distinct advantages for students of social movements: access to participants and their ability to explain themselves are outstanding. Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and to some extent the same is true of universities. SLU’s tumultuous year was significantly shaped by the personalities of involved parties and the unique circumstances of the place. But there was also much about SLU’s experience that highlighted common trends in higher education: the impulse by upper administration to make unilateral decisions, ignoring faculty voices;3 efforts to organize the university more along a corporate model;4 fears of staff members and untenured faculty that a wrong move might cost them their jobs; faculty governance structures not up to the task of running a revolution.5 In many respects, the pressures on SLU’s faculty were similar to those at any 21st-century university. Consequently, the insights offered in this book speak directly to the larger topic of faculty resistance. Some of the chapter authors draw on the insights of social movement or other relevant research both to illuminate the case and to test how well theories developed to explain public movements in democratic societies also explain semiclandestine mobilization in much smaller and more autocratic organizations. Overall, the chapter authors bring a variety of disciplinary tools and approaches to bear to shed new light on an understudied subject: faculty protest. Both this book and the movement it seeks to explain were interdisciplinary projects. Many of the faculty members involved in SLU’s protests put their academic expertise to the service of the cause. English professors drafted some of the manifestos, news releases, and op-ed pieces, and often made sure everyone’s commas were in place. Theology and philosophy professors crafted the language that brought faculty goals in line with the university mission that, since SLU is a Catholic, Jesuit university, made faculty claims more persuasive for some audiences. Scientists and mathematicians ran surveys, collected and analyzed data, and created a master email list enabling faculty to communicate with each other across campus. Social scientists and historians used their knowledge of social movements and revolutions to plot a successful strategy. For this book, participants

Introduction 3 in SLU’s no-confidence movement analyze some part of the movement through their own disciplinary lens. The result is a book that brings together insights from economics, history, law, political science, public administration, rhetoric, sociology, and women’s and gender studies, enriching the study of contentious politics with a number of new perspectives. Since the chapter authors were all involved in the protests at SLU, there is a possibility of bias. But all of the authors aim to reduce this bias through careful reliance on the tools of their academic trade.

Contentious politics Faculty activism has not received much attention from scholars, and this book is intended in part to fill that gap. There is a reasonably large popular and academic literature on widely shared faculty grievances, including the effects of corporate money and power on academic values;6 the decline of faculty governance;7 outcomes assessment as a threat to faculty autonomy;8 the rise in the number of contingent faculty and other attacks on tenure and the academic freedom it protects;9 and efforts to impose more corporate or neoliberal models of control and behavior.10 Many news publications, including Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education, do outstanding work compiling and describing episodes of faculty protest; nonetheless, academic studies of the phenomenon are almost nonexistent. The absence of academic treatments of faculty protest is particularly remarkable given that studies of student activism are one of the foundations of social movement research.11 Perhaps one of the reasons that faculty activism has received less scholarly attention is because faculty often mobilize around specific grievances in the context of their own schools: challenges to tenure or other aspects of their jobs; the actions of a particular administrator; or efforts to shift the locus of decision-making away from faculty. The resulting moments of activism may seem too narrow to serve as the foundation of further study. However, if faculty grievances are highly similar across schools, if all institutions of higher education are subject to the same social and economic pressures, and if many administrators elect to pursue comparable strategies in response, then faculty protest at one school should have much in common with protest at another school. Each episode illuminates a larger trend of faculty members working to defend their role in university governance, as administrators attempt to curtail it in the name of “efficiency,” “nimble decision-making,” or market share. The limited work on faculty activism that does exist tends to focus on particular aspects of collective action. For instance, work on faculty efforts to unionize stretches back at least to Everett Ladd and Seymour Martin Lipset’s 1973 study of faculty attitudes toward unionization.12 More recent work examines graduate student and contingent faculty efforts to unionize.13 But unionization, important though it is, is a different process than voluntary faculty mobilization in defense of shared interests. Forming a union raises specific legal and practical issues, and many unions are more directly focused on issues of compensation and work rules than on participation in the decisions that matter. The most pressing concerns of

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graduate students and contingent faculty – the more common focus of current research on unionization – are often seen as different from those of tenured and tenure-track faculty, and solidarity across these groups has been hard to build.14 Some work in political psychology examines why faculty members respond to inequities or mistreatment by protest or in some other way: looking to leave or failing to meet obligations to students.15 While chapters in this book examine that important question, our overall purpose is broader: to also analyze how faculty protest and to examine some strategies that hold promise of general application. This book, then, is unique in that it uses a particular episode of faculty protest to illuminate larger issues about the circumstances in which faculty are likely to be motivated to protest, the institutional frameworks that make protest possible, and the strategies that can get results. It is also unique in that it addresses these questions from a variety of disciplinary angles. This interdisciplinary lens enables authors to offer new insights to social movement theory. In the remainder of this introduction, I describe the various chapters. The book is divided into two main sections. The first examines “power” – the institutional structures that contributed to conflict and made a less convulsive resolution unlikely. The second focuses on “protest” – the strategies and tactics faculty and students used to confront those power structures. The discussion here follows the same format.

Power Faculty resistance – like all resistance – occurs within established structures of power. Scholars of contentious politics often call this environment outside the movement itself the “structure of political opportunity.” Protest is unlikely when opportunities are either so closed that action is impossible or so open that action outside existing institutions is unnecessary. Structures of political opportunity are commonly conceptualized in governmental terms – as political institutions, public policy, and political alignments in legislative bodies.16 To understand faculty protest, then, it is necessary to translate these concepts to a different context. Understanding the environment in which faculty protest occurs requires analyzing the openings and barriers created by university decision-making structures, university policies that affect faculty, configurations of actors, and broader trends in higher education. Chapters by David Rapach and Bonnie Wilson, Annette Clark, and Robert Cropf and Kathryn E. Kuhn do just that. These authors have disciplinary training in economics, law, and public administration, respectively, disciplines not well represented in the study of contentious politics. As a result, they are able to offer compelling insights into the structure of opportunity for protest in university settings. Universities are organized differently from either private firms or democratic governments. They have more dispersed authority than many corporations, with faculty claims to “shared governance” and control over curriculum as evidence of at least an aspiration to divide decision-making.17 Tenure, of course, gives faculty members freedom that most employees do not have to raise uncomfortable

Introduction 5 criticisms. At the same time, faculty governance bodies often lack real decisionmaking power and may be relegated to offering advice that administrators can easily ignore. Democratic governments are grounded on powerful legislatures that can restrain presidents and voters who can remove unpopular leaders from power. Faculty members, by contrast, have little recourse when they think the boss is wrong. Many observers of higher education institutions argue that in the late 20th and early 21st centuries colleges and universities began to hew more closely to a corporate model, with more centralized decision-making and less regard for faculty voices.18 The replacement of tenured with contingent faculty facilitates this process, since contingent faculty have little power to resist. While the concentrated power in the contemporary university makes organized faculty resistance more difficult, it may also make resistance more likely since faculty have few options to affect administrative decisions within ordinary decision-making structures. In “The Rise and Decline: In Universities as in Nations,” David Rapach and Bonnie Wilson, two economists, examine the effects of increasing power concentration in university decision-making structures. Drawing on both neo-classical economic theory and new institutional economics, they argue that insights economists have gained from the examination of trade, markets, and material prosperity at the national level apply surprisingly well to universities. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, in Why Nations Fail,19 argue that nations fail when power becomes concentrated among a ruling elite and succeed when such power is constrained. Rapach and Wilson show how power concentration in universities follows a similar logic. The kind of concentrated power that works well to transform an “underdeveloped” university can also undermine progress as the institution becomes more complex. As power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the president and board of trustees, university administration relies more on absolutist and centralized, rather than pluralistic and decentralized, processes. Administrators adopt strategies that limit transparency and avoid accountability. As a byproduct, the dynamism of the university suffers and organizational decline sets in. Social movement scholars often consider political opportunities to be limited when institutions provide few avenues of influence for outsiders or when power is so unevenly distributed that those defending the status quo seem to have it all. The contribution of Rapach and Wilson is to help us see the weakness in absolutist institutions. Their analysis permits them to identify a critical juncture in the fall of 2012 when an opportunity for radical change occurred at SLU. At that point, the administration’s encroachment into spheres formerly under the control of the faculty increased in ways that prompted faculty resistance. The absence of pluralistic and decentralized institutions in which faculty and administrators could meet to resolve conflict encouraged action outside of existing institutions, action that spiraled beyond the capacity of the administration to control and provided an opportunity to overturn the status quo. Sidney Tarrow identifies the presence of influential allies as a key aspect of an opportunity structure that is conducive to protest. He says, “Challengers

6 Ellen Carnaghan are encouraged to take collective action when they have allies who can act as friends of the court, as guarantors against repression or as acceptable negotiators on their behalf.”20 That such allies exist may also signify that elites are divided and alignments among important actors are shifting, other indicators of increasing opportunities to protest. For faculty members, the people a few steps closer to power are deans. Deans have more information about how the university works and they have more direct contact with upper-level administrators. They have some power to shield faculty from harm from above, and they also have many tools to shut down protest, if that is their aim. Annette Clark, dean of SLU’s law school, played a significant role in sparking protest at SLU. She resigned from her deanship in early August 2012, about a month before protest took shape. She explained the reasons for her resignation in a letter to the law school faculty and staff that was leaked to the media.21 For many SLU faculty members, Clark’s accusations – that nearly a million dollars had been removed by the president from the law school budget and that the president treated her dismissively and with disrespect – were less surprising in terms of content than in the fact that they were spoken aloud. If a dean new to SLU could voice criticisms in public, perhaps long-term faculty could as well. In “Postscript to a Deanship,” reprinted with permission from the University of Toledo Law Review, Dean Clark reflects on her experiences and discerns lessons for others in similar circumstances. Clark’s is a personal essay reflecting on a deanship that ended too soon, but in telling her story she illuminates the structures that she and her faculty acted within. Dean Clark’s willingness to go public with her grievances against the administration broke the silence that was a main feature of a culture of fear pervasive at SLU. But it did not immediately change how faculty acted within an environment Clark describes as “a mini-fiefdom, in which absolute loyalty was expected and demanded, over which the president and his inner circle reigned supreme, and against whom the ‘subjects’ generally felt (and were in reality) powerless.” In this oppressive context, the law school faculty’s response to their dean’s public resignation was largely silence. Clark describes a variety of environmental features that inhibited faculty activism. These include weak faculty governance bodies and the lack of experience in self-government that resulted. They also include beliefs widely shared among law school faculty members. Clark identifies a culture of stoicism among the law school faculty, a sense that their corporate interests were best served by keeping their heads down and riding out the storm. This stoicism was rooted both in a concern for providing stability for students and in fear of the retribution that the administration might enact for disobedience. Law school faculty tended to believe that resistance would fail, making the potential costs of action too high to justify. That the president immediately installed a loyal interim dean did not help either, since soon the law school held few safe spaces in which faculty could strategize. Once some of the faculty committed to a strategy of inaction, it was all the more difficult for those who might have wanted to speak out to do so. Clark helps us see how structures that facilitate one type of resistance – her own very public

Introduction 7 resignation – inhibit others. She also makes it clear how opportunities for action are mediated through the perceptions of the would-be actors and the ways they make sense of their world, as many social movement theorists have noted.22 In the end, perceptions outweigh objective opportunities, and “common sense” shuts down protest. Protest, of course, requires not only opportunity but also grievance. For widespread mobilization to occur, those grievances have to be broadly shared, and potential activists need to agree on the source of their discontent and consequent target for protest.23 Robert Cropf and Kathryn Kuhn examine qualities of contemporary university decision-making that both create grievances and make clear their source. Cropf, a specialist in public administration, and Kuhn, a sociologist, rely on Guy Adams and Danny Balfour’s concept of “administrative evil” to better understand university decision-making.24 Adams and Balfour argue that commitments to technical rationality and efficiency and the use of quantifiable performance measures can make it easier for administrators to take actions that cause individuals considerable harm. These actions can be said to be “evil” insofar as they ignore moral concerns or the consequences for human beings. Administrative evil is often “masked” and hard to identify in modern organizations. After all, the values that underlie administrative evil – rationality and efficiency – are widely shared. Cropf and Kuhn focus particularly on the misuse of quantitative indicators. While exact decisions differ across universities, the commitment to technical rationality and efficiency is widespread enough to indicate a common tendency that may threaten more traditional values of higher education, like academic freedom and shared governance. These three chapters that focus on power relations in university institutions highlight many features that inhibit faculty protest. University administrations often concentrate power in a way that leaves little room for effective faculty influence. Powerful allies may be few, and even the ones that exist become less powerful once they turn to resistance. Grievances can be widespread even as their sources are hard to identify. It is hardly surprising, then, that organized faculty resistance is rare. SLU’s case, though, shows how these unfavorable circumstances can shift rapidly. The pivotal moment at SLU came about three weeks after Annette Clark’s resignation, as the administration released proposals to change the way that faculty would be evaluated. The proposals described a set of metrics to evaluate faculty and announced that that faculty would be required to reapply for tenure every six years. The metrics eliminated the power of chairs and deans to devise discipline-specific standards to evaluate faculty. The end to permanent tenure made it easier to fire both poorly performing faculty or people who disagreed with the administration. Faculty members were united in their alarm. After opposition organized primarily by the universitywide Faculty Senate, the administration retracted the faculty evaluation proposals in mid-September. But the day after the proposals were retracted, the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Council passed a motion of no confidence in the Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA).25 SLU’s no-confidence movement was underway.

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Protest The second half of this book analyzes the strategies and tactics of a rebellious faculty. This part of the book focuses on mobilization, organizational structures, communication strategies, and ways to frame and sustain faculty protest. Would-be faculty protesters are fortunate in that they usually have an important resource: some kind of faculty governance body that can serve as a locus and impetus for wider mobilization. Even if those bodies are highly imperfect and better suited to approving new courses than fomenting revolution, they have members, meeting dates and places, and mechanisms to communicate with both the wider faculty and the administration. They have authority to speak and act on behalf of the faculty. In SLU’s case, two faculty governance bodies proved important in the no-confidence struggle. The all-university Faculty Senate undertook key no-confidence votes in both the VPAA and the president. The Senate Executive Committee met a few times with members of the executive committee of the board of trustees and encouraged faculty to rely on that often-secretive process to solve the crisis. Many faculty members, particularly in the College of Arts and Sciences, doubted that the trustees would act in the absence of greater pressure. The Arts and Sciences Faculty Council was less hierarchically organized than the university-wide Senate and tended to rely much more on deliberation among its members to reach decisions. These features allowed it to respond more flexibly to crisis. The Council created three ad hoc committees – Strategy, Evidence, and Communication. Members of these committees – which included most of the authors in this book – were among the most active participants in the no-confidence movement. They organized the marches, the teach-ins, a color campaign of orange flags and wristbands, a press campaign, reports on the state of SLU, clandestine contact with trustees, and a series of resolutions passed by the Faculty Council. In “The Power of the Powerless Faculty Member,” I analyze how faculty are mobilized into active protest, focusing particularly on the contribution of existing governance structures. Writing as a political scientist and chair of the strategy committee, I examine various explanations for mobilization to better understand why some faculty joined together in active resistance while most others applauded from the sidelines. Scholars of collective action are familiar with the free-rider problem, the preference of rational actors to reap the benefits of the actions of others, while themselves doing little.26 Faculty protest is surely a case where narrowly conceived self-interest will lead most people to the sidelines: protest has both institutional and professional risks, and the benefit of administrative change, if achieved, will be enjoyed both by those who were active and those who were not. And yet some faculty members act despite this set of incentives. At SLU, these tended to be faculty for whom the risks of inaction outweighed the risks of action. They judged the cost of inaction to be unacceptably high, a threat to the university and faculty roles within it, and they tended to have the security of tenure and the confidence their departments would not be closed. Structures of opportunity also mattered. Activist faculty members were disproportionately

Introduction 9 from the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), where their dean, a senior Jesuit and Philosophy professor served as a very public influential ally. Despite angry attacks from the president, the CAS dean made no effort to muzzle the faculty in his college throughout the struggle. One critical benefit enjoyed by Arts and Sciences faculty was a well-functioning governance structure. In “The Power of the Powerless Faculty Member,” I show how the institutional features of governance in the CAS made the faculty of that school easier to mobilize than the faculty of other units at SLU. Relying on interviews with faculty activists, I show how networks of trusted acquaintances prepared faculty for collective action. In many cases, these networks were founded on past service under the auspices of the Faculty Council. While social movement scholars predict that network ties support individual decisions to undertake risky actions,27 it is not always clear how these mechanisms work. My access to a set of hyperarticulate activists provides detailed insight into how networks affect individual choices. In the same chapter, I also examine the role of networks in sustaining collective action across time. Like any social movement organization, the members of the three ad hoc committees created by the Faculty Council worked together closely over the course of the year and continued to collaborate intermittently for years afterward. They sometimes informally referred to each other as the “rebel alliance.”28 People in these groups acted both publicly and clandestinely. Some authored resolutions and op-ed pieces or spoke with the press. Others collected evidence, organized surveys, compiled email lists, bought supplies, or edited documents without making their names public. An “all-conspirator” email list facilitated rapid communication among committee members. These committees proved crucial to the no-confidence movement in that they provided the labor to respond quickly to any action by the administration, and they served as the institutional base to maintain momentum between the regular meetings of governance bodies or even rarer demonstrations. When a faculty takes a vote of no confidence in its administrators, it makes a statement without the power to compel action. Such votes are the first volley in what is often a long ground war of persuasion. Much to the chagrin of SLU’s administration and the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, the rebel alliance elected to take that effort at persuasion outside the university walls and to a broader public. Committee members prepared press releases and op-ed pieces and established relationships with friendly journalists. Sympathetic students created a Facebook page, SLU Students for No Confidence, which released some key pieces of information, including the names and addresses of the university trustees.29 Lacking the power to compel the president or to communicate directly with the trustees, activists reasoned that a public persuasion campaign would put pressure on people who were otherwise reluctant to act. But there was still a question of what story to tell. As social movement scholars are well aware, how an issue is framed can impact how effectively it mobilizes activists, inspires supporters, and challenges opponents to respond.30 Kathryn E. Kuhn – a sociologist – and Mark Ruff – a historian, former journalist, and cochair of the communication committee – trace the process by which some potential frames were discarded and

10 Ellen Carnaghan others were adopted by SLU’s no-confidence movement. Francesca Polletta notes that studies of how social movements frame issues tend to neglect the discursive processes that precede the formation of movement organizations.31 By contrast, because of their close connection to SLU’s no-confidence movement Kuhn and Ruff can identify the emerging narratives of a story in the process of being created. Ultimately, SLU’s no-confidence movement told a David and Goliath story about an embattled faculty versus an entrenched and autocratic president. This story found a ready audience in the local press. It led to what organizers referred to as the “poke the bear” strategy of publicly annoying the administration, and particularly the president, until they started to make equally public mistakes. At its heart, protest is about identity.32 John Drury and Steve Reicher call a shared identity “the fulcrum of social change.”33 It is the base upon which people manage to act together. Faculty members start out with an advantage compared to some other groups, since they already share a role and a workplace. But the shared part of their identity may not go very deep. They are divided by discipline and rank, and most do not naturally see themselves as activists. In his chapter, “Almost Empty Spaces: Jesuit Mission and Identity as Rhetorical Topoi,” Paul Lynch explores how identities form in the crucible of contestation. He argues that by forming arguments about the kinds of action that were consistent with the university’s mission, faculty members crafted a shared identity as people qualified to speak about the purpose of the university. In SLU’s case, this was not a given. As mentioned earlier, SLU is a Catholic, Jesuit university. Jesuits, like the university president, might seem better placed than lay faculty to interpret a mission based on the “pursuit of truth for the greater glory of God.”34 Lynch, a rhetorician and English professor, uses his disciplinary expertise to provide new insights into the process of meaning-making common to all collective action. He explores “Jesuit mission” as a rhetorical topos, a place from which a variety of arguments can be launched. He shows how the fact that faculty and students claimed to be able to define mission – rather than leaving that task to the Jesuits and the administration – was more important than the actual persuasiveness of their claims. Collective action rarely achieves all of its goals. Momentum peters out, and activists turn to other concerns.35 SLU’s no-confidence movement was no exception. While the president left office less than a year after the movement began, many of the issues that emerged during the period of contention were left unaddressed. A Faculty Senate that represented faculty interests only poorly and under duress was not restructured. The special needs of marginalized or vulnerable groups – staff, contingent faculty, female faculty, and faculty of color – received little attention. Voices that could have been amplified were instead muffled. In “(K)no(wing) Confidence: On Suspicion, Dialogue, and Self-Reflection in (Campus) Movements for Change,” Wynne Moskop and Penny Weiss analyze shortcomings of SLU’s no confidence movement. Both Moskop and Weiss are political scientists by training; they rely on feminist epistemologies to uncover practices that did not serve faculty well. In particular, they use feminist standpoint theory and work on the politics of credibility and the epistemology of ignorance.36 In short, these theories argue that knowledge available from marginalized

Introduction 11 voices may be different from and rejected by more socially advantaged groups. These voices are discounted or misrepresented, and the knowledge they would bring is not accepted by the group. Moskop and Weiss concentrate particularly on demands that faculty should “be nice,” a failure to interrogate leadership practices, and insufficient attention to broader social justice issues of race, gender, and class. They conclude that greater reliance on the feminist epistemologies they describe would have allowed participants in the no-confidence movement to see how dominant “comfort norms” in the university functioned as wires of an epistemic cage that limited vision and action. With that knowledge, the movement could have gone farther and accomplished more than it did.

Conclusion When we analyze a particular episode of faculty protest in the light of theories of contentious politics, we are able not only to better understand faculty protest but also to gain new insights into contention itself. The smaller scale of faculty protest makes it easier to grasp the whole of the events, although even here we know little of what transpired within the board of trustees. Ready access to talkative participants facilitates analysis of motivations and individual choices. By focusing on protest in the arena of higher education, we are able to identify how “opportunity” presents itself in a small and contained administrative structure: a high concentration of decision-making power created grievances and failed to establish mechanisms to resolve them. We can pinpoint factors that enabled faculty to mobilize and act collectively. Preexisting institutions that helped construct networks of trusted colleagues and that were flexible enough to allow for democratic and participatory decision-making were critical in this regard. We uncover effective strategies of resistance: pressing the administration relentlessly until it started to make revealing mistakes; taking the battle public through a press campaign; boldly claiming the right to define the university’s mission; and cultivating powerful allies among the trustees and, in SLU’s case, the Jesuits. And we identify features of our own movement that ultimately limited the amount of change accomplished: here, the most important being the focus on individuals rather than institutional structures. While the exact circumstances at other schools will certainly vary, there is much in our experience that likely translates well to other cases. For many of the faculty members who were most active in resistance at SLU, the year was tense and difficult in many ways. But the year was also extraordinarily joyous. For some, it was the best and most engaged year of their careers.37 Faculty do a lot of their work alone, but changing a structure as big as a university demands a committed team, with many people sharing burdens and offering each other moral support. Enduring and unexpected friendships were forged. Faculty developed a sense of ownership of the university’s future. While a year of struggle certainly has considerable costs, both personal and institutional, it also has extraordinary benefits. If nothing else, we hope we are able to convey in this book the joy of a shared struggle to build a vital and revived university and the courage to move forward.

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Notes 1 Jordan Friedman, “Nine ‘No Confidence’ Votes That Made Headlines in 2012–2013,” Huffington Post, The Blog, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-friedman/nine-no -confidence-votes-_b_3448606.html (accessed March 18, 2015); Kevin Kiley, “Voting With No Confidence,” Inside Higher Ed, April 23, 2013, www.insidehighered.com/ne ws/2013/04/23/votes-no-confidence-proliferate-their-impact-seems-minimal (accessed March 18, 2015); Sean McKinniss, “No-Confidence Vote Database,” www.seanmc kinniss.org/no-confidence-vote-database/ (accessed March 18, 2015). 2 Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4–7. 3 Benjamin Ginsburg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Larry G. Gerber, The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance: Professionalization and the Modern American University (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Martin J. Finkelstein, Valerie Martin Conley, and Jack H. Schuster, The Faculty Factor: Reassessing the American Academy in a Turbulent Era (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). 4 Henry Giroux, “Democracy’s Nemesis: The Rise of the Corporate University,” Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies 9, no. 5 (October 2009): 669–695; Donald W. Bray and Marjorie Woodford Bray, “Succeed with Caution: Rethinking Academic Culture at RPI, PSU, and CSU,” in Campus, Inc., ed. Geoffry White, with Flannery Hauk (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 55–60; Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). 5 Gerber, Rise and Decline. 6 Geoffry D. White, with Flannery C. Hauk, eds., Campus, Inc. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000). 7 Gerber, Rise and Decline. 8 David F. Bell, “Impact, or the Business of the University,” SubStance #130 42, no. 1 (2013): 28–39. 9 Mary Burgan, What Ever Happened to the Faculty?: Drift and Decision in Higher Education (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 169–190; Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University (New York: The New Press, 2010), 199–215. 10 Cary Nelson, No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 51–60; Frank Donoghue, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). 11 For example, Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” American Journal of Sociology 92, no. 1 (July 1986): 64–90. Eric L. Hirsh, “Sacrifice for the Cause: Group Processes, Recruitment, and Commitment in a Student Social Movement,” American Sociological Review 55, no. 2 (April 1990): 243–254; Francesca Polletta, “‘It Was Like a Fever …’ Narrative and Identity in Social Protest,” Social Problems 45, no. 2 (May 1998): 137–159. 12 Everett Carll Ladd Jr. and Seymour Martin Lipset, Professors, Unions, and American Higher Education (Berkeley, CA: The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1973). See also, for instance, Christine M. Wickens, “The Organizational Impact of University Labor Unions,” Higher Education (2008): 545–564; Gregory Goldey, Eric Swank, Constance Hardesty, and Randall Swain, “Union Professors: Framing Processes, Mobilizing Structures, and Participation in Faculty Unions,” Sociological Inquiry 80, no. 3 (August 2010): 331–353.

Introduction 13 13 For example, Monika Krause, Mary Nolan, Michael Palm, and Andrew Ross, eds., The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008). 14 Joseph M. Schwartz, “Resisting the Exploitation of Contingent Faculty Labor in the Neoliberal University: The Challenge of Building Solidarity between Tenured and Non-Tenured Faculty,” New Political Science 36, no. 4 (2014): 504–522. 15 For instance, Tracey Cronin and Heather Smith, “Protest, Exit, or Deviance: Adjunct University Faculty Reactions to Occupational Rank-Based Mistreatment,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 41, no. 10 (2011): 2352–2373; Heather J. Smith, Tracey Cronin, and Thomas Kessler, “Anger, Fear, or Sadness: Faculty Members’ Emotional Reactions to Collective Pay Disadvantage,” Political Psychology 29, no. 2 (April 2008): 221–246. 16 David S. Meyer and Debra C. Minkoff, “Conceptualizing Political Opportunity,” Social Forces 82, no. 4 (June 2004): 1457–1492. 17 David F. Labaree, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 18 Leslie Bary, “Faculty Governance in the New University,” Academe 99, no. 5, September–October 2013; Donoghue, The Last Professors. 19 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail (New York: Crown Business, 2012). 20 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 166. 21 “SLU Law Dean Resigns Citing Multiple Disputes with School President,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 8, 2012, www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/slu-law-dean -resigns-citing-multiple-disputes-with-school-president/article_1df6e214-e185-11e1 -bc1b-0019bb30f31a.html (accessed March 1, 2020). 22 Bert Klandermans, “Grievance Interpretation and Success Expectations: The Social Construction of Protest,” Social Behavior 4 (1989): 113–125; Charles Kurzman, “Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979,” American Sociological Review 61, no. 1 (February 1996): 153–170; Charles Kurzman, “Meaning-Making in Social Movements,” Anthropological Quarterly 81, issue 1 (Winter 2008): 5–15; Francesca Polletta, “Culture and Movements,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 619 (September): 79–96; Polletta, “‘It Was Like a Fever.’” 23 Debra Javeline, Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003). 24 Guy Adams and Danny Balfour, Unmasking Administrative Evil, 4th ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2015). 25 Elizabethe Holland, “St. Louis University Faculty Vote of No Confidence Is Historic,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 20, 2012, www.stltoday.com/news/local/educati on/st-louis-university-faculty-s-vote-of-no-confidence-is/article_aea72a98-6f05-5bae9c68-2628d33e675b.html (accessed May 30, 2019). For those interested in a more detailed story, Stacey Harris, president of the SLU chapter of the American Association of University Professors during the crisis, kept a chronology of events and press coverage: See Saint Louis University AAUP, “AAUP-SLU-Interim, Current Issues,” https ://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/aaup-slu-interim/home/current-issues (accessed April 2, 2015). 26 Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). 27 Mario Diani, “Networks and Participation,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 342; Reinoud Leenders and Steven Heydemann, “Popular Mobilization in Syria: Opportunity and Threat, and the Social Networks of Early

14 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36

37

Ellen Carnaghan Risers,” Mediterranean Politics 17, no. 2 (2012): 139–159; McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism.” With apologies to George Lucas. SLU Students for No Confidence, www.facebook.com/NoConfidenceSLU/ (accessed February 29, 2020). Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611–639; Rabab El-Mahdi, “Enough! Egypt’s Quest for Democracy,” Comparative Politics Studies 42, no. 8 (August 2009): 1011–1039. Polletta, “’It Was Like a Fever.’” Bernd Simon and Bert Klandermans, “Politicized Collective Identity: A Social Psychological Analysis,” American Psychologist 56, 4 (April 2001): 319–331; McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention. John Drury and Steve Reicher, “Collective Psychological Empowerment as a Model of Social Change: Researching Crowds and Power,” Journal of Social Issues 65, 4 (2009), 708. For the Saint Louis University mission, see SLU www.slu.edu/about/catholic-jesuit-i dentity/mission.php (accessed March 1, 2020). Tarrow, Power in Movement, 194–214. Nancy Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Grounds for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,” in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Methodology, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 283–310; Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Lorraine Code, “Incredulity, Experientialism, and the Politics of Knowledge,” in Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader, ed. Alison M. Jaggar (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers), 295; Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). Here, I draw on the interviews that I conducted for my chapter, “The Power of the Powerless Faculty Member.”

Part I

Power

2

The rise and decline of a university1 David E. Rapach and Bonnie Wilson

Introduction The discipline of economics is known for what it teaches us about trade, markets, and material prosperity. Less well recognized is the fact that those lessons offer essential cautions about power and the ways that power can impede prosperity. Even less understood is the claim we make in this chapter: those lessons apply not only to nations, but also to universities. Specifically, we argue that universities, like nations, need inclusive – rather than extractive – institutions to prosper. Of course, a university is not a nation. In the case of nations, extractive institutions are often associated with the unjust and immoral tyranny of an autocrat and associated elites over an impoverished majority. In the case of universities, students, staff, administrators, and faculty all have exit options that the residents of a nation often do not. Such options constrain the extent to which the concentrated power associated with extractive institutions can be exercised. In a broad sense, if not a narrow one, a university is actually a sort of firm. Firms are something of a puzzle from an economic perspective. Markets “work,” after all, and firms are alternatives to markets. According to Ronald Coase2 and Oliver Williamson,3 the firm is a governance structure, a means of organizing contractual relations between individuals. The rules of the game that apply inside of firms, like the rules that govern nations, may be more pluralistic and decentralized (inclusive) or more autocratic and centralized (extractive). In this regard, our understanding of the role of institutions in the success and failure of nations may have much to teach us about the role of institutions in an organization like a university. In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith articulated how man’s innate propensity to “truck, barter, and exchange” can occasion “universal opulence.” Smith’s Wealth of Nations is also a scathing critique of mercantilism, a system of economic nationalism that empowers the politically connected. Smith argued in favor of the “invisible hand” of the market and against the idea that a powerful elite of businessmen and statesmen could serve as a means to the end of prosperity. More recently, in Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson take up Adam Smith’s topic of the prosperity and poverty of

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nations.4 Like Smith, they argue that nations fail when power becomes concentrated among a ruling elite and that nations succeed when such power is constrained. In this chapter, we argue that these insights about the success (or failure) of nations offer important lessons for universities. We examine Saint Louis University’s (SLU) rise and decline over the period 1987–2013 as a case in point. Our analysis considers two canonical theories of economic growth: neoclassical growth theory and the new institutional economics. We articulate, in simple terms, how neoclassical theory explains SLU’s growth during the early years of the period examined. We go on to highlight the limits to growth implied by the theory, and by extension to any university’s related development strategy. Next, we turn to the new institutional economics to explain SLU’s performance during the latter portion of the period we consider. During this period, evidence of decline at SLU became apparent, as power became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the president and board of trustees. Using the taxonomy of Acemoglu and Robinson, we argue that the university functioned with increasingly extractive (absolutist and centralized), rather than inclusive (pluralistic and decentralized), institutions. The application of the new institutional economics to the development of nations suggests that nations fail when institutions are extractive rather than inclusive. Likewise, we argue that once a university has developed into a sufficiently complex organization, dynamism cannot be maintained if the leadership amasses and exploits power in ways that limit transparency and avoid accountability. Couched in the language of the academy, if an administration fails to respect shared governance, organizational decline is the likely outcome. In the case of nations, critical junctures sometimes emerge that afford an opportunity to upend an adverse status quo. In the case of SLU, a critical juncture emerged in the fall of 2012. The opening shot of the revolution at SLU was an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the president. Protected by his captured board, the president was seemingly unfazed. Just over a year later, however, the president’s retirement was announced. The unfolding of these events parallels the history of efforts in nations to upend the status quo and offers lessons about change in universities – for faculty and administrators alike. In the last portion of our chapter, we consider the state of affairs at SLU a little more than five years after the departure of the former president and the installation of a new regime. The growth history of nations demonstrates that the hope for reform and development that follows on the heels of revolution is often dashed when inclusive institutions fail to replace extractive institutions. In the case of SLU, institutional change has proved difficult. Old, extractive ways of proceeding have re-emerged, and the university is struggling – with enrollment difficulties, a persistent budget deficit, violations of shared governance, a donor-influence crisis, and a board that remains isolated from faculty and students. Viewed through the lens of growth theory, the case of SLU offers lessons and a cautionary tale for universities seeking to administer themselves in ways that promote dynamism and avoid decline.

The rise and decline of a university 19

Neoclassical growth theory and the rise of Saint Louis University The study of economic growth is central to the field of macroeconomics. It investigates the evolution of living standards over time and seeks to explain differences in living standards across countries. At the heart of neoclassical growth theory5 lies a simple construct: the aggregate production function. Neoclassical growth theory abstracts from a myriad of details and imagines an aggregate production function from which originates all of the various goods and services that a nation produces. The aggregate production function provides a useful way to conceptualize economic growth by positing a “black box” that transforms inputs, primarily capital and labor, into output.6 A standard (and rather obvious) assumption regarding the production technology is that, all else equal, increasing capital or labor generates an increase in output. In other words, as a country employs more capital or labor, it produces more output. Technological progress can also increase output, by allowing more to be produced from given amounts of capital and labor. Likewise, one can imagine that a university employs capital and labor to produce output in the form of courses, graduates, research, health care, and community services. If more capital and labor are employed, or if better technology is acquired, more courses, graduates, research, health care, and community services are produced. The nation and the university here are effectively modeled as a single actor, engaged in calculations that lead to a particular level and growth of output. To be sure, the amount of goods and services produced by a nation is not a metric that captures all the things that affect human welfare. Likewise, the amount of measurable output produced by a university is not a metric that captures all that a university arguably can and should be. Nonetheless, output is an important proxy for productivity that allows us to gauge how nations, universities, and other organizations are performing. In the context of the abstraction that is the aggregate production function, SLU’s rise during the first part of the 1987–2013 period is consistent with a simple and straightforward strategy of capital accumulation, evidenced largely by an expansion of the university’s physical plant. At the start of this period, the campus was relatively underdeveloped, consisting of some 66 buildings on 216 acres. As campus legend has it, the then new president, Father Lawrence Biondi, S.J., took a member of the board of trustees to the roof of Jesuit Hall. The roof of Jesuit Hall offers a panoramic view of the university’s urban campus and the city of St. Louis’s downtown. The president reportedly turned to the trustee and said, “Visualize this: I see a gateway to the campus with fountains and green space.”7 He subsequently delivered on the promise implicit in that visualization. As a 2002 university report boasts, [T]he first impression SLU makes on newcomers is the striking beauty of its campus. Visitors find it difficult to believe that, 20 years ago, one could drive past SLU and not notice it was there. What was once a nondescript cluster

20 David E. Rapach and Bonnie Wilson of buildings at the intersections of Grand Boulevard and side streets has now become a defined campus, marked by gates, greenspace, and two malls. The report goes on to claim, “Credit for this accomplishment lies with the University's President.”8 The official SLU 2014 profile indicated that the campus had more than doubled in size to 144 buildings on 809 acres, replete with fountains and green spaces. When people – supporters and detractors alike – talk about the former president and his contributions to the university, they inevitably emphasize this expansion of the physical plant. While the then president accomplished much of the expansion, Biondi himself acknowledges that this “growth” strategy for the university originated with his predecessor, Father Thomas R. Fitzgerald, S.J. In his 2004 State of the University address, Biondi characterized his predecessor's message as follows: Father Fitz never believed in giving up on progress or giving in to pressure. This is wise advice coming from an individual who turned deficits into surpluses by trimming budgets and streamlining administrative processes. An individual who did so while initiating historic campus improvement projects. The president then announced plans to construct a state-of-the-art research facility at SLU’s Health Sciences Center, plans for an on-campus arena, and the opening of the newly renovated and expanded Busch Student Center. SLU thus experienced some 30 years of significant physical capital expansion. From the perspective of neoclassical growth theory, such an expansion of physical capital was an obvious recipe for progress, at least initially. When each worker has relatively little capital to work with, increases in capital bring about large increases in output. Along this line, neoclassical growth theory implies that the return to investment in physical capital is high in less-developed countries (LDCs) with relatively little physical capital; intuitively, if a country begins with few buildings and machines per worker, building additional capital goods and bringing them on line generates large increases in output, so that capital expansion generates high growth rates in LDCs. By analogy, for an institution like SLU in the late 1980s with a small and run-down physical plant – a less-developed campus, so to speak – we expect capital expansion to produce relatively strong growth, making it an obvious advancement strategy.9 However, a typical feature of a production function is diminishing returns to capital as the capital stock grows, all else equal. Diminishing returns to capital imply that the increase in output corresponding to an increase in capital eventually falls as more capital is accumulated, due to disruptions to production as additional units of capital are added to a fixed amount of labor. Diminishing returns to capital also imply that growth rates slow over time as countries accumulate more capital; intuitively, if a country has already accumulated many buildings and machines per worker, adding another building or machine provides only a relatively modest increase in output.10 Again by analogy, during 30 years of significant physical capital expansion, a neoclassical production function implies that SLU has had

The rise and decline of a university 21 to contend more and more with smaller and smaller returns to capital. Indeed, precisely because SLU accumulated a sizable physical capital stock over time, diminishing returns to capital implied that further capital expansion alone was likely to have only limited effects on growth. The reality of diminishing returns suggests that the former president’s growth strategy of accumulating physical capital was far less valuable at the end of his 25-year tenure than at the beginning. Of course, the university’s rise over the first 15 years of the 1987–2013 period is not entirely attributable to capital expansion. Investments in labor and technological change are also evident, as highlighted in a 2002 university report.11 Moreover, if labor increased by more than the capital stock, returns to capital might have increased, rather than declined. Alternatively, technological change could have increased the amount of output generated by the university’s capital and labor. A paucity of requisite data makes it difficult to discern the extent to which technological change accounts for the university’s early rise during the period of interest. In general, though, productivity improvements are thought to be difficult to come by in higher education, due to the labor-intensive nature of the services provided. Indeed, the industry has often been characterized as suffering from William Baumol and William Bowen's12 service-sector “cost disease,” which limits productivity advances. At SLU, even to this day, and certainly over the 1987–2002 period, there is little evidence of any significant redesign in the delivery of educational services of the sort that might have dramatically increased the productivity of available capital and labor. As such, while technological change may well have enhanced research activity, it seems unlikely that technological change substantively enhanced productivity in the delivery of courses and credit hours to students. Growth in the labor force also seems unlikely to have dominated the expansion in the capital stock. Between 1987 and 2013, the number of full-time faculty increased some 40 percent, from 961 to 1348.13 By comparison, between 1987 and 2014, the number of buildings (a proxy for the capital stock, albeit a rough one) increased 118 percent, from 66 to 144. This rise in the number of buildings per full-time faculty member certainly suggests a substantial rise in the capital stock per worker, consistent with the president’s stated strategy for the institution and the public perception of the president’s key accomplishment. The sizable increase in the amount of capital per worker is also consistent with our view that SLU pursued a growth strategy that, because of diminishing returns to capital, was destined to be short lived.

Why institutions fail After a long period of success along key dimensions, in more recent years, a common perception developed that the university was failing to meet its potential – failing to advance along key dimensions and failing to rise to the levels of excellence it was seemingly capable of and that its mission demanded.14 This perception, and a confluence of other factors, precipitated a crisis and an associated no-confidence movement. By the end of October 2012, three formal representative

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bodies of faculty and students had overwhelmingly voted no confidence in the president. Less than a year later, the crisis and movement in turn led to Biondi’s resignation (voluntary on its face, but understood by many to have been forced) after over 25 years in the role of president. Such votes of no confidence are rare in higher education, especially at Jesuit universities. While neoclassical growth theory’s prediction of diminishing returns to capital accumulation is consistent with a slowing of development at the university, the theory hardly seems sufficient to explain the depth of concern and claims of mismanagement associated with the no-confidence votes and movement to oust the president. A richer theory than the one provided by neoclassical growth theory, with its focus on the production function, is needed to explain the university’s decline and crisis. Such a theory exists – the new institutional economics. Circa the 1980s, economists studying economic growth began to focus their attention on the role of institutions, or rules, in economic development. Whereas neoclassical economics supposes a world of frictionfree transacting, the new institutional economics recognizes that the world is a messy place, a place in which people develop rules or institutions that constrain behavior and make life less complicated (at least for those making the rules, and sometimes for many others). This literature focuses on the role of political structures, formal laws and regulations, and informal norms and customs in economic performance.15 Such institutions are of interest from an economic perspective because they affect the incentives that influence individual decisions and govern how individuals interact in society. Likewise, we should expect the institutions that govern the work and transactions that take place within a university (or other organization) to affect the university’s (or other organization’s) performance. The literature on institutions and the economic development of nations argues that nations fail as a result of extractive, rather than inclusive, institutions, and is explicated through world history by Acemoglu and Robinson in their authoritative work, Why Nations Fail. In what follows, we first outline Acemoglu and Robinson’s thesis regarding the role of institutions in development. We then turn to the case of SLU and suggest that the university’s decline and crisis were the result of extractive, rather than inclusive, institutions, drawing on analogies to nations. Acemoglu and Robinson’s book, Why Nations Fail, represents a seminal application of the new institutional economics and provides a sweeping history of the role of institutions in shaping economic growth across nations. Among their many contributions, Acemoglu and Robinson explain how institutions play a vital role in determining whether nations that rapidly accumulate capital can cope with diminishing returns and continue to experience relatively robust growth. In this vein, they identify institutional features that seriously impede future growth after a burst of growth fueled by rapid capital accumulation. We suggest that these insights are useful for understanding SLU’s recent decline and crisis after a period of growth driven by rapid capital accumulation. By extension, they are also likely to explain similar developments at many universities around the world.

The rise and decline of a university 23 The following conclusions from Acemoglu and Robinson are central to their story and relevant for our analysis: • • • •

Sustained growth and prosperity are associated with inclusive institutions. Growth under extractive institutions is possible but not sustainable. Both inclusive and extractive institutions tend to persist, in self-reinforcing virtuous and vicious circles, respectively. Broad-based revolution is often required to replace extractive with inclusive institutions.

In general, inclusive institutions are pluralistic and decentralized, while extractive institutions are absolutist and centralized. Democracy and competitive markets are examples of inclusive political and economic institutions, respectively, while autocracy and monopoly are examples of extractive institutions. At its heart, Acemoglu and Robinson’s thesis on the success and failure of nations rests on the power structure within nations. Inclusive institutions entail dispersed and constrained power, protection of property rights, and respect for the rule of law. When inclusive institutions predominate, self-interest and social interest better align for two main reasons. First, individuals have incentives to cooperate with one another as a means of improving their lot in life, because the alternative approach – expropriation of the property of others – is a less viable option. Second, individuals have incentives to invest, as they can expect to reap the returns from their costly investments and are less concerned that the fruits of their labors will be expropriated. Inclusive institutions thus promote peace and prosperity. In contrast, when extractive institutions predominate, power is highly concentrated and there are few constraints on the exercise of power. In this setting, those with power – elites – need not cooperate with non-elites. Not only can they enrich themselves at the expense of others, they have strong incentives to increase their hold on power as the means to improve their lot in life, rather than engage in productive activities. In such an environment, non-elites face disincentives to innovate and be entrepreneurial, since elites may block their efforts or expropriate the fruits of their labors. Acemoglu and Robinson document how the nature of individual nations’ political and economic institutions explains their relative prosperity or poverty. Acemoglu and Robinson also emphasize the importance of a sufficiently centralized and powerful state. Such a state is needed to enforce law and order, provide essential public services, and regulate business activity. Absent such a state, a nation suffers chaos and anarchy, with tragic consequences (as evidenced by, for example, the recent history of Somalia16). Because a sufficiently strong state is a necessary condition for growth, it is crucial that political institutions are sufficiently inclusive to prevent those with political power from abusing their power. Acemoglu and Robinson’s thesis rings true to many peoples’ intuition: democracy and decentralized allocation of resources (via competitive markets in the context of justly allocated property rights) generally work well; autocracy and centralized allocation of resources (often via coercion) work poorly. Furthermore,

24 David E. Rapach and Bonnie Wilson moving away from concentrated power and toward pluralism is difficult because powerful elites benefit from the status quo and may be harmed by change. Even when elites are well intentioned, the incentives that they face under conditions of concentrated power make it difficult for them to affect change toward more inclusive institutions and greater pluralism. Revolution backed by popular support may be the only way out of scenarios in which power is concentrated, although revolution can be very costly.17

Growth under extractive institutions Like many nations, one could argue that SLU developed for many years while operating under what reasonably can be characterized as extractive institutions that concentrated power in the office of the president. Development under extractive institutions is obviously possible.18 Indeed, extractive institutions can be very effective in reallocating resources to underdeveloped sectors and marshaling rapid capital accumulation, thereby stimulating increased production and a burst of growth. However, growth is unsustainable in this environment. Growth wanes because of diminishing returns to capital in conjunction with a lack of innovation and technological advance. The weak incentives to invest due to the risk of expropriation created by extractive institutions are particularly inimical to innovation and technological progress. In the history of nations, a canonical example of rapid but ultimately unsustainable growth under extractive institutions is the Soviet Union.19 Growth was certainly impressive in the Soviet Union between roughly 1928 and 1960. However, the strong growth came not primarily via innovation and technological progress in the presence of inclusive institutions, but via massive investment in physical capital and reallocation of resources into heavy industry as mandated by the central government. At the start of this period, heavy industry was underdeveloped and investment in this sector offered high returns, resulting in strong growth. This growth in the Soviet Union under the extractive institution of centralized top-down power ultimately proved unsustainable. Similarly at SLU, because the physical campus was underdeveloped at the start of the 1987–2013 period, investment in the physical campus through the exercise of centralized top-down power initially generated substantial development, evidenced by increasing enrollment, growth of the endowment, and an advancing reputation. This growth was not sustained however, and the university began to underperform relative to others, as evidenced by a decline in rankings, among other metrics.20 Other telling parallels are evident between the Soviet Union and SLU. Many associate the Soviet Union with its five-year plans. However, the plans were frequently ignored, and development took place largely at the whim of Stalin and the Politburo.21 Similarly, SLU went through the motions of strategic planning. Arguably, though, the president functioned more as an opportunistic manager than a strategic planner. He took action as opportunities arose, without reference to or motivation from strategic plans in place. From nearly the outset of his service, the university’s president over the period 1987–2013 was decried as an autocrat

The rise and decline of a university 25 who acted as he saw fit, largely with impunity. He was perhaps mostly known as a micro manager and an aggressive “CEO.” Such traits are indicative of a leader unlikely to be concerned with input from others and willing to act unilaterally, in a manner consistent with extractive institutions. Also, the Communist Party used sticks (rather than carrots) to get its way, and made it a criminal offense for workers to shirk.22 In later years, the president seemed to become similarly fixated on what he perceived as a problem of faculty shirking. As we describe below, a related policy precipitated the university’s crisis. In addition to concentration of power, extractive institutions are often characterized by lack of transparency and lack of accountability. Evidence of these characteristics was observed at SLU in practices related to the board of trustees. It had long been understood that faculty, staff, and even administrators up to the level of vice presidents were not allowed to interact with board members without permission from the president’s office. In 1999, the board of trustees rejected a proposal that faculty, student, and staff representatives be allowed to observe board meetings. Around the same time, a Faculty Senate request for the names and addresses of the members of the board of trustees was refused by the president’s office, and the Senate was told that all communications with the board of trustees must take place through the president’s office.23 Given these circumstances, it seems likely that little information flowed to the board of trustees unless filtered through the president.24 Secrecy extended even to the bylaws that govern the board of trustees. Several of the university’s IRS 990 forms state that the “Organization does not make its governing documents or conflict of interest policy available to the public.” The 1985 version of the bylaws that govern the board of trustees is publicly available. However, more recent editions were unavailable for a long time. Around midJanuary 2013, the faculty obtained an actual copy of the bylaws as of 2003 from a source formerly associated with the administration. The first word on the cover of the bylaws is “CONFIDENTIAL.” In the spring of 2013, a copy of the thencurrent bylaws was given to the executive committee of the Faculty Senate by the president and was publicly posted to the Faculty Senate’s website. Changes in the bylaws over time suggest the potential for concentration of power in the office of the president at SLU in ways that subverted both the authority and decision-making capacity of the board of trustees. Differences in the three iterations of the bylaws that are available (as of 1985, 2003, and 2013) are interesting mostly as they relate to the executive committee of the board of trustees and the corresponding implications for the power of the president. According to the bylaws, members of the executive committee are elected by the trustees. As of the 1985 bylaws, nominations came from a nominating committee that was appointed by the chairman of the board of trustees and selected from members not on the executive committee. As of the 2003 bylaws, nominations still came from a nominating committee, but there was nothing in the bylaws that specified the composition of the nominating committee. It thus appears possible that since 2003, the executive committee of the board of trustees could have been entirely self-nominated or nominated by the president. The 2013 bylaws are even more vague about the nomination process and specify nothing about how nominations

26 David E. Rapach and Bonnie Wilson for the executive committee are to be obtained. The 2013 bylaws also indicate that any current trustee who has previously served as chairman may serve as a member of the executive committee. Similar changes were observed in Venetian institutions during the 11th century, where Venice’s Great Council was dominated by aristocrats. New members were initially nominated by a committee whose members were chosen by lot from the existing council. Later, individuals who were members of the Great Council in the previous four years received automatic nomination and approval. The Great Council eventually became sealed to outsiders, with the initial incumbents enshrined as a hereditary aristocracy.25 As political tensions increased, Venice’s Great Council grew larger. Similarly, SLU's board of trustees has grown larger over time.26 The large size of the board suggests two distinct groups of trustees in practice – a minority of elites on the executive committee and a majority of non-elites. Historically, when the board met, the executive committee typically met on a Thursday, committee meetings took place on Friday, and the full board met on Saturday. This routine suggests that by Saturday, decisions had mostly been made by the elites. Put differently, while the bylaws indicate a large board de jure, the de facto effective board may well have been quite small. None of these observations implies that individual board members did not wish or endeavor to serve diligently and with distinction; rather, they imply that it is at least difficult to imagine how individuals on the wider board might have effected change if the executive committee was a selfperpetuating cohesive block, operating in close partnership with the president. The university may have actually operated for a number of years with a board that was captured by the president. In principle, the board of an organization monitors management, to ensure that managers pursue the interests of the organization rather than their self-interest. In practice, boards may become captured and thereby dominated by the very individuals they are supposed to be monitoring. The idea of board capture stems from the economic theory of regulation. George Stigler suggested that regulation exists not primarily for the benefit of the public, but for the benefit of the regulated, due to the tendency for special interests to capture regulators.27 As noted above, in the case of SLU, information flow to the board (the supposed “regulator” in charge of monitoring) appeared largely controlled by the president (the individual being “regulated” or monitored) via practices that restricted contact between board members and anyone but the president and executive committee. In sum, it is plausible to surmise that the board, the body entrusted with the fiduciary duty to monitor the president, was largely controlled by a minority elite that was chosen de facto by the president. The president’s management style further provides important clues about the extractive versus inclusive nature of institutions at the university. In the fall of 2012, the Faculty Senate commissioned an assessment task force to examine the management of the university. In the spring of 2013, the task force’s report was released and concluded, The “my way or the highway” management style to which Fr. Biondi admits may have been useful for bringing together a campus that was physically

The rise and decline of a university 27 fractured, although it was never without cost to the shared governance valued by faculty. In the current environment, however, that management style … is eroding the academic mission and the Jesuit character of the integrated university Fr. Biondi built. The report notes that, between 2003 and 2012, three schools were each led by five different deans and other schools were led by four different deans. It also cites “a ‘culture of fear,’ a phrase that refers to an organizational pattern of intimidation under which faculty and staff continually fear workplace retribution for expressing their professional judgments.” It goes on to provide evidence of penalties for dissent in the form of raises denied, laboratory resources restricted, highly regarded deans and department chairs fired or forced to resign, and lawsuits filed or threatened. Furthermore, the report reveals that individuals interviewed expressed fear that disagreement with the president would lead to retribution against their academic departments, programs, or schools through budget cuts, frozen hiring, or appointment of an unqualified dean over the objections of faculty.28 This management style appears far more consistent with extractive institutions rather than the pluralism and decentralized decision-making associated with inclusive institutions. Prior to the no-confidence movement, the university instituted some changes in an effort to enhance shared governance – a university’s version of inclusive institutions. Faculty, student, and staff representatives were added to the president’s coordinating council (PCC). However, PCC meetings subsequently became less frequent, and former PCC agenda items were dealt with in senior staff meetings. The president also reinstituted a budget advisory committee with faculty, student, and staff representatives. However, he altered the charge of the committee, from one that addressed budget priorities to one that examined alternative budgeting models. One decentralized budgeting model that was recommended was “rejected as being inconsistent with the centralization of control that characterizes the governance of Saint Louis University.” Several board of trustees committees accepted faculty and student representatives, but only faculty members approved by the president were allowed to serve and they were enjoined not to speak of what they learned at committee meetings with their constituencies.29 At the end of the day, the president failed to institute significant power-sharing, consistent with the idea stressed by Acemoglu and Robinson that extractive institutions tend to be self-perpetuating and difficult to overcome, as a result of the incentives they create for elites to hold on to power.30

Critical juncture at Saint Louis University Beginning in 2009, the university’s extractive institutions began to expand into areas previously governed by inclusive institutions – namely, the academic sphere. We suggest below that this change precipitated the no-confidence crisis of 2012–2013, á la Acemoglu and Robinson, who argue that a critical juncture – a confluence of factors that emerge and provide an opportunity to overturn the

28 David E. Rapach and Bonnie Wilson status quo – coupled with a broad-based coalition are often required to effect change away from extractive and towards inclusive institutions.31 Despite the concentration of power in the president’s office, for many years the “property rights” of faculty were respected in significant ways. Traditionally defined, a property right is the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used. In the context of SLU, the faculty manual is the “constitution” that spells out the role of the faculty in university governance.32 SLU’s faculty manual allocates property rights over academic matters to the faculty and constrains the administration from control over such matters. Over much of the period of interest, consistent with the faculty manual, the faculty largely maintained control over academic matters such as curriculum, pedagogy, research, as well as rank and tenure. Towards the end of the period, however, the administration began to extend its control beyond budgets and the physical plant and into domains that historically were the purview of faculty. One potential explanation for this change is that the university benefited historically from strong provosts who were able to shield the academic side of the university to some extent from the president and direct his attention elsewhere. In 2009, however, an interim provost was appointed by the president after the former provost left for a two-month administrative leave. Shortly thereafter, two significant changes directly related to academic affairs were announced: (1) elimination of the position of provost, to be replaced with the position of vice president of academic affairs (VPAA); and (2) dissolution of the graduate school. The former provost who took administrative leave returned to the faculty, but not to his administrative position; once the position of provost was eliminated, the interim provost became interim VPAA and subsequently VPAA. According to many on the faculty, both changes were made in violation of the rule of law codified in the faculty manual and without appropriate consultation and approval from various faculty committees and representative bodies. Then, in late 2011, the board of trustees approved a new strategic plan for SLU.33 Although published documents describe a process of development of the new strategic plan, in December 2012 – roughly one year after the board’s reported approval of the plan – faculty knew little about the plan. For the third time in roughly as many years, the faculty felt that their role in crucial academic decisions and planning had been subverted by the administration. Finally, in August 2012, a set of new policies was proposed by the administration, including a new faculty evaluation policy. The stated intent was that the policy be ratified by the PCC the following October. A review of the policies by the Faculty Senate concluded that the proposals were “irremediably flawed” and that “many of the individual actions proposed directly contradict the faculty manual, a contractual document.”34 The Faculty Senate thus requested that the proposals be withdrawn. This fourth significant intervention into academic affairs by the administration was seemingly the last straw. Media attention on the faculty evaluation proposal was largely focused on the issue of tenure. As the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) put it, “[T]he policy … would effectively eviscerate tenure as it’s understood at most institutions of higher learning.”35 To be sure, this aspect of the plan is what largely animated

The rise and decline of a university 29 faculty opposition to it. However, what is arguably most striking about the proposed policy is that the administration apparently felt little to no constraint when it came to wielding authority and power, despite the rules of law codified in the faculty manual. Although the proposed faculty evaluation policy was formally withdrawn, votes of no confidence in the VPAA, the primary author of the policy, were subsequently passed first by the Faculty Council of the College of Arts and Sciences and second by the all-university Faculty Senate. In early October 2012, the president reaffirmed his support for the VPAA and dismissed faculty concerns.36 By the end of October, motions of no confidence in the president were overwhelmingly supported in the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council, Faculty Senate, and Student Government Association. “Political revolution” was in full swing at the university. In the context of nations with inclusive institutions, such as in a parliamentary democracy, when support from a majority constituency is lost, the government is typically compelled to resign or ask the legislature to be dissolved, which then leads to a general election. In the case of SLU, the president’s loss of confidence from two crucial university stakeholders – faculty and students – triggered no analogous response. Instead, the executive committee of the board of trustees continued to assert its full confidence in the president. It was recommended to trustees that they not respond to letters, emails, and telephone calls from faculty and students.37 The lack of willingness to engage substantively with faculty and students in a time of crisis points to the lack of inclusive institutions at SLU. Conflict continued until roughly one year later, at which point both the VPAA and president no longer held their positions. Acemoglu and Robinson claim that in the history of nations, extractive institutions have often persisted because there was nothing to break the vicious circle that reinforces them.38 They further assert that when change has occurred, the incentive to push for inclusive institutions has typically come from those who benefit from the property rights associated with inclusive institutions – merchants, businessmen, and entrepreneurs. For example, England, Spain, and France were all once ruled by relatively absolutist monarchs: Elizabeth I in England, Philip II in Spain, and Henry II in France. All battled with assemblies of citizens – the Parliament in England, Cortés in Spain, and Estates General in France – that demanded more rights and control over the monarchy. In the case of SLU, as the property rights most closely associated with the academic operations of the university became less inclusive, those who benefited most from the property rights associated with inclusive institutions in academic operations – faculty and students – likewise pushed back. And as assemblies of citizens have historically done, they did so (in part) through collective action associated with their representative bodies – the Faculty Council of the College of Arts and Sciences, Faculty Senate, and Student Government Association. Acemoglu and Robinson also note that merchants opposing the Crown in England were emboldened by the rise of Atlantic trade.39 They refer to such historical developments as “contingent events,” and suggest that the outcomes associated with critical junctures are by no means certain, but rather often depend on the role of contingency. In the case of SLU, both faculty and students were

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arguably emboldened in their opposition to the administration by Jesuit mission, arguing that the administration’s actions and behavior were not supportive of or consistent with that mission. The contingent factor of SLU’s Catholic, Jesuit mission may well have played a key role in the ultimate success of the no-confidence movement. It certainly provided an opportunity to frame opposition not as simply a matter of self-interest, but rather in terms of the overall interest of the university. Likewise, those faculty newly arrived to the university or otherwise not so steeped in matters of mission were emboldened by a commitment to an idea of “the university” that SLU’s administration seemed to have abandoned, and they perceived themselves as engaged in a battle on behalf of the academy. Acemoglu and Robinson attribute similar framing to the abolition of the Royal African Company monopoly in 1698.40 A final contingent event ultimately precipitated the president’s departure. In July 2013, faculty received their contracts for the 2013–2014 academic year. Approximately two dozen faculty members who had been publicly active in the crisis discovered that the raises recommended by their deans and department chairs had been cut, without explanation. After the salary retaliation was discovered and publicized, the president published an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in which he effectively admitted that he was responsible for the cuts.41 This brazen effort to exert power and subvert the “rule of law” by the president was among his last in the role. In August 2013, the chairman of the board of trustees announced the installation of an interim president.42

Going forward The interventions during 2009–2012 in the academic affairs of Saint Louis University by the administration may be characterized as an expansion of extractive institutions in the sense that the interventions were top-down and contrary to codified property rights and the rule of law. As such, the interventions violated the university’s “constitution” with the faculty – the faculty manual. The interventions and subsequent crisis may be understood to constitute what Acemoglu and Robinson call a critical juncture – a major event or confluence of factors that disrupt the existing balance in society. In the history of nations, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that critical junctures have at times exacerbated extractive institutions (e.g., the Second Serfdom in Eastern Europe in the 16th century), while at other times they have paved the way to more inclusive institutions (e.g., the Glorious Revolution in England in the late 17th century). In this concluding section, we examine some factors that influence whether extractive institutions become more inclusive over time and consider what the effects of SLU’s “revolution” appear to be to date. Aspects of SLU’s institutions are inclusive, at least on paper – in particular, the faculty manual,43 with its principles of shared governance. Back in 2014, as we hypothesized about the future of SLU with new leadership, we imagined that extractive institutions might well recede, especially the more informal ones. Such a change boded well for a revival of development and growth. At the same time,

The rise and decline of a university 31 we worried that a change in leadership might not lead to more inclusive institutions and growth. After all, institutions became increasingly extractive under the ousted president, despite the existence of the faculty manual and its promise of shared governance. It was thus clear that the rule of law was not sufficiently strong to prevent elites from neglecting basic tenets of shared governance and wielding undue power. Even if new leadership had the best of intentions, the power associated with extractive institutions can be difficult to give up. It is easy for administrators to see the ways they might be able to advance policy change and take action quickly and easily under extractive institutions. What is more difficult for them to discern are the knowledge and information problems that make informed decision-making quite difficult. Many organizations, especially the modern university, are complex and complicated. Administrators simply do not possess all the relevant information needed to know how to allocate resources efficiently. Inside these organizations, where markets and prices are absent and managers operate as central planners, mechanisms that draw upon the knowledge, information, and wisdom that is dispersed among the many members of the organization must be created. Decentralized decision-making of the sort associated with inclusive institutions is one such mechanism. Decentralized decision-making admittedly raises concerns for upper-level management and administrators – those who, in principle, will ultimately be held responsible for the performance of an organization. Decentralization within the organization creates many decision nodes and small bureaucracies. Incentive compatibility problems can be the result, so that decentralization alone is insufficient, and mechanisms must be designed to ensure that the goals at each of potentially many decision nodes are aligned with the goals of the broader organization. The problem of decentralization with incentive compatibility is not an easy one to solve. However, the alternative – extractive institutions – stymies organizations and nations alike. In the history of nations, Acemoglu and Robinson suggest that a factor in successful transitions away from exclusive and toward inclusive institutions is a tradition of power-sharing in some form; leading examples are the Magna Carta in England and Assembly of Notables in France. In the case of SLU, although the principles and practices of shared governance articulated in the faculty manual were not sufficient to avoid a concentration of power in the office of the president that allowed subversion of the manual, the document might well be understood to provide an important historical framework for the development of more binding inclusive institutions. In England during the reign of Charles II, a Triennial Act asserted that Parliaments had to be called at least once every three years; however, there was no method of enforcing that Act, and Charles simply chose to ignore it.44 Similarly, the university’s faculty manual and its principles of shared governance were often ignored by the former president and board of trustees. In England, this problem was resolved in two ways. First, authority and decision-making power moved to Parliament. Many members of Parliament benefited from and thus supported property rights, and non-elites had access to Parliament. Second, King William simply chose not to behave as Charles and other kings had.45 We

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had hope back in 2014 that a new president would follow William in this regard, even while we suspected that hope might go unfulfilled if some of the authority and decision-making power of the office of the president was not diffused, so that the faculty manual would be more likely to be enforced. We note that a commitment to inclusive institutions has both formal and informal dimensions. The latter encompass the norms and shared beliefs of the members of a community. A philosophical commitment to the logic and virtues of pluralism and inclusive institutions can act as an important informal constraint on the abuse of power. Acemoglu and Robinson cite the example of Britain throughout much of the 19th century. Whigs and parliamentarians had ample political opportunity to increase their power and enrich themselves by repressing vast segments of society. However, Whigs and parliamentarians were constrained by the fact that they themselves had prospered because of fundamental change in the direction of pluralism and inclusive institutions. To a significant degree, they found themselves committed to the rule of law and the logic of pluralism. This intellectual commitment helped to preserve and expand inclusive institutions over time in Britain in a virtuous circle.46 In the context of nations, Acemoglu and Robinson suggest that a key factor that facilitates the development of inclusive institutions following revolution is a broad-based movement for change, as were evident in the cases of the Glorious Revolution and French Revolution. Coups driven by narrow interests or groups tend to simply replace one group of power holders with another. In the case of SLU, there was thus reason for optimism that institutional change would be positive. The university’s no-confidence movement was certainly broad-based rather than narrow. Formal representative bodies of both students and faculty were involved. In addition, a number of informal groups emerged throughout the course of the crisis and became quite active and influential, including a group of faculty (some publicly known and others not) who met almost weekly during the crisis and engaged one another in deliberation daily in often lengthy email threads. The results of several university-wide surveys also indicated broad-based movement for change.

Post revolution At SLU, some of our hopes for change have been realized. In key regards, the new administration has been much more responsive to students, staff, and faculty than the previous one. The Faculty Senate has also made progress advancing important governance initiatives. In other regards, it is clear that the organizational and cultural damage of more than two decades of living with extractive institutions is not easily or quickly undone. Five years in with a new administration, the university is facing serious challenges – structural budget deficits, enrollment worries, a news-making donor-influence crisis. Some of these challenges are not unique to SLU and likely reflect the increasing corporatization of universities and the generally difficult environment for higher education. However, like the old one, the new administration has periodically violated provisions of the faculty manual.

The rise and decline of a university 33 When called out, the new administration has sometimes responded and changed course. However, it is clear that neither mid- nor upper-level administrators feel obliged to know or abide by the manual’s provisions. Lack of respect for the manual – the university’s constitution – arguably signals a lack of commitment to the hard work of institutional reform that SLU needs. The administration has also demonstrated a willingness to violate long-standing norms of academic independence. For example, in one case, apparently a large-dollar donor was granted academic hiring privileges. In another case, a large-dollar donor evidently was granted a seat on dean search committees in exchange for a donation. This lack of respect for norms also bodes poorly for efforts to improve institutions at SLU. As noted earlier, while inclusive institutions promote innovation, entrepreneurial initiative, and growth, a sufficiently centralized and powerful “state” is also important. While the analogy to the context of the nation-state is far from perfect, in the context of the university or organization, the claim might be that a strong leader is vital. In the past, SLU had such a leader, but lacked the inclusive institutions needed to constrain him. Most recently, it has become increasingly clear that the challenge of driving needed reform while simultaneously navigating a difficult external environment has sapped what potential new administrators might have had to serve as strong leaders. University-wide, there is a growing sense that the university’s administration is effectively absent and not leading. Some have hypothesized that SLU is experiencing a leadership vacuum, and that no one is running the show. Others have hypothesized that behind the scenes, influential donors are effectively guiding the bits of decision-making and strategic planning that are taking place. If this is the case, it may well be that SLU has ended up suffering the sad fate of many nations, in which revolutions have succeeded in ousting one autocratic strongman, only to see him replaced by another, when the challenges of reform proved too great to overcome.

Notes 1 We thank Ellen Carnaghan, Kathryn Kuhn, Kenneth Parker, Jonathan Sawday, and Silvana Siddali for helpful comments. We note that both authors have been members of the Saint Louis University faculty since 2003. Both authors participated in the noconfidence movement that sought leadership changes at SLU in 2012–2013. 2 Ronald H. Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica 4 (1937): 386–405. 3 Oliver E. Williamson, “The Economics of Governance,” American Economic Review 95 (2005): 1–18. 4 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail (New York: Crown Business, 2012). 5 Neoclassical growth theory dates to the seminal studies of Robert Solow; see Robert M. Solow, “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 70 (1956): 65–94; and Robert M. Solow, “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function,” Review of Economics and Statistics 39 (1957): 312–320. 6 Formally, Yt = F(Kt, Lt, At), where Yt is the flow of output produced during period t, Kt is the amount of physical capital (buildings, machines, equipment, and the like) employed during period t, Lt is the amount of labor employed during period t (e.g., total number of hours worked), and At is the available level of technology.

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7 Rick Desloge, ”Urban Renewal Award – Saint Louis University,” St. Louis Business Journal, September 17, 2000, http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2000/09/18/ focus4.html?page=all (accessed August 2016). 8 Saint Louis University, A Decade of Renaissance, April 2002, 41. 9 Although the recipe is obvious, it should be noted that actually accomplishing an expansion of the capital stock may not be easy – not for a nation and not for a university. 10 Precisely because of diminishing returns, a key prediction of neoclassical growth theory is that poor countries grow faster than rich countries, and there is considerable empirical support for a conditional version of this prediction; see, e.g., Robert J. Barro, “Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (1991): 407–443; and N. Gregory Mankiw, David Romer, and David N. Weil, “A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (1992): 407–437. 11 Saint Louis University, A Decade of Renaissance. 12 William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, Performing Arts, The Economic Dilemma: A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1966). 13 National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ (accessed March 3, 2020). 14 Mark Knuepfer, letter from the Faculty Senate President to the Saint Louis University Board of Trustees, October 31, 2012, https://docs.google.com/a/slu.edu/viewer?a =v&pid=sites&srcid=c2x1LmVkdXxhYXVwLXNsdS1pbnRlcmltfGd4OjdkMDJh M2E5Zjk0MzhkYzU (accessed March 2020); Saint Louis University Faculty Senate, Report of the Faculty Senate Assessment Task Force, April 24, 2013. 15 For an influential study in this vein, see Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” American Economic Review 91 (2001): 1369–1401. 16 Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 238–243. 17 Ibid., 4–5, 458–459. 18 Ibid., ch. 5. 19 Other examples include the Maya city-states and modern-day China. 20 Saint Louis University Faculty Senate, Report of Assessment Task Force. 21 Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 128. 22 Ibid., 131. 23 Saint Louis University Faculty Senate ad hoc Committee on the Assessment of Shared Governance at Saint Louis University, Shared Governance at Saint Louis University: Reality or Myth?, March 26, 2002. 24 During the 2012–2013 academic year of the crisis, a number of the faculty managed to establish connections with a handful of board members. However, even in the context of private faculty strategy meetings, the names of those board members were never revealed, to protect them from the president. Throughout the crisis, a number of board documents were leaked to faculty and/or students. At least some of the leaked documents came from trustees. 25 Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 152–156. 26 In 1992, 47 members of the board were listed. During the fall of 2012, there appeared to be 52 members of the board. As of July 3, 2014, SLU’s web pages listed 49 board members, including 7 Jesuits, 6 women (based on name inferences), and the new president. 27 George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2 (1971): 3–21. 28 Saint Louis University Faculty Senate, Report of Assessment Task Force, 2–4, 9–10. 29 Saint Louis University Faculty Senate, Governance at Saint Louis University. 30 Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, ch. 12.

The rise and decline of a university 35 31 Ibid., ch. 14. 32 As understood by the field of constitutional economics, a constitution is a set of rules that constrains the choices of agents. From the economic perspective, constitutions are understood as the result of a cooperative exchange through which its rules are decided; see James M. Buchanan, “The Domain of Constitutional Economics,” Constitutional Political Economy 1 (1990): 1–18. 33 The previous plan was dated 2001. The new plan applied to fiscal years 2013 to 2017. 34 Saint Louis University Faculty Senate Executive Committee, memo to Manoj Patankar, September 5, 2012, https://docs.google.com/a/slu.edu/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid =c2x1LmVkdXxhYXVwLXNsdS1pbnRlcmltfGd4OjY4ZDkxOTU5OThjODJjN2E (accessed March 3, 2020). 35 Audrey Williams June, “Faculty-Review Proposal at Saint Louis U. Would ‘Eviscerate Tenure,’ AAUP Says,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 30, 2012. 36 Lawrence Biondi, letter to Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, October 2, 2012, https://docs.google.com/a/slu.edu/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=c2x1LmVkd XxhYXVwLXNsdS1pbnRlcmltfGd4OjM4ZmQyOTI0ODI3ODMwMTM (accessed February 20, 2020). 37 Thomas Brouster, memo to the Saint Louis University trustees, November 30, 2012, https://docs.google.com/a/slu.edu/file/d/0B7HsEqmC0EunUGFoZDc4QjFGWUk/ edit?pli=1 (accessed March 3, 2020). 38 Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, ch. 12. 39 Ibid., 110. 40 Ibid., 193–194. 41 Lawrence Biondi, S.J., “Criticism of SLU Raises Didn’t Tell the Whole Story,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 8, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/ biondi-criticism-of-slu-raises-didn-t-tell-the-whole/article_b879fc80-c49d-537e9104-d879a0197d71.html (accessed March 3, 2020). 42 In October, the raise recommendations of faculty were restored. It is widely understood that it took several months to restore the recommendations because the then chairman of the board of trustees (and close ally of the then former president) objected. 43 Saint Louis University, Faculty Manual, 2017. 44 Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 191. 45 Ibid., 191–192. 46 Ibid., 306–307.

3

Postscript to a deanship Annette E. Clark1

Introduction I resigned my deanship of the Saint Louis University (SLU) School of Law on August 8, 2012, just a few months ago, and here I sit at my laptop computer trying to put into words what has happened to me and to “my” law school since that fateful day. I am certain that many of you are thinking that it is unwise to put “pen to paper” so soon after my resignation, that I risk saying something out of anger or hurt that I will regret later. I certainly understand that view and I know that I will gain more objectivity and distance, and perhaps even acceptance as the months pass, but I also fear that much of what I learned by living through the events of the past year, and particularly those last few weeks of my deanship, will be lost if I wait. As I search for some meaning, some good to come out of this debacle, it gives me a sense of purpose and a feeling of hopefulness to reflect on my experiences and to try to discern lessons that might be useful to my fellow deans. Let me begin this chapter by saying what it will not be about. I said everything I needed or wanted to say about the university’s actions in my letter of resignation addressed to the president and vice president for academic affairs2 and in the explanatory letter addressed to my faculty and staff.3 As the university leadership pursued an aggressive strategy in response – doing everything it could to destroy my professional reputation and claiming that I had lied in stating the reasons for my resignation4 – I have refrained from commenting or answering, in the media or elsewhere. I have no intention of defending that which needs no defense. I spoke the truth. It is the aftermath that I wish to write about here, to describe the days since that have been so markedly different from the ones that came before, as well as the lessons that I learned from this experience.

The beginning of the end I came to Saint Louis University, as I imagine all new deans arrive at their new schools, excited and enthusiastic to have been chosen to lead a law school; one that had impressed me with its genuine commitment to the trilogy of academic excellence, scholarship, and service to others. At the same time, I was anxious about having left my old life behind, and of course concerned about how best to

Postscript to a deanship 37 manage and move a law school forward at a time when the very value of legal education is being questioned. I certainly had no intention of being anyone’s hero, and I did not wish for, or seek out, my 15 seconds of fame. My sole intentions in accepting the SLU Law deanship were to find an academic home, a place where my skills and vision meshed with a university’s and law school’s vision for its future, and to work as hard as I could to advance the interests of the school I had agreed to serve. What I feel at this point, having done the job for over a year and then resigning from the deanship and from the faculty,5 is a sense of sadness. The faculty, staff, students, and I were not wrong when we concluded in the spring of 2011 that we were a good match for each other, which only makes the outcome that much more tragic. It is such a waste – far more than just a lost year for the law school and for me. All of the school’s time and money spent on doing a national dean search, the effort that went into introducing me as the new dean and laying the foundation for my deanship, the work I put into learning the culture and the people – all of it, wasted. The net result is that the law school will have had five deans in five years (the longtime former dean, an internal interim dean, me, an external interim dean, and whoever takes the position next). The law school’s and university’s reputations have been damaged, as has mine,6 and I am left to regret that I ever took the position in the first place. Surely no one wanted this outcome, although those in the best position to avoid it, the university leadership, seemed oblivious to the likely consequences of their actions until it was too late (and despite my repeated attempts over the course of the year to help them understand). Much was made by the president that I was about to be fired when I resigned,7 but despite the university’s attempt to humiliate me by publicizing their plan to replace me, I am not at all ashamed that my reasoned resistance to their actions had led them to that decision. In fact, in the final days of my deanship, I was doing a constant calculus as I tried to get things into place for my resignation while also staying out in front of any action the university might take. It was only because I paid attention to signals from the university leadership and followed my instincts that I was able to act quickly and assert some control over how the end game played out.8 I am relieved and grateful that I followed my instinct on this. I had labored for a year in an intensely oppressive environment in which I had been given very little authority as a dean, but once it became clear that I could not continue as a member of the administration, I was determined to at least control the timing and manner of my leave-taking. In addition, in order to make the points I wanted to make, it was important that I act first so that the initial narrative was one of my resignation and the reasons behind it. If I had allowed the president and vice president to make the first move, I would have ceded that power to the university. As a result, anything I said after that would likely have been dismissed as a defensive reaction by a disgruntled ex-dean, and my message would have been completely lost. Or, I might have been able to negotiate a “deal” to quietly walk away, but that would have left the university leadership free to continue its conduct unfettered, as well as ensuring that my criticisms of their actions never saw the light of day.9

38 Annette E. Clark By making my statements public, I was able to say what I needed to say precisely, accurately, and clearly.

The shifting narrative To say that the story went viral is an understatement. I resigned at 11:00 a.m., and by that evening, my letters and the president’s response had been posted on Twitter and, from there, were picked up by media outlets locally and even nationally and became the talk of the blogosphere. From Above the Law10 to TaxProf Blog11 to Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports12 to ProfessorBainbridge.com13 to the WSJ Blog,14 the pundits had a field day with my resignation.15 Although I had intended to make the reasons for my resignation known when I notified the faculty and staff, and I surely knew that my letters would not stay within the confines of the individuals to whom they were addressed, I did not expect that the storyline would hold such intense and enduring interest beyond St. Louis and, particularly, within academia. That my resignation letters struck a chord with faculty members was evidenced by the fact that, in the days following, I heard from scores of academics across the country, many of whom I have never met and some of whom were outside the legal academy. By going on the offensive rather than allowing the university to break the story, I was able to get out in front on the narrative initially, but I soon learned that the story would morph beyond what I had intended or envisioned, as others read it through the prism of recent events in legal education and/or used it to further their own agendas. My story was essentially that the university operated as a mini-fiefdom, in which absolute loyalty was expected and demanded, over which the president and his inner circle reigned supreme, and against whom the “subjects” generally felt (and were in reality) powerless. Thus, my intended narrative was one of the use and abuse of power, albeit in an academic (and strikingly feudal) setting.16 In my experience of the events, what happened between the law school and the university over the course of the year that I was dean had almost nothing to do with the admissions, fiscal/budgetary, bar passage, and employment-related issues that we currently face in legal education and was only tangentially related to the age-old debate over law school autonomy within a university administrative and budgetary structure. I was thus bemused when I was first portrayed in Above the Law as a model dean, someone who was fighting the good fight for students against an evil university that was using the law school as a cash cow, only to be followed the next day by a completely different portrayal, such that I was now the classic disgruntled ex-employee trying to get revenge against my former employers by publicly denouncing them.17 That neither of those perspectives was consistent with the reality of the situation was, of course, irrelevant in a world where the goal is to drive readers to a blog site. In a more academic vein, two of my faculty colleagues shifted the narrative themselves, intentionally diverting attention away from the specifics of what had happened between the university and the law school. Instead, they used the events

Postscript to a deanship 39 to stimulate debate and discussion over the current model of legal education, Brian Tamanaha’s controversial new book, Failing Law Schools,18 and the value of scholarship to the legal academic enterprise and to our students.19 Other than this commentary on the larger (and inapposite, in my view) picture carried on by two of my former faculty colleagues under their own names, the public conversation following my resignation has been strikingly devoid of any formal response from the tenured faculty in the law school, either individually or as a group – a silence that has been noted and commented upon by others within the legal academy.20 A few brave souls from the law school faculty ventured out into the blogosphere anonymously to make comments on the underlying factual situation or to try to explain the lack of a public response from the faculty,21 but in general, the faculty’s silence has been deafening.22

The sound of silence I acknowledge up front that there is a piece of this that is both personal and painful for me, because the faculty’s failure to break its silence in the aftermath of my resignation has left unchallenged the president’s and interim dean’s attacks on my competence and professional reputation.23 It has left me hanging, with no one who had firsthand knowledge stepping forward to either substantiate my claims or publicly offer their support for me. I have come to realize, however, that as much as I would have preferred the faculty to defend my performance as dean and to protest the circumstances that forced me to resign, it is not the faculty’s role to be the dean’s friend or savior.24 In an instance such as this, where the dean has taken an action that is as significant and irrevocable as making a public resignation, their fiduciary responsibility now runs not to the former dean, but to the institution (and to themselves, individually and collectively). Thus, I am slowly coming to terms with the painful lesson that the faculty owed me no duty of loyalty, if you will, no obligation to come to my defense once I had submitted my resignation. The faculty’s silence has also caused me to question in my own mind whether I should have handled my resignation differently. I clearly owed no one a duty to continue to be a part of an administration that I no longer trusted or had faith in, and any obligation I had to the university had been negated by the central administration’s conduct. However, I gave then (and continue to give) a great deal of thought to whether my actions, which I took because I believed them to be in the best interests of the law school, will in the long-run have caused more harm than good.25 After a year spent living and working within the university setting, I was very aware that the administration was well-defended and protected, and I was not so naïve as to believe that my public resignation would necessarily or even probably lead to personnel changes within the upper echelons. I did ultimately conclude, however, that the seriousness of the conduct and its likely continuation weighed strongly in favor of bringing the issues out into the open, as did my sense of the importance of “speaking truth to power” under these circumstances. Still, I

40 Annette E. Clark have no definitive answer to the question of whether I should I have gone “gentle into that good night,” other than to note that administrative resignations unaccompanied by genuine explanations for why the persons stepped down seem to have been the norm at Saint Louis University for years, and I do not believe that resignations conducted in that manner have turned out to serve the longer-term interests of either the law school or the university.26 In fact, such resignations have served to increase the president’s already formidable power. Although I accept that the faculty did not owe me a duty of loyalty under these circumstances, the faculty surely has a continuing obligation to exercise its governance powers in the best interests of the law school. In my view, that obligation applies particularly to the senior, tenured members of the faculty, who have the most freedom to speak up on important matters affecting the law school and its future. The question becomes, then, whether the SLU Law faculty’s silence regarding my resignation and the underlying events (including the appointment of an interim dean who has himself precipitated public controversy)27 is in the law school’s best interests.28 I want to approach my thinking on this question with as much humility as I can, in part because none of us yet knows the answer as to how all of this will play out for SLU, and in part because those of us on the outside – and I am clearly an outsider at this point – should be cautious about making judgments or casting aspersions on individuals who are doing the best they can to navigate extremely trying circumstances. At the same time, I feel that I need to say something on this matter lest I be accused of ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. It is my sense that there are a number of elements at play here. These include substantive reasons why a faculty might stay silent or speak out under these circumstances, a process component by which a faculty qua faculty goes about making the decision of whether or how to respond, and cultural factors that are likely affecting both the substance of the faculty’s reasoning and the method by which it makes its decision. Although I feel less than completely confident speaking about the law school’s culture since I was still relatively new to it, I want to start there because I think the cultural overlay is relevant to any attempt to tease out why the faculty response has been so muted. The faculty at SLU Law is as collegial a faculty as I have ever encountered in the academy; the collaborative, caring culture is definitely one of the aspects that attracted me to the school and that made my time spent within the law school enjoyable and gratifying. As we faced a number of challenges over the course of the year – not all of them related to the larger university – I also perceived a stoicism among the law school faculty;29 a view that there is value in literally gutting out difficult circumstances and in not airing one’s dirty laundry in public. The faculty culture and inclination was also to be risk-averse and to take the long view, to have the patience to wait out difficult circumstances and to even sometimes deny their existence. This comes perhaps from long practice and the knowledge that this moment is but one small point in time in the history of a law school that is the oldest one west of the Mississippi. I had also learned in

Postscript to a deanship 41 my time there that strong faculty governance had not been the norm,30 at least in recent years. This lack of experience in self-governance was exacerbated by the relatively rapid growth in the size of the faculty in the last few years, making the process of self-governance more complex, along with the addition of a number of entry-level faculty members who did not yet have a fully-formed sense of what faculty governance is, why it might be important, or how it can be effectuated. It was also clear that the university had become increasingly oppressive over time, but in an incremental fashion. Thus, the institutional problems I perceived as someone coming in from the outside were perhaps less striking to those who had been working within and adapting to that culture for years. Finally, and perhaps most salient to this inquiry, is the culture of fear that permeated the campus (something that I personally experienced).31 This culture developed in direct response to the strongly authoritarian and top-down central administration, and has led to a sense of hopelessness and longstanding feelings of powerlessness among many faculty members across the campus. I would characterize some of these cultural incidents as positive and admirable, and some less so, but I believe that these cultural forces, taken together, predisposed the faculty to try to accept and work within the circumstances in which they found themselves rather than going public with the crisis that resulted from the university’s actions and my subsequent resignation. Let me add to that picture by positing some reasons why the faculty might choose to avoid a public fight with the administration, with the understanding that this exercise is something akin to an attempt to discern the intent of Congress when it passes legislation: there is no one reason, but rather, many individual reasons that coalesce into a particular choice of course of action. First, the SLU Law faculty takes its obligations to its students very seriously, and given the timing of my resignation less than two weeks before the start of the academic year, there was a very real risk that some sort of public protest or demand for an explanation by the faculty would result in chaos at the law school, to the clear detriment of the students. Second, there was a strong sense, informed by past experience, that speaking out would be met by retribution, visited on both individuals and the law school itself. The faculty likely perceived the very real possibility that, if faced with organized resistance, the president and board of trustees might literally shut the doors of the law school. In this context, quiet diplomacy and an attempt to work the problem from within is an approach that would have considerable appeal. Third is the belief, again informed by the history of the university and its exercise of power, that challenging the administration would be futile32 and would serve only to further publicize the discord. The result would be even greater harm to the law school’s and the university’s reputations, directly impacting not just faculty, but also staff, students, and graduates long into the future. Fourth, a number of faculty at SLU have spent their entire academic careers building up the law school and its reputation for excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. To blow that up, to throw gasoline on the fire that I had already lit by my resignation, without any assurance that doing so would cause anything other than additional harm, is likely more than some of the faculty could

42 Annette E. Clark contemplate. Taken together, these are obviously not small or insignificant considerations when a faculty is trying to conduct a cost-benefit analysis and make a decision of this magnitude. The idea of a cost-benefit analysis brings me to the issue of process. It is always challenging to manage a full-fledged, participatory decision-making process within an institutional structure, but much more so when that institution is in crisis and its faculty is in shock. It did not help that my resignation occurred at a time when a number of faculty members had not yet returned for the start of the academic year, and the decision-making setting was further complicated by the fact that the president had made the strategic move of immediately installing an interim dean. This individual had made it clear that he was working for and closely with the president, with the result that the law school was neither physically nor electronically a safe space for faculty to gather and strategize. Thus, I watched as communication quickly went underground; people were concerned that their email communications were being monitored by the university, so texting, the use of private email accounts, and closed-door and off-site discussions became the norm. It is my understanding that the faculty managed only one group meeting before the interim dean’s arrival, a meeting that was run by two faculty associate deans, one of whom had little administrative experience and neither of whom could have anticipated finding themselves in these difficult circumstances. The position taken from the beginning by the law school leadership was that the faculty could not “win” by fighting,33 and that the most risk-averse course was to work with the university administration, including the interim dean, rather than against them.34 Once stated, the default position, although clearly (and perhaps understandably) not the result of a full deliberative process undertaken by the faculty as a whole, became the de facto course of action. And once begun, that course of action has proven difficult to overcome for the minority who are of the view that the faculty should have spoken up and advocated publicly on behalf of themselves and the law school.35 Of course, as time has passed, the opportunity for the faculty to take any public stand has faded away.36

The cost of silence Given that all of these factors – substantive, procedural, and cultural – were likely operating in a complex and complicated set of circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the faculty has remained silent in the aftermath of my resignation.37 I am also aware that it is a false dichotomy to assume that the only options available to the faculty are public and vocal opposition on the one hand and passive acceptance on the other, and I know that the faculty has been working in less visible ways to assert the law school’s interests. In addition, I accept that I was differently situated than my faculty colleagues in that I had greater personal knowledge and experience with the central administration and access to key information that was not available to them. And, unlike some of my colleagues, I held tenure at SLU and so in theory could not be fired from my faculty position on the basis of my statements.

Postscript to a deanship 43 All of that being said, it would frankly be disingenuous of me to say that I agree with the position the faculty has taken. Although I understand that it is their decision to make and that they are in the best position to identify and weigh all of the factors that should inform how to respond to this difficult conundrum, there are institutional costs to the faculty’s seeming acquiescence and silence, costs that are perhaps being undervalued by those working from the inside. First and foremost is the harm being done to the faculty’s reputation, which flows from the fact that they are being publicly perceived as operating strategically and expediently, but at the cost of the law school’s integrity. If the faculty believes that the description of the conduct I outlined in my letter of resignation is an accurate representation of what actually occurred over the course of the past year,38 then it is reasonable to ask how those who hold the protection of tenure can not speak up, even if speaking comes at some risk.39 I obviously believe that there are principles at play here that are worth defending. We teach our students every day that their professional obligation is to hold fast to their principles and to fight injustice and oppression, even if it seems unlikely they will prevail; and, of course, the most powerful form of teaching is to model for our students what we preach in the classroom. That the faculty at SLU has self-governance power that it can wield effectively, when it marshals the will and courage to do so, is apparent in the recent votes of no confidence taken by the University Faculty Senate against, first, the vice president for academic affairs,40 and then the president.41 Particularly in this larger university context, the faculty’s silence in the face of the underlying law school events and my resignation has created a sense of disillusionment and betrayal among some members of the SLU Law faculty. These individuals believe that the injustices and wrongs perpetrated by the university against the law school should be publicly and affirmatively acknowledged and resisted, even if that resistance would be futile and even if it would be counterproductive. Far more than the loss of perquisites such as summer research support or travel funding, it is this sense of betrayal and of not being heard on matters that go to the very heart of the academic enterprise that is propelling some SLU Law faculty to seek to continue their academic careers elsewhere. And if these talented, productive, and committed individuals are successful in their efforts to leave SLU, the impact of their departures will be felt by the law school for years to come. Sadly, they have lost faith in their colleagues and in their institution, an outcome that literally breaks my heart, but which I have no power to affect or change.

Aftermath Let me conclude my reflections by describing where I am now in all of this. I do not think it is an overstatement to say that the act of resigning was the single most solitary act I have ever performed. One of my fellow deans called me in the days following the resignation and said words to the effect of, “I hope you don’t feel alone.” I did not say so at the time, but the reality was that I had never felt so alone in all my life. Until 11:00 a.m. on August 8, I was in a fiduciary position, doing my best to steward the interests of a law school within a university that seemed

44 Annette E. Clark hell-bent on a course of action that I was convinced was neither in the best interests of the law school nor the university. In that one instant, sometime between 10:55 and 11:00 a.m. on that day, everything changed, such that SLU Law was no longer my law school and its people were no longer my faculty, my staff, or my students.42 But what did not change in that moment was my continuing feeling of responsibility and obligation toward the law school, even though it was no longer mine to lead. My experience was, thus, one of profound cognitive dissonance, as if I had gone from 60 m.p.h. to 0 in 6 milliseconds, with all of the whiplash and disorientation that such a complete and sudden stop entails. It is remarkable how quickly everything closed over and moved on, as the university worked to replace me and erase any evidence that I had ever been there. Because I no longer had an office to return to or the work of a dean to do,43 I found myself alone at home, living for several days on what the next email or phone call or media article or blog post would bring. My interactions with my colleagues had suddenly become awkward and uncomfortable, in part because no one knew what to say and, in part, because it was dangerous for them to be caught “fraternizing with the enemy,” which is what I had become. The adrenaline rush that came with the resignation itself quickly dissipated, followed by intense feelings of loss and alienation as the academic year began without me, the beginnings of a period of grieving that I am sure will be with me for some time to come. Thirteen days later, on the day that I submitted my resignation from the faculty, I returned home and sat on my deck, looking up at the sky and watching the clouds drift by and the planes passing overhead, listening to the odd but soothing rhythm of the cicadas singing in the background. I needed to live with and feel the loss, the sense of relief, the devastation and sadness, without cell phone or laptop, without wondering what my colleagues or the media or the blogs were saying about my decision to leave. It was my own very personal and private farewell to St. Louis and Saint Louis University School of Law, and the hopes and dreams they had represented.

Lessons learned This has not been an easy chapter for me to write. As I explained at the outset, it will take me a long time and a lot of work to fully process the circumstances surrounding the abrupt and unhappy end to my deanship. I am certain that, were I to write this chapter two years hence, I would realize additional insights and reach some different conclusions, but I hope that my fellow deans and others find these initial reflections to be thought-provoking and useful. I wonder whether I might have the opportunity to revisit this chapter two years from now, in the next Deans’ Issue, to see which of my thoughts and insights have held up with the passage of time and with the increased objectivity that comes from distance and healing. I fervently hope that, should I have such an opportunity, I will return to this subject to find a law school and university that have made it through this present adversity, that is thriving and moving forward, and that is governed by a central

Postscript to a deanship 45 administration that recognizes and values the law school faculty, staff, students, and alumni for all that they bring to the university, the legal academy, and the legal profession.44 And, finally, let me offer my list of the most important lessons that I learned from my year as dean at SLU Law: 1. I learned how vitally important it is to conduct an intensive and comprehensive assessment of the university-as-employer before accepting an offer to lead a law school; 2. I learned that one should never listen or give credence to comments made by those who either know nothing about the situation at hand or who are not worthy of respect; 3. I learned that it is key to have an exit strategy and a good employment law attorney if things go awry; 4. I learned that the need for tenure for deans continues to exist to ensure academic freedom and the ability to speak truth to power. I am living, breathing proof of that proposition; 5. I learned that it is essential to have fellow deans and other trusted friends and confidantes who can provide confidential counsel and reassurance that you are not the crazy one; 6. I learned how ephemeral and transient our place in this world is, and that what we have worked so hard to build and achieve can be gone in an instant; 7. I learned that the academy is hungry for role models, individuals who try to live their professional lives with integrity and who have the courage of their convictions; 8. I learned that no deanship is worth compromising the principles and values that make you who you are as a person and as a professional; 9. I learned that my sons will still love and respect me even though I am no longer a dean; and, perhaps most importantly, 10. I learned that there is life after a deanship that ended far too soon.

Notes 1 Annette E. Clark, Former Dean and Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law. I want to thank my family for their love and unwavering support, which sustained me during this long, difficult year. I also want to dedicate this Essay to my best friend, Professor Eric Chiappinelli, who so generously provided me with wise counsel, advice, and much-needed friendship as I faced the unending string of challenges that defined my decanal year. This chapter was originally published as Annette E. Clark, “Postscript to a Deanship,” University of Toledo Law Review 44, no. 303 (2013): 303–317. It is reprinted here with permission of the University of Toledo Law Review. 2 See Letter from Annette E. Clark to President Biondi and Vice President Patankar, August 8, 2012, available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/102367564/SLU-Law-Dean -Annette-E-Clark-Resignation-Letter-8-8-12 (copy on file with the author). 3 See Letter from Annette E. Clark to Faculty and Staff, August 8, 2012, available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/102368276/SLU-Law-Dean-Annette-Clark-ResignationAnnouncement-to-Faculty-Staff-8-8-2012 (copy on file with author).

46 Annette E. Clark 4 See Memorandum From the Lawrence Biondi, S.J., President, Saint Louis University to SLU Law Faculty and Staff, August 8, 2012, available at http://www.scribd.co m/doc/102389655/Special-Message-From-the-President-8-8-12 (“Her emails to Dr. Patankar and me, and to the faculty and staff of our School of Law, demonstrate a lack of a clear and comprehensive understanding of the duties and obligations, autonomy and authority, of a modern-day dean at a large and complex university.”). The president resorted to calling me a liar, claiming in an annual letter emailed to the university community that my stated reasons for resigning were untrue. See Lawrence Biondi, August 2012 Message, August 28, 2012 (copy on file with author). The interim dean also joined in the fray. See, e.g., Melissa Meinzer, “New SLU Law Dean Thomas Keefe Says He Is Keeping His Day Job,” Missouri Lawyers Media, August 10, 2012, http://molawyersmedia.com/blog/2012/08/10/new-slu-law-dean-t homas-keefe-says-he-is-keeping-his-day-job/ (subscription needed, copy on file with author). 5 I resigned my position from the tenure-track faculty on August 21, 2012, effective on August 31, 2012, and returned to the Seattle University School of Law faculty as of September 1. I want to take this opportunity to express publicly my deep gratitude to President Stephen Sundborg, S.J., Provost Isiaah Crawford, and Dean Mark Niles for facilitating my return to my first “academic home,” and to the faculty and staff at Seattle University for welcoming me back with open arms. 6 See Phil Pucillo, “Annette Clark and the Situation at SLU,” The Faculty Lounge, September 15, 2012, 1:17 p.m., http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2012/09/annette-cl ark-and-the-situation-at-slu.html (including blog comments) for an interesting (but also surreal, for me, at least) discussion of whether my administrative career has been harmed or helped by the events that transpired at SLU. 7 See Biondi, Memorandum to SLU Law Faculty & Staff, supra note 4 (“At 11 a.m. today, there was a scheduled meeting between Prof. Clark and Dr. Patankar, at which time Dr. Patankar and I had intended to terminate Prof. Clark’s appointment as dean of our School of Law.”). See also Tim Barker, “Discord Rocks SLU Law School,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9, 2012, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/ discordrocksslulawschool/article_8fd025bf-31e9-58d2-a720-acaa2fe74bf8.html (noting that the president had stated in his letter that “Clark was going to be fired anyway.”). 8 Upon learning, while on vacation, that the president had canceled, on very short notice, a private dinner with donor prospects that he and I were to host immediately after my return, I sent an exploratory email to the vice president for academic affairs, suggesting that we delay our upcoming one-on-one meeting. When the vice president responded stating that we definitely needed to meet as scheduled, I had a strong feeling that the university was going to make its move at that meeting. I arrived back in St. Louis at 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday night from my vacation and spent the rest of the night finalizing my resignation letter, which I intentionally submitted five minutes prior to the scheduled time for my meeting with the vice president. 9 The significance of the difference between my resigning and being terminated was not lost on the president, who, seemingly without any sense of irony, criticized me for my lack of courtesy in not showing up for the meeting at which he and the vice president for academic affairs had planned to fire me. See Biondi, Memorandum to SLU Law Faculty & Staff, supra note 4 (“Prof. Clark did not have the courtesy to honor this regularly scheduled meeting, and instead emailed a letter of resignation to Dr. Patankar and me, in which she resigned as dean effective immediately.”). 10 See Elie Mystal, “Law School Dean Blasts University in Passionate Resignation Letter,” Above the Law, August 8, 2012, 2:08 p.m., http://abovethelaw.com/2012/08/ law-school-dean-blasts-university-in-passionate-resignation-letter/. 11 See Paul L. Caron, “St. Louis Law School Dean Resigns Abruptly, Blasts University Administration,” TaxProf Blog, August 8, 2012, https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof _blog/2012/08/st-louis.html.

Postscript to a deanship 47 12 See Brian Leiter, “SLU LAW Dean Resigns Abruptly,” Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports, August 8, 2012, 10:59 AM, http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2012 /08/slu-law-dean-resigns.html. 13 See Stephen Bainbridge, “My Condolences to SLU Law Faculty and Students,” ProfessorBainbridge.com, August 9, 2012, 9:37 AM, http://www.professorbainbridge .com/professorbainbridgecom/2012/08/my-condolences-to-slu-law-faculty-and-s tudents.html. 14 See Jennifer Smith, “Dean Resigns in Row Over Law School Autonomy,” WSJ Blog, August 8, 2012, 5:55 p.m., http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/08/deans-noisy-resigna tion-sheds-light-on-battle-for-law-school-autonomy/. 15 Perhaps the most poignant moment for me in all of this was when my son, a young adult just a few days away from starting his own law school studies, felt the need to defend me on Above the Law when a commenter criticized me for having graduated from a non-elite law school. See Jordanc620, Comment to Elie Mystal, “Law School Dean,” supra note 10. 16 One of the challenges I have grappled with in trying to distill lessons that will be of some use to other deans is the relatively unique set of circumstances we were dealing with at SLU, although perhaps every law dean is convinced that the problems that he/ she is confronting are unique, and more difficult than, those at other universities. 17 Compare Mystal, supra note 10 (“Law students who read this resignation letter should ask themselves if their law deans are going to the mattresses for them every day, or if the deans are just rolling over and submitting to university pressures while trying to hang onto their jobs …”), with Staci Zaretsky, “University President Claims He Intended to Terminate Ex-Dean’s Appointment, Hires Personal Injury Attorney as Interim Dean,” Above the Law, August 9, 2012, 3:32 p.m., http://abovethelaw.com/2012/08/universit y-president-claims-he-intended-to-terminate-ex-deans-appointment-hires-personal-in jury-attorney-as-interim-dean/ (“Now that the dust has settled a bit, we’ve found out that Clark’s passionate letter may have been penned in one of those ‘can’t fire me, I quit’ type scenarios.”). 18 Brian Z. Tamanaha, Failing Law Schools (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2012). 19 See, e.g., Anders Walker, “Enter the Practitioner Dean,” Faculty Flow: A Blog for Associate Deans, August 12, 2012 (discussing the need to educate the practitioner interim dean on the value of scholarship); Anders Walker, “Tamanaha’s Revenge,” Faculty Flow: A Blog for Associate Deans, August 19, 2012 (invoking Brian Tamanaha’s new book, Failing Law Schools, and suggesting that the situation at SLU was “now morphing into something very different, a Tamanaha-esque audit of legal education in its current state, including questions about tuition, faculty resources, and the merits of scholarship”); Brian Tamanaha, “I’m the Villain,” Balkanization, August 20, 2012, 9:49 AM, http://balkin.blogspot.com/2012/08/im-villain.html (expressing his sympathy for the SLU Law faculty and distancing himself and his book’s thesis from the events at SLU); Walker, “Tamanaha’s Revenge,” supra (reiterating that Tamanaha’s book would be read and potentially used by “by university presidents, trustees, and others eager to cut cost, strip faculty resources, and stick it to law professors”); Marcia McCormick, “Job Security, Law School, and the Bigger Picture,” Workplace Prof Blog, August 14, 2012, https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2012/08/job-secu rity-the-changing-face-of-legal-education-and-the-bigger-picture.html (noting the extent to which the blog comments have situated the events at SLU within the ongoing critique of legal education, defending the value of legal scholarship, and calling for a deeper, more transparent discussion within the academy of “what it is a law school should be doing for students, what they need to know or have mastered by the time they leave, who else is served who wouldn’t be if we didn’t exist, and how to structure it all to serve those constituencies”). 20 See, e.g., Phil Pucillo, “The SLU Law Faculty: What Now?,” The Faculty Lounge, September 24, 2012, 10:21 AM, http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2012/09/the-slu-la

48 Annette E. Clark

21

22 23 24

25

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w-faculty-what-now.html?cid=6a00e54f871a9c8833017ee3bffa7c970d; Phil Pucillo, “The SLU Law Faculty: What Now? (Part 2),” The Faculty Lounge, September 28, 2012, 9:36 AM, http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2012/09/the-slu-law-faculty-what -now-part-2.html (asserting that the faculty has a duty to detail the relevant facts and produce a corporate judgment as to the appropriate remedy for the law school’s situation). See, e.g., SLU LAW Prof, Comment to Gerald Magliocca, “The New Interim Dean at Saint Louis University Law School,” Concurring Opinions, August 9, 2012, 6:54 p.m. (attesting to the truth of my assertions about the university’s actions and criticizing the new interim dean as unqualified to run a law school); SLU Law Prof, Comment to Pucillo, Annette Clark and the Situation at SLU, supra note 6 (asserting that the SLU Law faculty had been aware of the issues with the university for years, that they had chosen not to challenge the administration out of fear of backlash, that my public resignation, rather than motivating the faculty to act, has engendered further fear and reluctance to speak out, and that a meaningful response from the faculty is unlikely); Anon. SLU Law Prof, Comment to Pucillo, Annette Clark and the Situation at SLU, supra note 6 (stating that the SLU Law faculty have not been inactive, but that they lack consensus on whether publicly fighting with the administration would do more harm to the law school than good); Concerned SLU Law Faculty Member, Comment to ibid., September 25, 2012, 12:02 a.m. (suggesting that the faculty’s failure to speak out demonstrates “the current meaningless of tenure at Saint Louis University”). I did, however, receive a number of expressions of appreciation and support from SLU Law faculty (as well as staff, students and alumni) in-person or through notes, emails and phone calls, for which I am grateful. See supra note 4. I mean absolutely no disrespect to my former colleagues in making this claim; I count a number of the SLU Law faculty as good and hopefully lifelong friends, individuals who warmly welcomed me to the law school and to St. Louis, and who regularly expressed appreciation for the work I was doing on their and the law school’s behalf. I was in the process of preparing to consult with several leaders on the faculty, having composed a document (on file with author) outlining the questions and considerations of leaving quietly, resigning publicly, or exploring other options, when I surmised that the president and vice president for academic affairs were planning my ouster and decided that I needed to act quickly in order to preempt them. See supra note 8. The timing thus prevented the consultation with colleagues that I had been planning. While I have seen nothing in the blogs or commentaries to suggest that there are large numbers of faculty who believe I should have resigned without making my assertions public, I have certainly heard through the law school grapevine that that sentiment exists, and there are a few faculty members with whom I worked closely who have not contacted or spoken to me since my resignation. I can only surmise (perhaps incorrectly) that their silence reflects their dissatisfaction with my handling of the situation. See also Anders Walker, Comment to Pucillo, The SLU Law Faculty (Part 2), supra note 20 (stating that “[s]ome [faculty] clearly believe that Clark’s resignation was a heroic act that warrants some kind of direct action. Others support Clark’s decision to go public but remain ambivalent about what its impact has been on the school and what the best way to move forward is. Yet others find Clark’s public exit to have been ill-advised and embarrassing.”). I, for one, would have greatly benefited from knowing the full story of the prior dean’s decision to step down from the deanship before I accepted the position. At least now, when the next person accepts the permanent position, he/she will have more complete information about the history of the troubled relationship between the law school and the administration.

Postscript to a deanship 49 27 I have watched with some interest the public missteps of the interim dean who the president appointed to lead the law school after I left. Thomas Q. Keefe, an alumnus of the law school and Illinois personal injury attorney, has presented himself as what I colloquially refer to as the “anti-Dean,” someone who glories in wearing old t-shirts and shorts rather than a suit to work, whose stated plan was to retain his lucrative litigation practice while acting part-time as dean, whose work email address is ISueDocs77@ gmail.com, and who proudly described himself as being “nuttier than a fruitcake.” See Meinzer, supra note 4. Then, in response to questions about his relationship with, and independence from, the president of the university, Keefe proclaimed in another interview, with both crudeness and insensitivity, that he was “not [President] Biondi’s buttboy.” See Melissa Meinzer, “Interview with SLU Dean Tom Keefe: I’m not Biondi’s ‘Butt Boy,’” Missouri Lawyers Media, August 24, 2012 (subscription required, copy on file with author). See also Elie Mystal, “Law Dean Denies that He is Priest’s ‘Butt Boy,’” Above the Law, August 27, 2012, 11:15 AM, http://abovethelaw.com/tag/tho mas-q-keefe/. Interim Dean Keefe’s statements and actions have perhaps served to add credibility to my assertion that there are significant problems at SLU, but they also have garnered further negative press for the law school and are an embarrassment for those of us who value professionalism in legal education. 28 The blog post on The Faculty Lounge in which Phil Pucillo asserted that the SLU Law faculty had an obligation to make a public pronouncement on the events that had occurred provoked an interesting exchange in which Brian Tamanaha and Brian Leiter criticized Professor Pucillo for essentially lacking standing to make such a claim from outside the situation, while two anonymous SLU Law professors thanked him for staking out his position. See Brian Tamanaha, Comment to Pucillo, The SLU Law Faculty (Part 2), supra note 20 (“[I]t strikes me as distasteful for someone not at SLU to repeatedly raise the subject of the unfortunate events at SLU, and to assert that law professors there have a ‘duty’ to take a public stand against the administration.”); Brian Leiter, Comment to ibid., October 1, 2012, 10:03 a.m. (“Who is Phil Pucillo, and why is he writing these bizarre posts? Why is Faculty Lounge hosting them? This whole thing is an embarrassment for Mr. Pucillo and this blog.”). But see Worried SLU Law Prof, Comment to ibid., October 1, 2012, 10:21 a.m. (thanking Pucillo for raising that which cannot be raised internally due to the poisoned atmosphere and lack of leadership in the law school); Unprotected SLU Prof against changing the subject, Comment to ibid., October 1, 2012, 2:59 p.m. (welcoming Pucillo’s voice and defending those who post anonymously out of fear of retribution by the SLU administration). 29 I might identify the stoicism as Midwestern, except that many of the faculty do not originally hail from the Midwest. 30 The law school had operated very successfully before my arrival under what I would characterize as a “strong dean” model, with much of the work done through committees and approved via faculty consensus. 31 See, e.g., “St. Louis University Student Government Group Votes ‘No Confidence’ in Biondi,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 1, 2012, 5:00 a.m., http://www.stltoday. com/news/local/education/st-louis-university-student-government-group-votes-no-c onfidence-in/article_d8c82c74-1ce9-5648-b367-0c53ba73c6dc.html (describing the Student Government Association’s no confidence vote against the president based, in part, on the “culture of fear” fostered by Vice President Patankar and President Biondi). 32 As one of my former colleagues so cogently put it when the faculty was discussing whether or how to respond to the university’s unilateral decision to move the law school downtown (paraphrasing): “If we go to war with the university, all of the blood on the floor is likely to be ours.” 33 This position is difficult to dispute if one accepts the definition of “winning” as besting the central administration. 34 I am indebted to a couple of my former faculty colleagues at SLU Law who have shared with me thoughts and impressions of how the faculty has responded since my resigna-

50 Annette E. Clark 35

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tion. At the same time, I take full responsibility for the views expressed in this Essay, which are mine and no one else’s. See SLU Law Prof, Comment to Pucillo, Annette Clark and the Situation at SLU, supra note 6 (stating that the faculty who argued for a public and unified response were far outnumbered); Anon. SLU Law Prof, Comment to Pucillo, The SLU Law Faculty, supra note 20, September 24, 2012, 4:52 p.m. (asserting that, without consensus on the value of a public fight with the administration, those who want to speak out, cannot). See Anders Walker, Comment to Pucillo, The SLU Law Faculty (Part 2), supra note 20, September 28, 2012, 12:23 p.m. (“I seriously doubt a corporate, i.e. unified judgment will be reached here at SLU, mainly because our faculty remain divided over Dean Clark’s resignation.”). I also knew at the time of my public resignation that my former institution, Seattle University, would welcome me back if I wished to return. Thus, I was aware that I would not have to bear the institutional costs that flowed from my public resignation (although I have surely borne significant professional and personal costs from my affiliation with SLU). I have had no indication in my conversations with various faculty members that there is any significant doubt about my credibility or the veracity of my public statements. It is somewhat incongruous that law students and alumni have called publicly for accountability and explanations from the central administration, while the law faculty has not. See Elizabethe Holland, “St. Louis University Faculty Panel Recommends Firing of Vice President,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 26, 2012, 12:30 AM, http://www .stltoday.com/news/local/education/stlouisuniversityfacultypanelrecommendsfiring ofvicepresident/article_bbc0730d-6f48-5463-99bf-68328c4478e5.html. See Tim Barker, “St. Louis University Faculty Votes No Confidence in the Rev. Lawrence Biondi,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 31, 2012, 12:05 AM, http://www .stltoday.com/news/local/education/st-louis-university-faculty-votes-no-confidence-in -the-rev/article_fff13f3b-c8ad-5790-b919-06485a41b61a.html. The primary motivating factor behind these developments is the highly negative response from the university’s faculty to new policies proposed and pushed by the vice president that would have weakened tenure protections at the university. See ibid. See also Audrey Williams June, “Faculty-Review Proposal at Saint Louis U. Would ‘Eviscerate Tenure,’ AAUP Says,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 30, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/F aculty-Review-Proposal-at/134022/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en. I take some solace in the fact that while my public resignation did not directly prompt the noconfidence votes, it added to a constellation of factors, most of them related to the lack of genuine shared governance, that resulted in the Faculty Senate taking affirmative action against the central administration. Interestingly, it was my staff that I worried about the most. Staff have far less job security than faculty, they have virtually no say in what happens, and yet they are the ones who are expected to accommodate themselves to the demands and expectations of new leadership. In the days following my resignation, “my” staff exhibited the professionalism and competence that I had so come to value in the year I worked with them, and they did a masterful job of keeping the law school going through this crisis. It is not quite accurate to say that I did not have the work of a dean to do. In the tumult of the last month prior to my resignation, I had not been able to complete the annual review letters for each of my faculty members. And so my final act, completed after my resignation, was to say goodbye to my faculty by writing this last set of letters, summarizing their accomplishments and thanking them for their service to the institution. And, if I might be permitted one small reflection on my own future, I hope that my career will not have been defined by the actions of central administrators who failed in their obligation to uphold a sacred trust, that of stewarding an institution of higher learning for the benefit of its students and graduates.

4

Unmasking administrative evil in academia Robert A. Cropf 1 and Kathryn E. Kuhn

An important development in the recent public administration literature, particularly that which is concerned with administrative ethics, has been a focus on identifying (“unmasking”) and preventing or redressing occurrences of administrative evil.2 As the authors responsible for inventing the concept, Guy Adams and Danny Balfour point out, “Administrative evil is regrettably a recurring aspect of public policy and administration in the modern era.”3 This chapter uses the administrative evil construct to examine challenges facing higher education. This chapter consists of three sections. The first section examines the theory of administrative evil and the conditions of bureaucratic society that give rise to it. Section two deals with the type of administrative evil which occurs in contemporary academic life, namely passive administrative evil. Finally, the third section offers some recommendations for avoiding or combatting administrative evil based on recent research in the area.

Unmasking evil in an administrative setting Definitions of “evil” vary from society to society and from group to group. A common definition of evil would include such attributes as the intentional infliction of pain and suffering, either physical or psychological, on another human being. It can be perpetrated by individuals, by organizations, and by nation states, among others. It can take the form of masked administrative evil, in which people participate in acts of evil while thinking they are only performing their organizational roles.4 Evil can be characterized as a pattern of domination and submission relationships, within which dignity and rights are not respected. In Adams and Balfour’s groundbreaking book, Unmasking Administrative Evil, they make the assertion that evil behavior results either in the physical destruction or harm of human beings or in robbing them of their humanity.5 Murder is clearly an act of evil but, as Adams and Balfour make clear, so is depriving individuals of their dignity. For the most part, use of the term “evil” has been largely restricted to philosophy and theology, but Adams and Balfour make the case that the term should be employed in discussing administrative ethics, particularly because the conditions existing within contemporary organizations create a unique opportunity for administrative evil to take root and thrive without the direct knowledge

52 Robert A. Cropf and Kathryn E. Kuhn of the participants. In other words, evil in a contemporary organizational context is “masked,” and therefore difficult to recognize – unlike intentional evil which is “unmasked” and readily recognized because it is out in the open. What makes masked administrative evil possible is the culture of technical rationality that characterizes modern organizations. Americans have tended to view evil as an individual responsibility and to ignore the organizational and cultural components of committing evil acts. Organizational diffusion of responsibility, for example, prevents people from recognizing the full consequences of their actions.6 Organizations may encourage evil by rewarding only rationality, regardless of the consequences. The rest of human existence, therefore, becomes detached from the organization through the over-emphasis on a particular type of rationality, one that prioritizes efficiency and the bottom line over all else. Administrators become detached from their official roles and, more importantly, from the people they serve. This can lead to moral inversion, in which participants in evil perceive their actions as being good by serving the interests of the organization. Once rationality, defined as organizational efficiency, became the dominant value for modern society, Eric Voegelin argues that it delegitimizes all other values.7 Human existence is thus narrowed to pragmatic utilitarianism. Administrators can now manipulate organization members by satisfying individuals “in accordance with the rewards or punishments held out by the structure of society in which they operate” and ethical considerations are transferred from the individual to the organization, which is to say they become of secondary importance.8 Richard Ghere uses four models to explain the existence of evil in administrative agencies, though these are not always administrative evil as defined by Adams and Balfour.9 Model 1 postulates a conventional, legalistic administrator in a public policy environment where rationality is used to solve public problems. Under Model 1, bureaucrats are rendered morally insensitive by technical rationality and enact public policy that is driven by a societal culture of rationality and, in the process, become capable of committing administrative evil. Model 2 postulates an administrator attempting to cope with cognitive dissonance by using rationality as an escape route that provides some baseline standard of objective truth. Under Model 2, administrators become complicit in evil by submitting themselves to the creation of rational policy to quell their concerns that their actions may not represent values of fairness, representation, and compassion. Model 3 postulates a conventional, legalistic administrator within a policy context of dominant political actors. Under Model 3, the administrator uses the standard of rationality as a shield against the capricious behavior of policy makers or to promote their preferred public policy as power holders themselves. Public policy can be both rational and good or evil under this model. Model 4 postulates a coping administrator in the center of a public discourse that pulls her in multiple directions of different power holders. Under Model 4, administrators use rationality to create standard procedures that allow them to act while being pulled in multiple directions. Model 4, in effect, removes the human element from the administrative decision-making process. The four models convey the different means by which

Unmasking administrative evil in academia 53 technical rationality overriding all other values in modern organizations turns members into amoral actors who, under certain conditions, can become participants in administrative evil. Criticism of the Concept of Administrative Evil. The concept of administrative evil is not without some detractors, however. This should not be surprising considering the reluctance of many social scientists to accept the “evil” designation as legitimate.10 Melvin Dubnick, for example, argues that the concept is “rhetorical,” one that may not be credible in a scholarly sense.11 Dubnick’s main point is that Adams and Balfour’s introduction of critical theory into public administration theory is a mistake because critical theory does not provide a rigorous enough methodology to support their argument. Dubnick uses the example of layoffs in a private organization to point out that evil should be viewed not as a “historical force” as Adams and Balfour would have it but as more of a “social-cultural perception.” Thus, administrators who downsize do not actually enjoy inflicting pain on other human beings. Rather, “lean” organizations are considered healthy and more efficient, both things considered to be good in a contemporary organization. Adams and Belfour, in contrast, point out that legal does not always equal good, and that legal and organizational rules often supplant human consciousness in organizations. Dubnick points out the potential difficulties one has in applying the concept to actual organizations in a meaningful way. Thus, even if credible evidence of harmful decisions can be found, what else needs to be present in order to justify the imputation of the morally charged term “evil” to the decision? The literature is clear that moral inversion is the key ingredient. That is, when decision makers disregard moral or ethical concerns when they come into conflict with organizational prerogatives and objectives, this will result in masking administrative evil. The utility of the administrative evil theory is that it attributes this abduction of moral values in modern organizations to an over- emphasis on technical rationality, which installs efficiency as the highest value in administration; that can lead, in some cases, to the treatment of human beings as merely means to an end. Thus, modern large organizations operate under conditions that make administrative evil possible but other variables, such as toxic leadership style, must be present in order to activate them. As we explore below, the path of administrative evil is often the one of least resistance for academic administrators. In the end, the main challenge in applying the construct of administrative evil in an academic setting is that “evil” may seem to be too strong a word for the decisions under investigation. When corporations hide safety flaws in airplanes or churches protect sexual predators, there is likely to be less debate over the use of the word “evil” than when universities close departments or downsize staff. Even so, the construct is useful insofar as it helps us understand how university administrators cause real harm to humans without recognizing their agency in doing so. It also suggests ways faculty members can fight these tendencies of the “corporatized” university, committed as it is to rationality, measurement, and the bottom line.

54 Robert A. Cropf and Kathryn E. Kuhn

Passive administrative evil in academe While it is common to assign organizational or individual agency to acts of evil, Eugenie Samier points out that administrative evil occurs in settings in which passivity on the part of organization members allows the evil to remain masked.12 Samier refers to instances where, as a response to administrative domination or bullying, other administrators remain passive and so participated in the evil that was perpetrated. So, for instance, subordinates might fail to rein in a bully or a sexual predator for fear either of becoming the next target or losing their own positions. Many administrators who enter their field with good intentions slowly over time become morally mute – focused entirely on remaining neutral and ignoring moral agency – and thereby lose their sense of moral agency. Samier argues that most administrative evil is in fact passive evil, in which participants perceive administrative evil and yet do nothing to prevent or stop it. The nature of passive evil is that wrongdoers are not the main problem when administrative evil occurs; rather, it is the universal toleration of them inside the organization that undermines its moral integrity. Not preventing, relieving, or minimizing harm thus becomes an evil in itself. Administrative evil is not possible without the complicity of others; an authoritarian CEO or university president cannot act alone. Higher education provides instances of administrative complicity in evil, albeit ones that do not typically attract a great deal of public attention. A dean or provost can wield abusive power through the bureaucracy much as any other high-level administrator in corporations or government. Three negative attributes of contemporary universities contribute to the abduction of moral responsibility in the face of administrative evil: over reliance on organizational discipline and rule-governed practices, and dehumanization through over-quantification. The most prominent symptom of moral abduction is utilitarian rationality, within which human experience is reduced to the abstraction of mathematics. People have always been able to delude themselves regarding evil acts, but technical rationality encourages administrative evil by making value-free claims, diffusing responsibility from the individual to the group, and using analysis to make evil seem necessary for desired outcomes.13 Utilitarian reasoning, or what Max Weber identified as formal rationality dominates decision-making by administrators, who are themselves answerable to board members or state legislators for whom such rationality is prized. Formal rationality focuses entirely on achieving the most efficient means to a given end. As it gains dominance, the end itself becomes displaced, distorted, or discarded altogether. Among the hallmarks of formal rationality, or utilitarian rationality, are an emphasis on universalistic criteria, impersonality, standardization, and hierarchy. These are translated into the use of numerical measures of performance at all levels of higher education, an efficient, but not effective way of evaluating students, staff, faculty, and academic programs and schools. Examples of over-quantification and utilitarian rationality are endemic in the contemporary, “corporate” university. Elaborate metrics are devised to justify closing programs, denying tenure and promotion, and even raising teaching loads

Unmasking administrative evil in academia 55 for some faculty. The bottom line and overly simplistic measures of productivity outweigh academic quality in university decision-making, and activities that do not themselves bring in revenue, whether that revenue is in the form of grants or in the form of student tuition, are essentially seen as costs rather benefits to the university. In the case of SLU, for example, one of the four faculty evaluation proposals established a complicated, and, as mathematicians discovered, fundamentally flawed set of measures against which academic programs were compared. Those programs that scored below the threshold could be, and in at least one case, were faced with elimination. Some faculty members pointed out that, were those metrics applied to all schools and programs at the university, the entire medical school could have been closed down. These extraordinary measures are by no means the sole examples of technocratic, utilitarian reasoning. It is common practice, for example, to measure faculty teaching performance using the quantitative measures found on standardized student evaluations. In search of a seemingly universalistic and efficient way of measuring something that is arguably not easily standardized, administrators draw upon a few of the questions, find the mean answer, and then draw larger conclusions about a faculty member’s teaching effectiveness. Even the use of means is, as most academics realize, mathematically unsound, as student evaluations tend to rely on ordinal level measurement. Administrators frequently employ standardized, time-efficient, and seemingly fair standards in evaluating faculty research productivity and impact as well. At one large state university graduate students were hired to count the number of citations each professor had received in the prior five years. The reasoning behind this strategy was that such a method was an objective and time-saving way of determining the quality of the research. At another such university a graduate dean pulled a ruler from his desk and measured the number of column inches of the citations for individual faculty members. Administrators chose not to take into consideration such things as researcher’s citing their own work and whether the citations in question were laudatory or highly critical. More importantly, they do not recognize that the quality of research, like the quality of teaching, cannot be captured by one measure. More recently, college administrators in both private and public universities use completion rates as a measure of faculty performance. Completion rates refer to the percentage of those students originally enrolled in a course who finish the course with a passing grade. In this system, withdrawals and failing grades lower a faculty member’s score. Students withdraw from courses for a number of reasons, however, and faculty teaching effectiveness is arguably not the most common of those reasons. The use of this sort of measure also discourages the assignment of failing grades, casting such grades as indicating the failure of the instructor rather than the failure of the student. In the parlance of those who employ such measures, the instructor has failed to deliver education efficiently. Passive evil is thus built into the bureaucratic ethos of higher education in the United States, according to Samier.14 University administration abdicates

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moral voluntarism to committee rule or upper administration fiat. In committees, individual moral agency may be compromised by deference to the general will. In other words, committee members with dissenting viewpoints may find themselves effectively silenced if the group’s consensus runs counter to their position. Similarly, mid-level administrators may be reluctant to challenge upper administration too vigorously if doing so threatens their position in the organization. This moral abdication can be rationalized by self-interest, willful ignorance, systematic ignorance or distraction, emotional detachment, fear of confronting colleagues, or submitting to a higher principle such as “the good of the organization.” Evidence is ignored and the organization is justified as having “a right to act” in any event. Those who are harmed by administrative evil and attempt to challenge it are often characterized as being overly sensitive or emotional. Colleagues may take on the pain of others in private to assuage their conscience but will not typically act publicly to denounce the wrongs. Senior administrators find pawns (people to manipulate), patrons (informal leaders who defend the administrator), and patsies (who create cultures of secrecy and spread disinformation) to create evil. Onlookers mind their own business, feel it is not their place to intervene, or prefer not to cross a powerful individual. Subordinates of organization bullies tend to take on their traits. Administrators use persuasion, legitimized authority, or coercion to perform acts of administrative evil. With these techniques, members of an organization need not agree with the directives, they need only comply. Bullying is redefined as a “tough managerial style” and is thus deemed acceptable. Market ideology contributes to this by replacing faculty opinion with that of outside consultants and turning traditional organizational roles into competitive ones. Academic administrators, for instance, can use (1) excessive monitoring, (2) performance reviews, and (3) and resource distribution to effectively coerce most faculty into compliance.

Recommendations for combatting and avoiding administrative evil Administrative evil is prevalent because of universal conditions that shape modern organizations including the predominance of technical rationality and market values. Several organizational theorists, however, offer some recommendations that they argue can hinder the spread of evil. First, the theory of administrative conservatorship,15 which Kate McGovern asserts serves as a professional and ethical touchstone to defend against abuses of power.16 The notion of conservatorship characterizes the chief role of the administrator as one to uphold and protect the organization’s core mission; leaders of organizations should be unstinting in their efforts to protect the mission. This approach does not guarantee that moral inversion, bullying, sacrificing the organization’s mission in pursuit of market values, administrative acquiescence, and dehumanization through quantization will not happen. However, it does make it less likely, particularly if the entire organization’s leadership subscribes to this ethos.

Unmasking administrative evil in academia 57 Tom Barth’s examination of crisis management in the Catholic Church during the priest sex abuse scandal and its lesson for public administrators identifies four mechanisms that can help prevent the spread of evil within organizations.17 These include immediately sharing harsh truths with the public, accepting the stark realities of higher public expectations, creating appropriate systems of accountability, and fostering trust by building close community relationships. Hindering organizations from adopting these mechanisms are inappropriate organizational culture, bureaucracy, technical rationality, and goal displacement. In other words, in modern organizations the very attributes that contribute to their success, such as efficiency and market orientation, can also prove to be obstacles to transparency, accountability, and trust-building. For example, an over-emphasis on profits can skew decisionmaking in favor of activities that help the organization’s bottom line but that in the end wind up superseding all other legitimate university values and goals. Accountability structures should be established both internally and externally, with external controls taking the form of the checks and balances of legal accountability.18 All too often, professional organizations, such as universities, depend too heavily on peer accountability or the accountability proffered by boards of trustees. This, however, often leads to professional accountability deficit. Barth notes that a key source of internal accountability is including the membership in agenda setting and policy creation.19 In the context of higher education, the organization’s membership includes the faculty, staff, and students. In a university setting, strengthening shared governance mechanisms would go a long way toward reducing the deficit in professional accountability. Strong faculty governance bodies, such as senates and assemblies, serve as fora in which faculty can air grievances, question policies, and advocate for change. Because these organizations are typically at least formally recognized as legitimate, they can serve, if run well, as a means by which goals rather than means can be discussed and debated without fear of reprisal. One of the issues faculty can and should raise in governance bodies is that of institutional over-emphasis on simple, quantifiable measures of achievement, success, and productivity. When the Public Policy Studies department at SLU found itself facing elimination, its faculty fought back in a variety of ways. One of the most compelling arguments they made was that the department, its faculty, and students made considerable substantive contributions not only to scholarship but also to the greater Saint Louis community. Given the university’s stated commitment to service to others, this argument hit home. Finally, when avoidance fails, organization members can still subvert evil through opposition.20 Members can engage in active visible or open opposition, as some faculty members did at Saint Louis University. An effective strategy here is the use of publicity and the media. During the no confidence movement at SLU, law school dean Annette Clark’s resignation drew both local and national attention. While the administration sought to refute her claims, it was caught off guard by the publication of her letter of resignation and by its degree of specificity. Thus, the administration found itself having to defend its actions rather than merely announcing decisions.

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Similarly, the immediate media response to and coverage of the administration’s heavy handed response to an op-ed written by two faculty members called into question the actions, or more appropriately the lack thereof, by administrators, some of whom had signed the letter to the editor without, as at least one has admitted, reading it in full. The letter in question accused both faculty members by name of going out of their way to harm the university, questioned the veracity of the faculty members’ claims, and, more generally, their integrity. While the two faculty members had assiduously avoided mentioning any names, the response from the administration called them out directly.21 The obvious power differential involved and the tone of the letter itself prompted one of the signers to hold a special meeting at which they spoke with regret about the incident. Two faculty members being told to leave an open to the public Student Government Association after the president noticed their presence also garnered considerable publicity at the local level and word spread quickly. The story’s notoriety was in part fueled by the presence of an armed security officer, who escorted the faculty members out of the room. No sooner had one of the faculty members in question arrived at their home than a local newspaper reporter called and asked for details about the incident. As with the prior example, the use of coercive power to control and limit faculty rights to free speech and freedom of assembly can and should serve as a moral wake up call to those in administrations who are otherwise passive enablers of administrative evil. Another strategy, and one with which some people are more comfortable is to engage in active invisible subversion, privately opposing the administration while keeping quiet publicly. They can behave in a passive visible manner, that is, by abstaining from participation to avoid sharing responsibility for acts they abhor. Finally, some members will engage in passive invisible subversion, perhaps the safest form because it requires foot dragging rather than outright opposition. An issue with the last approach is that it still shows support for the organization, albeit weakly.

Conclusion The point of “masked” administrative evil is that usually no one intends to do anyone else harm or to inflict suffering. Administrative evil is typically the natural result of organizations blindly pursuing their objectives in a technical rational manner according to the dictates of the marketplace. In some cases, the leadership of an organization can hijack the structures and procedures of bureaucracy with the intent to do harm and discover that the organization has been primed to accomplish this. Intentional or not, administrative evil’s effects on the organization, its members, and stakeholders are often pernicious and can metastasize over time. The successful outcome of the efforts at Saint Louis University to force the president to resign provides a glimmer of hope that, as some organization theorists argue, administrative evil can be challenged and overcome. It is better, however, to heed the advice of the same theorists to create structures and mechanisms that will prevent evil from taking root in the first place.

Unmasking administrative evil in academia 59

Notes 1 Robert Cropf would like to thank Mark Benton, who provided invaluable research assistance in early stages of the project. 2 Guy B. Adams, “The Problem of Administrative Evil in a Culture of Technical Rationality,” Public Integrity 13, no. 3 (2011b): 275–286; Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour, “Expiating Evil: Reflections on the Difficulties of Cultural, Organizational and Individual Reparation,” Public Administration 86, no. 4 (2008): 881–893; Guy B. Adams, Danny L. Balfour and George E. Reed, “Abu Ghraib, Administrative Evil, and Moral Inversion: The Value of ‘Putting Cruelty First’,” Public Administration Review 66, no. 5 (2006): 680. 3 Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour, “Public Service Ethics and Administrative Evil: Prospects and Problems”, in Ethics in Public Management, ed. H. George Frederickson and Richard K. Ghere (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), 115. 4 Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour, Unmasking Administrative Evil, 4th ed. (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2015). 5 Ibid. 6 Adams, “Problem of Administrative Evil.” 7 Gerson Moreno-Riaño, “The Etiology of Administrative Evil: Eric Voegelin and the Unconsciousness of Modernity,” American Review of Public Administration 31, no. 3 (2001): 296. 8 Ibid. 9 Richard K. Ghere, “Watching the Borders of Administrative Evil: Human Volition and Policy Intention,” American Review of Public Administration 36, no. 4 (2006): 419– 436. 10 Guy B. Adams, “Reply to Professor Koven,” Public Integrity 14, no. 1 (2011a). 11 Melvin J. Dubnick, “Spirited Dialogue: The Case for Administrative Evil: A Critique,” Public Administration Review 60, no. 5 (2000). 12 Eugenie Samier, “The Problem of Passive Evil in Educational Administration: Moral Implications of Doing Nothing,” International Studies in Educational Administration 36, no. 1 (2008): 2–21. 13 Adams and Balfour, “Expiating Evil.” 14 Samier, “The Problem of Passive Evil.” 15 Larry D. Terry, “Administrative Leadership, Neo-Managerialism, and the New Public Management,” Public Administration Review 58, no. 3 (1998). 16 Kate McGovern, “The Promise of Administrative Conservatorship vs. the Threat of Administrative Evil in the Mission of Public Service,” Public Integrity 14, no. 1 (2011): 51–66. 17 Tom Barth, “Crisis Management in the Catholic Church: Lessons for Public Administrators,” Public Administration Review 70, no. 5 (2010). 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Samier, “The Problem of Passive Evil.” 21 Philip Alderson, Ken Fleischmann, Jay Goff, Ellen Harshman, David Heimburger, and Gary Whitworth, “Faculty Members Misrepresent the Work of SLU Administration,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 7, 2013, https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/mailbag/ faculty-members-misrepresent-the-work-of-slu-administration/article_a8aba6a4-795c -5bf4-9168-5014ce4cefe0.html (accessed February 15, 2020).

Part II

Protest

5

The power of the powerless faculty member Ellen Carnaghan1

Citizens in autocratic regimes rarely protest. The costs are potentially too high, and the chance of changing a regime that is organized to ignore popular input usually seems too low. Instead, citizens of these regimes tend to be apathetic and apolitical, tending to their private concerns and ignoring the public sphere as much as possible.2 While the massive popular demonstrations that brought down communism or characterized the Arab Spring capture the public imagination, usually citizens in autocratic regimes sit around the kitchen table and complain, safely inside their homes. Outwardly, they conform to the expectations of the regime and pretend to accept the stories it tells. In his famous essay on resistance in communist regimes, “The Power of the Powerless,” Vaclav Havel noted, “Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”3 Yet, on rare occasions, inaction changes to action. People who were formerly quiet about their discontent become vocal and act in ways that put themselves at risk. Our understanding of the microfoundations of this change is imperfect. Many theories of social movements focus on the larger social and structural issues that make movements more or less likely4 and necessarily pay less attention to the multitude of individual choices that undergird larger social processes. Rational-actor approaches assume that movement participants act as a consequence of self-interested calculations,5 but strictly rational decisions may not motivate an individual citizen to act against a powerful regime. Social movement scholars have shown that membership in social networks is a significant contributor to activism,6 but the way social networks work is less clearly understood, in part because it is not always possible to collect data from activists just at the point when they start to act, especially activists operating in higher-risk situations. Although the dangers facing faculty members who object to university policies or aspire to unseat university personnel are much less fearsome than the ones facing citizens of autocracies, the dynamic of inaction is often similar. The fear of losing of a job, resources for one's department, or good standing with

64 Ellen Carnaghan the administration deters action, and usual avenues of faculty governance rarely inspire the confidence that real change is possible.7 In 2012 and 2013, however, some Saint Louis University (SLU) faculty did manage to work together to organize a series of no-confidence votes and other forms of pressure against an administration perceived as dismissive of faculty, academic freedom, and shared governance and more concerned about the “business” of higher education than the academic enterprise. This movement resulted in the “resignation” of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the abrupt “retirement” of a long-serving university president, and changes in the mode of operation of university trustees. The hyper-articulateness of the average faculty member makes this an excellent case to figure out why activists act. This chapter addresses two puzzles, examining why and how SLU faculty managed to act together in a no-confidence movement after years of inaction and why some people chose to be highly active. My focus is on activists at SLU and the mechanisms by which they became active, not directly on what made this particular movement successful. The logic of this focus is that, once people are mobilized, they may succeed or not depending in part on how their opponents proceed, but if they are not mobilized, they are unlikely to achieve their goals. The reasons for successful mobilization, then, are key to understanding faculty activism. I use evidence from 39 intensive interviews with SLU faculty members who were active in various ways in the no-confidence movement. Intensive interviews have the advantage of allowing respondents to reflect at length on their own motivations. This study has both practical and theoretical significance. On a practical level, faculty at other institutions may well find themselves in similar circumstance. The Wall Street Journal reported that faculty no-confidence votes in university and college presidents were six times as frequent in the period between 2013 and 2017 as between 2000 and 2004.8 SLU’s crisis was precipitated by proposals that would have eliminated tenure, weakened chairs and deans, and given upper-level administrators more power to fire faculty, consistent with a type of organization often labeled “corporate.” The many challenges facing higher education are likely to mean that traditional structures and faculty prerogatives will come under attack in many universities.9 The story of faculty resistance at SLU, then, is important as a practical model for others in similar circumstances. Beyond serving as a lesson for others, studying the roots of faculty activism at SLU can contribute to our understanding of the microfoundations of protest in episodes of high-risk contention. Due to my unique access to a group of talkative activists, I am able to explore in unusual depth how social networks and other factors impact individual decisions. Based on these interviews, I am able to show that cost-benefit calculations explain inaction better than they explain activism, and that very active participants often saw opportunities for change that less active people did not. I also show that diffuse personal networks and preexisting participation in governance structures played a key role in fueling activism – but also ultimately limited the number of activist faculty.

The power of the powerless faculty member 65 I start this chapter with a brief review of how previous research might help us understand the particular conditions of faculty protest. I then present empirical findings from the interviews with SLU activists, before concluding with a discussion of how the nature of mobilization at SLU affected the overall struggle, its successes, and its limitations.

Protest in autocratic regimes and universities Faculty protest occurs under risky enough conditions to make it useful to pull together two bodies of literature – on social movements and protest in autocratic regimes. Certainly, universities are different from autocratic regimes in very fundamental ways. University administrators do not shoot people or put them in jail. Faculty whose protests fail have the option of finding work elsewhere. Still, unlike the contexts often studied by social movement research, universities are not governed in accordance with democratic principles. While faculty members have some opportunities to consult on administrative decisions, under normal conditions their governance bodies do not have the power to stop decisions; effective power is fairly concentrated and may be growing more so;10 and the costs of annoying the boss can be substantial. Havel described a greengrocer, who put up a sign that read “Workers of the world, unite!” as an indicator of his willingness to comply with the regime, despite not caring much about the success of the global proletariat.11 Similarly, many faculty members recognize the benefits of appearing obedient even in circumstances where they do not agree. Given this tendency, I am interested in better understanding why and when some faculty members act in protest. Rational choice theory. One way to approach this question is through rational choice theory: actors calculate the costs and benefits of action and decide what they will do. The main problem with rational choice theory is that, if rationality is construed too narrowly, it can be difficult to explain action under conditions in which accomplishments are public goods shared by everyone. As Mancur Olson and others have pointed out, the great problem for collective action is the free rider.12 Any rational actor will prefer that others act in his or her place as long as the benefits of action will be provided to everyone, whether they acted or not. As a result, collective action is difficult and rare. Olson observed that the free rider problem is less of a deterrent to action in small groups, because individuals in small groups may receive specific benefits only if they are members or may be subject to painful sanctions from the group if they fail to meet their responsibilities. Scholars have used Olson’s insights to explain everything from peasant behavior in revolutions13 to the collapse of communist regimes.14 Simple rational-actor models, though, do not fully explain protest in autocratic regimes. In autocratic regimes, at least up until the point when they are collapsing, the risks involved in protest are almost always high enough to deter action. In her study of opposition groups in Egypt, Carrie Wickham noted, “When the risks of opposition activism are high and the prospects of positive change are, at best, remote, the most ‘rational’ response of the individual is a retreat into

66 Ellen Carnaghan self-preserving silence.”15 Nonetheless, even in circumstances where self-interest is insufficient to motivate action, protest occurs.16 Timur Kuran described a process by which rational people might join protests as more people joined and governments did not respond with force, bringing the costs of acting down.17 But that approach does not explain the behavior of the first reckless few to stick out their necks. For faculty – not facing a risk of death or arrest – the costs of action are higher than in democratic polities but considerably lower than in autocratic regimes. The benefits – a changed regime – are decidedly public goods. I anticipate, then, that rational calculations of costs and benefits are more likely to lead to inaction than action, and that many activist faculty do not engage in a dispassionate evaluation of costs and benefits. To the degree that activist faculty do weigh costs and benefits, activist faculty are likely to be concentrated among those who perceive lower costs of action – because they have tenure or are in otherwise secure positions. While it is true that prospective benefits are public goods shared by the active and inactive alike, the costs of failing to act is a public “bad,” that all will suffer. I argue that activists are likely to calculate the cost of action against the cost of inaction, acting in circumstances when inaction also carries high costs. Potential costs in these circumstances cannot be calculated in any readily accessed metric, so much will depend on individual circumstances and perceptions of value. The difficulty of predicting how individuals will assess costs that are difficult to measure means rational choice theory is likely to provide less than a full explanation for faculty behavior. Political process model. The political process model provides a framework that facilitates the examination of motivations broader than narrow self-interest.18 This model assumes that protest responds to the structure of opportunities that would-be activists face, with more protest occurring where the opportunities are greater, unless the political system is so open that protest is not necessary at all.19 The sorts of opportunities that matter are openings in political institutions that provide new types of access, allies within the regime or among powerful elites, resources available to protesters that facilitate mobilization, and the like. For example, Joshua Tucker argues that citizens’ calculus of costs and benefits changes in the case of electoral fraud.20 Electoral fraud can decrease the expected costs of protests – since many people are likely to protest at the same time – and increase the likelihood of success – since the chance for regime change is temporarily higher. Faced with this kind of opportunity, citizens will be more likely to protest. Scholars in this tradition also focus on understanding how people make sense of the opportunities around them and construct the mental frameworks and identities that enable action.21 People may sense opportunities that are not really there, or miss the ones that are. This approach provides many insights into why social movements occur when and where they do. For present purposes, it can help us understand why faculty protest at one moment and not another. Faculty, for instance, are more likely to protest if they perceive a point of weakness in the administration or during a pivotal crisis in which most faculty end up on the same side. In order to explain individual variation

The power of the powerless faculty member 67 in participation, we would need to take into account individual perceptions of opportunity. I would anticipate, then, that faculty who perceive greater opportunities for change are more likely to act. Those perceptions are probably very hard to predict systematically. Social network analysis. An approach that bridges these rationalist and structural perspectives focuses on the social networks in which people are embedded. This network approach is particularly suited to explaining why some people act while others do not: network ties support individual decisions to participate, especially when action is costly or dangerous.22 For instance, Reinoud Leenders and Steven Heydemann show that dense social networks were a critical feature distinguishing regions where opposition against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria first coalesced.23 “Early risers” in Syria, the people who took the first and most readily suppressed acts, were linked to each other by strong clan-based or tribal social structures, circular labor migration, cross-border linkages and a variety of activities denoted by the regime as “criminal.” Similarly, Doug McAdam showed that participation in Freedom Summer during the U.S. civil rights movement was not correlated with individual attitudes but rather with memberships in organizations, prior civil rights activism, and the strength of ties to other participants.24 Friendship ties have been shown to facilitate membership in groups as diverse as Italian left-wing terrorists,25 Colombian guerrilla groups,26 or the East German opposition to communism.27 While considerable research has accumulated to show that networks matter in mobilizing resistance, work on exactly how and why networks affect protest is often more speculative. One view is that networks help create an initial disposition toward protest by involving individuals in webs of social interactions that build and solidify identities and shape cognitive frames.28 As Florence Passy points out, social networks, “as island of meanings, shape individual perceptions that form the basis for the ultimate decision to participate.”29 For faculty, this leads to the expectation that people who have participated more actively in faculty governance structures in the past will be more likely to engage in unsanctioned faculty protest. These people are more likely to have developed necessary skills, formed a wider understanding of the university as a whole, and established a selfidentity that tends toward participation.30 More directly, networks also connect people to each other. Social networks provide “structural availability” that facilitates recruitment into activism.31 Research has shown that being asked to participate is one of the stronger predictors of participation, and membership in networks makes it more likely that people will be asked.32 There is some debate about the types of networks that most contribute to movement participation: while close and dense networks characterized by strong ties create stronger obligations, “weak ties” link larger groups of people and may bridge more closely knit groups.33 Empirical evidence shows that activists who recruit others tend to favor asking those with whom they have strong ties, but the most effective recruiters are those who themselves were recruited through a weak tie: they go on to recruit more people with whom they also have weak ties.34 Furthermore, what matters most in the effectiveness of recruitment seems to be

68 Ellen Carnaghan whether the recruit knows the recruiter or not, not whether the tie between them is strong or weak.35 Faculty are interesting in this regard because they almost by definition are connected by weak ties, by virtue of working for the same employer, and they are also embedded in a series of increasingly more closely knit groups, from governance bodies, to colleges or other units within larger universities, to departments and groups of long-term colleagues and friends. Given the risks inherent in faculty protest and the fact that recruitment is generally less successful the more that is asked of the recruit,36 it seems likely that stronger preexisting ties with group members will be more likely to encourage activism. Furthermore, later-joining activists are likely to have had previous face-to-face contact with early activists. It also seems likely that being embedded in a network would deter defections from a group and hence make it easier to sustain action over time. Drawn from this literature, then, my expectations are that faculty will undertake risky activism when they perceive that the costs of inaction outweigh the costs of action, when they perceive time-sensitive opportunities for change, when they have a deeper history of participation in faculty governance structures, and when they are embedded in reasonably close networks that contain other activists or know those activists personally. To test these expectations, I analyze new evidence from interviews with faculty activists. Interviews are an appropriate research strategy because they allow respondents to describe their perceptions of circumstances and trace reasons for their own participation.

Interviewing activists To collect information on activists’ motivations, perceptions of costs and opportunities, and decisions, I conducted face-to-face interviews with 34 SLU faculty members who were active to one degree or another in the no-confidence movement. Another five individuals completed a web-based survey, either because that mechanism allowed more anonymity or because their schedules did not permit a face-to-face discussion. All participants were given the choice to talk in person or complete the survey, and most preferred to talk. Most of the interviews were conducted in June 2014, less than a year after the abrupt retirement of SLU’s president. Participants were solicited from three sources: (1) an email list of members of three ad hoc committees – strategy, communication, and evidence – set up at the start of the conflict by the College of Arts and Science Faculty Council and other faculty members who joined the list over the course of the 2012–2013 academic year; (2) the executive committee of the all-university Faculty Senate, since Senate no-confidence votes and the executive committee’s negotiations with trustees were key elements of the movement; and (3) the executive committee of the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Council. The Faculty Council was the first governance body to take votes of no confidence and was widely seen as representing the most radical voices during the no-confidence movement. The most active members of the three ad hoc committees sometimes informally referred to themselves as “the rebel alliance.” The alliance worked together closely through

The power of the powerless faculty member 69 the year, coordinating strategy, preparing evidence, running a press campaign, and organizing a variety of demonstrations and other events. The total number of people invited to participate was 53. Thirty-nine participated, for a response rate of 73.6 percent. This sample is representative of the population of activists – people who took a visible and/or sustained role in opposition to the administration – not of the SLU faculty as a whole. The most active faculty – leaders of governance bodies and the rebel alliance – are included in the sample. But the sample covers a range of levels of activism. Some people devoted considerable time to organizing resistance; some appeared on local TV broadcasts or wrote op-ed pieces and letters to the editor; some joined the committee email list only late in the process. Of the 39 respondents, 19 were highly active in the noconfidence movement, usually with leading roles on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee or the rebel alliance. Ten respondents were less active. They voted in their respective assemblies, attended public events, or signed up the rebel alliance email list, usually late in the academic year. The remaining ten respondents fell between those two groups in level of activity, taking some voluntary and possibly risky actions, like writing op-ed pieces published in the student newspaper or the local press, but avoiding more sustained participation. This range of participation is useful because it illuminates the different decisions that faculty members made as to what kind of action they would take, how much time they would devote, or how public their actions would be. The no-confidence campaign permeated SLU’s campus in 2012–2013, and it was hard for faculty members to escape a minimal level of participation. Delegates to faculty assemblies discussed the no-confidence resolutions with their constituents; faculty spoke about events with their colleagues; faculty opinions were solicited both by the administration and by the opposition. Since this is a study of activists and their reasons for acting, not a study of how the whole faculty responded in a moment of crisis, this minimal level of participation is excluded. The reasons for low levels of participation are many and rather easily understood; the challenge is in understanding higher levels of risky activism. Activists always make up a tiny proportion of the total population, at least until the final moments when it is clear the regime will collapse. SLU was no different. In order to focus on why a small number people take the risky step of opposing their boss, this study does not include faculty members who minimized their exposure to risk as much as possible. This approach is consistent with that taken in many studies that focus on activists and not the population as whole. I personally conducted all of the face-to-face interviews.37 Levels of distrust remained high enough even after the end of the no-confidence movement that it is not clear that participants would have spoken freely with someone they did not know, especially about activities that occurred behind the scenes. I served as chair of the Faculty Council strategy committee during the no-confidence movement and so was familiar with the roles my respondents had played. I relied on face-to-face, open-ended interviews for a variety of reasons. First, open-ended interviews permit time for participants to explain themselves, allowing for the expression of a more complete range of fears and motivations than might come

70 Ellen Carnaghan through in a multiple-choice survey.38 Second, open-ended interviews played to the proclivities of the research group. Research has shown that elites respond better to an interview format than to a written survey.39 Faculty members like to talk but may not muster the same enthusiasm for answering multiple-choice questions. Third, the face-to-face interviews overcame some sources of social desirability bias. After the success of the no-confidence movement, it was not unusual for faculty members to inflate their level of involvement. My presence made this inflation less likely. Participants were familiar with my involvement and no doubt recognized that I was familiar with theirs. At the same time, faceto-face interviews may have made it more likely for respondents to attribute their motives to lofty ideas rather than hard-hearted calculations of costs and benefits or to avoid talking about their fears. In order to minimize some of this potential bias, I asked neutrally worded questions and provided no reaction to answers. I also approached some more sensitive topics – like the role of fear or self-interest – through a variety of differently worded questions. Although most participants were willing to be identified by name, the SLU Institutional Review Board stipulated that names not be used. Consequently, in describing the results, I identify people only in terms of groups with which they were involved or, because it turned out to be relevant to the question of who mobilized and who did not, whether they were faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences or not. Most of the people with whom I spoke knew and, I think, trusted me. Overall, I think that made them more likely to speak freely about what in some cases had been clandestine activities. I am confident they answered my questions as honestly as they could. In the discussion that follows, my aim is to identify the patterns and extract the meanings from the body of interviews that I conducted, not from my own experience or memory. While my interpretation is no doubt colored by my own role in the movement, I rely as much as possible on the words of my respondents. In the sections ahead, I am interested in two main questions: what made it possible to sustain mobilization in 2012 when earlier efforts had fizzled, and why some individuals made the choice to act. These questions are interrelated. Consequently, the discussion below is organized according to different ways that we might understand the sources of mobilization. I focus first on how my colleagues explained their own level of participation and then move to how (or if) they measured potential costs and benefits, their perception of the potential for meaningful change at the point the no-confidence movement started, their past work in shared governance structures at SLU, and the role of network membership. The next section begins with how respondents understood their own choices regarding participation in the movement.

Why did faculty get involved? How activists see it After some straightforward questions about participation in faculty governance prior to the no-confidence movement, I asked respondents how they became involved in the no-confidence movement. These responses are interesting because

The power of the powerless faculty member 71 they show how participants understood their own choices even if, as is likely, they did not articulate all the factors that influenced them. About a third of my sample, as one put it, was “born into” the conflict: these people held leadership roles in faculty governance bodies at the time the faculty evaluation proposals were put forward and had little choice but to become engaged. Overall, eight respondents were on the Senate at the start of the 2012–2013 academic year, with four of them on the Senate executive committee; 13 were on the Faculty Council, with seven of them on the Council’s executive committee. It is most interesting, therefore, to examine the people who chose to become active in the three Faculty Council committees, since they easily could have made a different choice. Many of those who voluntarily joined the committees articulated that choice as a principled response to the administration’s actions. The most immediate precipitating action was the August 2012 proposal to change how faculty would be evaluated and tenured, but respondents cited earlier actions as well, in particular what seemed like an increasing concentration of power in the office of the president and a variety of arbitrary interventions in academic life. One of the original members of the Council committees said, “I’ll never forget, seeing the memo or whatever it was on the destruction of tenure and literally walking out of this building saying, ‘I feel sick. I feel sick. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen here. I cannot be a part of this. I have to do whatever I can’” (Interview 4). Other activists focused on the importance of defending academic freedom or of responding to what seemed like the administration’s contempt for faculty. Some presented their actions in more direct terms: the administration was hurting the university, and it was the job of the faculty to stop them. Many activists perceived their choice to participate as a moral choice in a situation that demanded action. Indeed, one leader said he felt called by God to take a role in faculty governance. Another said, “You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I tried to stop this,’ because this was going to be devastating to everybody” (Interview 31). People who joined later in the academic year responded to the ways earlier activists had framed the fight. One said, “The fact that it was framed in moral terms by some of my colleagues really did make it hard for me to resist in a lot of ways. I felt like I believe this language. I believe the university has an obligation to behave in a moral manner. I believe it’s acting immorally, and I have a responsibility” (Interview 23). A member of the Jesuit order said, “Once I saw the commitment of my lay colleagues, I as a Jesuit knew that I had no choice but to support them and to act in accord with my own conscience. For me, it was primarily a moral rather than a practical issue: I believed and continue to believe that the president's attitudes and initiatives in general ran and continue to run counter to both the mission of the university and to the most fundamental principles of Christianity” (Interview 34). Though my respondents were reluctant to express it, it is clear that some felt what distinguished activists from those who were less active was a differential commitment to behaving morally or taking on an obvious responsibility. One respondent said, “People who saw the world through more of a social justice lens were more active in the no-confidence movement, whether publicly or privately,

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were just more active, more engaged, following it, forming an opinion about it, than people who had more of a transactional approach to the world, who just thought, ‘what can I get out of this?’” (Interview 1). But this interpretation does not fit with how less active people understood their own behavior. Many of those who were not very active understood the battle as one between right and wrong, and saw themselves as standing with the side of right. One member of the email list who showed up at some demonstrations but neither participated in the list’s discussions nor took any other role, said about the faculty evaluation proposals, “It was really outrageous. It just undermined everything that we had been told, everything that our contract relied on, the whole structure of the academic world, basically” (Interview 33). Evidence indicates that most of the faculty shared the views of the no-confidence activists. The no-confidence votes all passed by overwhelming margins. A survey conducted by the SLU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in April 2013 showed that 73 percent of those who responded thought it was time for Saint Louis University to choose a new president.40 Later in May, the results of an official university survey also showed high levels of dissatisfaction.41 If most people negatively evaluated the administration’s behavior, but only some reacted in a sustained way, then something beyond thinking the administration was wrong must explain their choice.

Costs and benefits The rational choice literature tells us to examine how respondents calculate the costs and benefits of acting. Since the main potential benefit in this case – a new president, hopefully with changed priorities – would be widely shared if achieved at all, and since there were not many side benefits also at stake, theory predicts that where we are likely to see differences among participants and non-participants is in terms of perceived costs. There is some evidence to back up this claim. To set the stage, my respondents thought there were real costs to activism. Most obviously, activism takes time, energy, and mental concentration; it is a clear distraction from a standard path to professional success. If conditions were to get so bad that faculty members needed to jump ship, then the most reasonable course of action would be to build up one’s research profile. At SLU, there was also widespread fear that the university administration would find ways to punish activists. After all, university administrators control many of the resources that faculty need to do their work. Past critics of the administration told stories about how they had been removed from administrative positions, locked out of their labs, denied research support, or in at least one case sued by the university. One activist said, “My impression is that there was a deeply conditioned ethos at the university that, if you made any sort of public stand that was opposed to the president, you would pay” (Interview 28). A more newly arrived faculty member observed, “For people who may have been at Saint Louis University for a long time, there was a feeling that, though things weren’t good, you couldn’t really change them and sticking your head above the

The power of the powerless faculty member 73 parapet wasn’t going to do you any good on a personal level” (Interview 10). One of the less active respondents said that, early in the no-confidence year, she thought to herself, “I’m working in a place where you want to cut letters out of the newspaper to write your opinion about something and wear a mask when you slide it under their door. How has this happened?” (Interview 30). Faculty referred to a “climate of fear” that made them afraid to voice real opinions or criticize those above them. Inadvertently, this culture of fear was reinforced by senior faculty members who discouraged untenured faculty from getting visibly involved in the movement. One untenured activist remarked, “If somebody comes in here into a work environment and is being told by the administration, ‘Watch it, or we’ll get you,’ and is being told, ‘Watch it, they’ll get you,” by people who are their friends and their allies and want their careers to thrive, I think that that probably creates a diffuse atmosphere of fear that’s difficult for people to overcome” (Interview 13). This respondent also thought the national tendency of replacing tenure-track lines with adjunct faculty left people more risk averse than they might otherwise be. In this kind of climate, it is not surprising that most of the people in my sample had tenure. Of the 39 people I interviewed, 32 had tenure at the start of the 2012– 2013 academic year. Since having tenure reduced the likelihood of losing their jobs, many of them felt an obligation to speak out for those who lacked that protection. Variations in tenure rates also seem to go some distance in explaining variation in activism among schools. At SLU, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Medical School have the highest proportions of tenured faculty, and Arts and Sciences faculty were at the forefront of resistance. The fact that the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, a Jesuit, had made highly visible comments extolling the nobility of the struggle early in the conflict further lowered potential costs for faculty in that college. Many of the professional schools, where large proportions of faculty are not on a tenure-track, remained reasonably quiet throughout the no-confidence year. The Medical School was represented by two highly visible activists: both the president and president-elect of the Faculty Senate. Beyond those two, Medical School faculty were not well-represented, despite the fact that they were more likely to be tenured and probably would have been able to move to other jobs relatively easily. Of the 53 people in the population of activists in this study, 75 percent were from the College of Arts and Sciences; 25 percent were from SLU’s professional schools (Law, Medicine, Business, Public Service, Nursing, and Allied Health). Of the Arts and Sciences faculty, over half were from the humanities disciplines.42 The demands of research in the various disciplines seem to explain some of this variation. Medical School faculty and natural scientists must raise outside funding to keep their labs going. For them, the cost of a delayed grant application was prohibitively high. One social scientist remarked, “I don’t feel vulnerable. I don’t need a lot of money. I don’t have to have equipment or anything else. I don’t know how much [the administration] can do to me. But other people, [the administration] really can take their livelihood if you’ve got a lab and you’re obligated by contract to raise a lot of money” (Interview 2). It seems

74 Ellen Carnaghan that activists decided to act buoyed by the calculation that the personal and professional cost to them was not insurmountable. But that is not so say that all tenured faculty who were not dependent on external funding for their research were active in the no-confidence movement. Many people for whom the cost of action was not overwhelming did not become involved in the no-confidence movement. While a lack of tenure and the insecurity of research funding go a long way to explain low levels of activity, relative security alone was not enough to stimulate activism. It does seem that some of the very active respondents calculated costs and benefits in a way that led them to conclude that the costs of inaction were simply too high: the administration was proposing such fundamental changes to their conditions of work that their jobs were no longer worth protecting. One activist, said, “I think a lot of people must have felt the way I did, that my livelihood was at stake at the most profound and deepest level, that I couldn’t be an academic in an institution that cared so little about the integrity of the university, that this university would cease to be a university if their corrupt, small-minded, wrongheaded vision of what this place was supposed to be was allowed to succeed.” She was not going to let what she called a couple of “vindictive twits” wreck the academic career she had worked so hard to achieve. In any case, she continued, “I just didn’t think the risks were that great. I didn’t think anyone would stand me up against a wall and shoot me” (Interview 4). Others were more concerned with how they would feel about themselves if they did not act or the messages their failure to act would send to students. One said, “I wouldn’t have been able to stand up and look people in the eye if I’d stayed on the sidelines and said, ‘well, you go!’” (Interview 32). Another said, “There is something very costly about allowing yourself to be paralyzed by fear and choosing to not tell what you understand to be the truth” (Interview 18). A moderately active list member who joined in the spring said, “I guess I also thought I had watched my other colleagues be so brave in the fall before there was even a sense that any progress had been made that I felt like to hold back out of fear of retribution would be more cowardly than I wanted to be” (Interview 23). One of the untenured activists felt obligated to act because, as a graduate student labor organizer, he had encouraged others “who were vulnerable to do something that put them in danger” (Interview 13). Now it was his turn. Other activists thought their own positions – as senior professors with strong research profiles or people in leading roles in faculty governance organizations – protected them and increased their responsibility to speak for others. Some noted that, given their areas of specialization, it would be easy enough for them to find new jobs. Most activists were from departments it would be hard for the university to shut down, so there would be a limit to the damage their actions might bring to others. Others noted that there was strength in numbers and some confidence that there would be people who would come to their defense if indeed the administration retaliated. Of course, once a person had taken the first critical steps toward highly visible activism, self-interest pushed strongly in the direction of continued activism so to increase the chance the movement would succeed.

The power of the powerless faculty member 75 One highly visible activist noted advice given to French revolutionaries: “If you wound the king, you’d better kill him” (Interview 39). But a significant group of the activists indicated that they did not consciously weigh costs and benefits at all. At least by their own understanding of their motivations, they acted according to their conscience or the demands of the moment. As one activist said about a decision to sign her name to a document that would go to the board of trustees, “When something has to be done, it has to be done. You do it” (Interview 14). One of the untenured activists tallied up the obvious costs and acted anyway. She said, “If you don’t exercise power that you might have, what good is it? I didn’t want to abdicate responsibility out of fear when that was sort of the whole problem” (Interview 5). One of the leaders of the no-confidence movement was not sure he had even made a conscious decision to become involved. He said, “It’s a gradual process that you find yourself being kind of led into. You start talking when you go to an academic council or what have you and gradually you find yourself more and more involved in it. So there isn’t a kind of sit down, ‘Shall I get involved? Shall I not get involved?’ I think there’s a sort of series of slopes that you find yourself traversing” (Interview 10). In July 2013, late in the no-confidence struggle, it became clear that there were real financial costs to resisting the administration: approximately 20 reasonably high profile activists – and only those 20 – saw their raises cut from what their deans had proposed. Contrary to rational choice predictions, this clear cost only increased people’s resolve. One of the people affected by the cuts said, “There was a sense in which it just reinforced that everything was right” (Interview 18). Others were happy to be part of the team that suffered retribution or, in some cases, unhappy they had been spared. One of those affected said, “I didn’t feel in the least regretful about having been involved. … I felt actually it was a good mob to be with. If you’re going to be hanged, here’s the people that you probably want to be hanged with on the morning before breakfast” (Interview 10). These were not people making rational decisions about how their self-interest would be best defended. In sum, it is likely that rational calculations of cost and benefit go a long way toward explaining why most faculty members opted for a low level of activity. Especially for people without tenure or in vulnerable programs, the potential costs were just too high. Other options – even exit from the university – were more appealing. Most activists operated from what they thought were relatively secure positions, but relative security was no guarantee of activism. Activists calculated costs of action differently than did non-activists: they looked at the costs of inaction, and they included the price of how they would feel about their own behavior. At the same time, many activists do not admit to weighing the costs of their actions to any meaningful extent. As a result, rational choice theory helps us understand the behavior of some activists and helps us understand why most people kept a low profile. But the theory’s explanations largely do not fit with how activists understood their own choices. Furthermore, rational choice theory does not, alone, help us understand why a sufficient number of people were able to act together in 2012 when they had not been so able earlier.

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Perceived opportunities for change To determine why mobilization occurs when it does, the political process approach tells us to look at structural opportunities for action. Even in the most auspicious circumstances, most people will not protest. Therefore, in order to determine why some people act and not others, it should be useful to examine perceptions of opportunities. Did activists think there were good chances of winning when they started their struggle against the administration? Many did not. Remembering back as best they could, 16 of the 39 people I interviewed said they thought at the start of the protests that there was little chance of substantial change. One of the not very active members of the sample said he had little hope that anything would improve. He continued, “Overall, I don’t really have a lot of confidence in the university, and I don’t really have a desire to waste my time. So I tend not to engage that stuff. I’ll stay away from it because it seems to me like you’re yelling and screaming and they’re not listening” (Interview 17). Activists imagined that many of their colleagues felt that change simply was not possible, and indeed that protest might just make things worse. Past experience seemed to counsel caution. One activist thought, “Some people who once had the heart for something like this had it beaten out of them” (Interview 2). In the face of pervasive pessimism and the apathy that attended it, it is notable that 14 of the respondents were reasonably confident that, at minimum, the proposals would be withdrawn and the Vice President of Academic Affairs would lose his position.43 Most of them thought the president would replace the vice president before his own position was threatened. While this number is only about a third of the sample, 10 of these 14 people were either highly or moderately active and five are people I would call leaders of the no-confidence movement. This was a small group, but it was an essential group in getting the movement started. One of these people related that, when she first read the proposals on faculty evaluation, before there was any indication of how faculty would respond, she said to herself triumphantly, “Yes!” To her, this was clearly an issue that would affect all faculty members at the same time, and the conditions for concerted action seemed ripe. Another no-confidence leader said, “I thought if we played our cards right we could do it. My sense was that [the president’s] actions had just become so egregious, that I thought he had really overplayed his hand. I also thought we could learn something from the earlier efforts” (Interview 11). One who joined a bit later said, “I keep getting this image in my head of a bunch of people trying to push over a tree, and it was the moment where, if we just got enough people, it’s going to go. As it gathered steam, it became obviously a now or never kind of moment” (Interview 15). Is it possible to determine why some people came to the conclusion that change was possible when most did not? One participant said that he recognized, “I’m a very bad calculator of these things. I’m hopelessly optimistic when I catch a vision for a cause” (Interview 28). Faculty members who had spent time in collapsing autocracies drew from those experiences. One said, “I knew what it felt like when a dictatorship was falling apart. I knew what cracks in the

The power of the powerless faculty member 77 foundation looked like, and I saw those similar kinds of cracks in the foundation of the edifice of silence at SLU. I felt there were enough parallels with crumbling governments that I had seen before to predict to myself that this was also going to crumble” (Interview 1). Here, the fact that Annette Clark, dean of SLU’s law school, had shared publicly her misgivings about the president was a key early element. A letter in support of the movement by Jesuits in the College of Arts and Sciences in October indicated significant tensions among those expected to support the president. Disciplinary expertise may have made something of a difference, with social scientists and historians of revolution and constitutionalism among those who saw the possibility of change. One social scientist commented, “People like us who study institutions are used to figuring out how they work. It’s something that we do anyway, and this is a great case study. It wasn’t foreign territory to me. I would think that for some people in some disciplines it was a major channel change for them” (Interview 32). But there were also natural scientists, theologians, and philosophers who thought success was likely. Even so, despite thinking that it was more likely than not that the faculty would fail, many people voted against administrators, spoke publicly in the press, and made themselves into easy targets for retribution. One of the leaders of the noconfidence movement said at the start of the process she put the chances of success at about 15 percent; more likely, she thought, was that we would all end up in trouble. Yet she acted. That circumstances apparently were ripe for change, even if they did not recognize it, is not enough to wholly explain the actions of many people like her. Can social networks explain more behavior than either the rational choice or political process model can?

Social networks In this section, I will provide evidence that networks contributed to mobilization in three ways. First, before the no-confidence movement began, many participants had attained useful experience and knowledge of the university through participation in other, conventional forms of faculty governance. Second, a variety of preexisting networks served as recruitment mechanisms. Third, once the movement started, its core became a new network that ensured that the movement did not fizzle out. Most respondents reported at least some prior participation in faculty governance bodies before their participation in the no-confidence movement. Twentyeight had participated on the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council or on permanent Council committees,44 with 17 of those people having served extensively or in leadership positions. Past participation with the all-university Senate was somewhat lower, with 19 respondents reporting having served previously on the Senate, 8 of them in leadership positions or for multiple terms. Only six respondents had not participated in either organ, and two of those six had spent most of their careers at schools other than SLU, where they had been active. One of the reasons less active respondents gave for not doing more was that they felt that

78 Ellen Carnaghan they did not have the right skill set. Some of these people may have felt differently had they had more experience in faculty governance. Perhaps more importantly, participation in faculty governance, especially at the college level, meant that people knew more of the other people who were becoming involved. This dynamic was much less important for members of the Senate and Council executive committees, since their roles were set by their positions, but it was critical in the three Faculty Council committees. There, most members joined either because they already knew people or because they were asked by already active members to join. For the early joiners, it was a source of reassurance that they already knew the people with whom they likely would be getting into trouble. An activist with a particularly extensive prior record of service said she knew most of the people joining the three Council committees. She said, “There was certain comfort level. You know people, you know what they do, what they think, how they work, who can do what” (Interview 2). Another early activist remarked, “It’s easier to get involved if you know some people really well who are involved, and they provide the segue into that. But if you don’t know those people, I think it’s really tough to get in without massive fear” (Interview 16). Once a small core was established, others joined because they were familiar with those people. One of the untenured activists remarked, “It was more the aggregate of all these people, some of whom I knew already and admired, and some of whom I didn’t know but had a sense of. I felt, if these people are all against it, it’s the thing to be against” (Interview 15). All the people who joined the strategy committee from outside the College of Arts and Sciences knew someone – if only as someone vouched for by a closer colleague – already working on the committee. By contrast, people who did not become more involved or who found their way in somewhat late noted that they had not known the right people at the start. One said, “Very often I feel isolated on campus. … That’s how I perceive and feel it. I know that if I had more contact with people, I would probably be a lot more involved” (Interview 33). Most of the people I interviewed did not perceive that being asked to join was critical: they saw their decision as an individual, principled one. There were exceptions. One activist from outside the College of Arts and Science concluded that her active role was apparently all the fault of a colleague she did not even know that well, who happened to ask her to do things because she was a faculty senator. She said, “If somebody asks me to do something, my default response is yes. And then I do actually do it, even if it’s not something I specifically sought” (Interview 18). A few respondents recognized that department networks played a role in their choices. People joined to help out their colleagues or, perhaps, because these were people they would need to keep looking in the face if they did not help. Departments with supportive and activist chairs produced more active members for the movement. In sum, then, in faculty activism, like in high-risk activism in autocratic regimes, personal familiarity with other activists contributed to mobilization. The familiarity did not have to be – and mostly was not – a personal friendship. It was enough to know someone by face and reputation. Being asked to join by someone

The power of the powerless faculty member 79 you know helped, but it was not the way into activism for most of the people I interviewed.

Costs and benefits of network mobilization A full assessment of the reasons for the success of SLU’s no-confidence movement extends beyond the purposes of this chapter, but consequences of networkbased mobilization help explain some reasons why mobilization was sustained across the semester. One characteristic of SLU’s no-confidence movement was the fact that it remained centered in the College of Arts and Sciences. The all-University Senate held two no-confidence votes and a portion of their executive committee met a few times with trustees, but otherwise the work of the Senate proceeded much as in an ordinary academic year. The Faculty Council, on the other hand, passed 22 motions criticizing administration actions. Arts and Sciences faculty populated most of the demonstrations and other public events and often served as public spokespersons for the opposition. This focus in the College of Arts and Sciences was in some ways unfortunate. In particular, it made it easier for the administration to blame opposition on a small number of malcontents not representative of the faculty as a whole. In many universities, it is often the case that votes of no confidence occur only in some units, with colleges of arts and sciences regularly leading the way.45 In some well-known cases – Harvard in 2005 and New York University in 2013 – only faculty in arts and sciences supported the votes. Robert Kreiser, then associate secretary of the AAUP, suggested that faculty in colleges of arts and sciences are more likely to suffer cuts in programs and departments and thus feel more strongly the decisions made by administrators.46 At least at SLU, the explanation for the central role of the College of Arts and Sciences seems different and focuses in part on mobilization networks. At Saint Louis University, faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences appear to have been able to spearhead the no-confidence movement partly because they had a previously-existing governance structure that worked well enough that it had involved a significant number of faculty prior to the episode of contention. These people knew each other sufficiently well to undertake risky action together. Faculty in most other schools in the university did not have the same advantage of having faculty-led governance structures. Of course, networks of people who knew each other were not the only advantage enjoyed by faulty in the College of Arts and Sciences. At SLU, these faculty also had certain protections that did not exist at some other parts in the university: a higher concentration of faculty with tenure, a dean unwilling to punish activist faculty, and the confidence, as one respondent noted, that the administration could not close down the English department. For them, the risks of action were lower. Nonetheless, in part because mobilization occurred through networks of people who already knew each other, it was difficult to expand participation outside the College of Arts and Sciences. Although there were efforts to recruit through the Senate, personal ties were much weaker in the all-university body. Few senators

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became highly active in the no-confidence movement. It was even hard to recruit widely in the College of Arts and Sciences because personal networks extended only so far. A late joiner said about the college committees, “It seemed exclusive. It didn’t seem like it was open for anyone who was interested in potentially being a part of it” (Interview 23). Had there not been other people in her department who were heavily involved, she might never have joined. A benefit of mobilization through networks of people who knew each other was that the networks continued and deepened as activism proceeded. The people who joined the Faculty Council committees may have joined because they already knew people who were involved, but once they were members they were introduced to more people and were in regular communication with them. Members of the rebel alliance were in touch almost daily by email and met frequently in person. These lengthy conversations – both in person and virtual – created a group of trusted colleagues who could react thoughtfully and change their positions in light of others’ arguments. The group became close enough that many could not remember at the time of my interviews if they had known each other at the start of the crisis. Most of the people that I interviewed agreed that one reason the no-confidence movement at SLU was successful was because it was relentless: it maintained several fronts, from media contacts to conversations with trustees to demonstrations and a campaign of orange wristbands, buttons, and banners and still responded to every action by the administration with surprising rapidity. To some observers, this looked like the work of unrelated individuals, but in fact there was an organized group able to reach decisions and implement them. This group – the rebel alliance – was centered in the three Faculty Council committees and the networks that had fed them. One respondent said, “None of this would have happened if the no-confidence movement hadn’t kept pressing. So you could say [the president] self-destructed, but I think he self-destructed because he was so angered by what was going on. If we succeeded, it’s in part because we wouldn’t stop” (Interview 15). Another commented, “I think so much of it was just having a good group of people getting together on a regular basis saying, well, that approach may have gotten us some gain, but we need to do more, what’s next? I think it was just having people continually thinking about what could we do next?” We learned, as other activists had before us, “that organization is everything” (Interview 10). The administration made a number of mistakes under stress, but they were forced errors in most cases, the result of relentless pressure. Inspired in part by this small group, other faculty members also put their fears aside and answered survey questions honesty and expressed their lack of confidence in the administration in votes and many other ways. One of the less active respondents said, “You have this sense that colleagues have taken a risk for something that is for the benefit of the community as a whole, and you don’t want to leave them out there hanging by themselves because then [the president] would win” (Interview 30). Another benefit of mobilization through networks of people who knew each other was that, once people became active in the network of activists, they usually did not leave. In part, this was because they recognized how their colleagues

The power of the powerless faculty member 81 depended on their actions. It was also because membership in the group was itself a benefit. One low-level participator remarked on how the activism of one of his colleagues had transformed her into a whole new person, devoid of fear. Others spoke about how they became socialized into the profession or felt more like members of a community. One said, “I probably among the group in the room only knew about three or four of the people, and really only as acquaintances and as people that I occasionally met in other settings. The thing that I feel very excited about is the fact that I’ve built relationships across schools and departments that could have never been built. I’ve got really good friends across the university that I would not have had if it hadn’t been for the work of the no confidence movement” (Interview 28). Membership in the closely knit committees affected how people experienced a year of crisis at their place of employment. Some people who were not active on the three faculty council committees remember the no-confidence year as a highly stressful one, for some the hardest year of their professional lives. One member of the Faculty Council Executive Committee, propelled into involvement not by volition but by his position, said, “I wish someone else had been able to do it. I thought it was really stressful. I think it was stressful for everyone on campus at the time. For me, there was real uncertainty as to what the future would hold” (Interview 8). Members of the tightly knit group that developed from those committees, though, look back at the year with considerable satisfaction. One active participant said, “It was such a great community, such a lively, cooperative, spirited community. It was fun. I really enjoyed it. It seems strange to say, but it was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done at SLU” (Interview 4). People made new friends across disciplines and schools; they became better connected and informed; and they experienced that process with deep pleasure, even, in the words of one activist, with “bliss” (Interview 6).

Conclusion The three theoretical approaches examined in this chapter all provided some insight into faculty activism, but it was network analysis that seemed best able to explain why some faculty became very active and why it was possible for a mobilized faculty to remain active once their new network had solidified. The rational choice perspective struggles to explain how self-interest based calculations would prompt people to take risky action. Most people would be better off keeping a low profile and letting others bear the costs of protest, especially if success is uncertain. Of course, for the vast majority of people who do not take action, this approach accurately predicts behavior. It also accurately predicts that faculty members without the benefit of tenure will be less likely to take up visible opposition: the potential costs are just too high. For this sample, the choices of the few who do take risky action seem strongly affected by how those people calculate the costs of inaction. Here, the issue is in part the cost of continuing to live with the status quo, but it is also the psychic cost of failing to act when others do or of shirking a perceived duty. On its own, the rational choice perspective lacks the tools to predict

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who is likely to perceive the cost of inaction as too high. Network analysis helps here. Most highly active participants knew other highly active participants. It seems as though those links to other active people raised the psychic costs of inaction in participants’ eyes and made it more likely they would act. The political process approach predicts that people will take risky action when they see an opportunity not previously available, an opportunity that makes the likelihood of success seem higher. In this sample, some of the most active participants did see an unusual opportunity in the way the administration’s proposals concerning faculty evaluation and tenure united the faculty, and they wanted to seize that opportunity before a new issue divided faculty on more familiar lines. As it turns out, these people ended up among the movement’s earliest and most active participants. Without their conviction that success was possible, things could have turned out quite differently. But many other people threw themselves into the struggle despite seeing little hope for a positive outcome. Network analysis helps again here. People who did not have a lot of confidence in the movement’s success nonetheless had confidence in their colleagues in opposition and in the skills they could contribute. They had developed these skills, often, through previous service in governance institutions. They were positioned in networks that increased the likelihood they would be asked to participate or at least would be able to figure out how to join. Networks – transformed into the three Faculty Council committees – also help explain one source of the movement’s success. These committees formed a cooperative, collegial group of hard-working activists that provided the organization essential to maintaining relentless pressure on the administration. Working with this group was a source of psychic benefits that kept participants active throughout the no-confidence year. Less fortuitously, network-based mobilization also limited the size of the no-confidence movement at SLU. In “The Power of the Powerless,” Vaclav Havel enjoins his fellow citizens to undermine what he calls a “post-totalitarian regime” simply by refusing to lie. While Havel no doubt underestimates the difficulty of regime change, he does point to structures independent of the regime as a key element for bringing together like-minded people. In this regard, faculty members are more fortunate than many people who want to start a movement for change. Usually, institutions that enable people to work together already exist. Faculty members are interconnected in a variety of ways that enhance mobilization and joint action. They start out with an impressive skill set. As one of the less active respondents in SLU’s struggle observed, “One of the lessons of it for me is to remember that I have more power than I probably think I have. We all together do. It’s not a totalitarian state or something” (Interview 27).

Notes 1 I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of graduate students who contributed to this study: Katie Alvarez, Meaghan Gass, Rachel Santon, James McGuire, and Ryan Norrenberns. Thanks also to a variety of colleagues, including Megan Metzger and other participants

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in a Midwest Political Science Association panel, plus members of SLU’s Political Science department. I would particularly like to thank my colleague Steven Rogers for detailed comments on an earlier draft. Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, “Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes,” World Politics 62, no. 1 (January 2010): 74. Lisa Wedeen, “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science,” American Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (December 2002): 723. Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” in Without Force or Lies: Voices from the Revolution of Central Europe in 1989–90, ed. William M. Brinton and Alan Rinzler (San Francisco, CA: Mercury House, Inc., 1990), 52. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); Timur Kuran, “Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics 44 (October 1991): 7–48. Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” American Journal of Sociology 92, no. 1 (1986): 64–90; Donatella della Porta, “Recruitment Processes in Clandestine Political Organizations: Italian Left-wing Terrorism,” in International Social Movement Research – From Structure to Action, Vol. 1, ed. Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1988), 155–172; Karl-Dieter Opp and Christiane Gern, “Dissident Groups, Personal Networks, and Spontaneous Cooperation: The East-German Revolution of 1989,” American Sociological Review 58, no. 5 (October 1993): 659–680; Reinoud Leenders and Steven Heydemann, “Popular Mobilization in Syria: Opportunity and Threat, and the Social Networks of Early Risers,” Mediterranean Politics 17, no. 2 (2012): 139–159. Henry A. Giroux, “Democracy’s Nemesis: The Rise of the Corporate University,” Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies 9, no. 5 (October 2009): 669–695. Douglas Belkin, “U.S. News: Votes on Leaders Spread at Colleges,” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2018, A3. David F. Bell, “Impact, or The Business of the University,” SubStance 42, no. 1 (2013): 28–39; Benjamin Ginsburg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Ellen Schrecker, “Academic Freedom in the Age of Casualization,” in The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace, ed. Monika Krause, Mary Nolan, Michael Palm, and Andrew Ross (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008), 30–42; Megan Zahneis, “The Latest Assault on Tenure,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 16, 2020, https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-LatestAssault-on-Tenure/248058?cid=wsinglestory_hp_1 (accessed February 22, 2020). Ginsburg, The Fall of the Faculty. Havel, Power of the Powerless, 48–49. Olson, Logic of Collective Action. Mark Irving Lichbach, “What Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary?: Dilemma, Paradox, and Irony in Peasant Collective Action,” World Politics 46, no. 3 (April 1994): 383–418. Kuran, “Now Out of Never;” Anthony Oberschall, “Social Movements and the Transition to Democracy,” Democratization 7, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 25–45. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Eqypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 120. Charles Kurzman, “Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in SocialMovement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979,” American Sociological Review 61, no. 1 (February 1996): 153–170. Kuran, “Now Out of Never.”

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18 Tarrow, Power in Movement; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention. 19 Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978); Herbert Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies,” British Journal of Political Science 16, no. 1 (January 1986): 57–85; Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Introduction: Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Framing Processes – Toward a Synthetic, Comparative Perspective on Social Movements,” in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, ed. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–20; Jason Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 20 Joshua A. Tucker, “Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action Problems, and PostCommunist Colored Revolutions,” Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 3 (September 2007): 535–551. 21 Bert Klandermans, “Grievance Interpretation and Success Expectations: The Social Construction of Protest,” Social Behaviour 4 (1989): 113–125; Charles Kurzman, “Meaning-Making in Social Movements,” Anthropological Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 5–15; Francesca Polletta, “‘It Was like a Fever …’ Narrative and Identity in Social Protest,” Social Problems 45, no. 2 (May 1998): 137–159; Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Charles Tilly, Stories, Identities, and Political Change (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002). 22 Mario Diani, “Networks and Participation,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 342. 23 Leenders and Heydemann, Popular Mobilization in Syria. 24 McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism. 25 della Porta, “Recruitment Processes.” 26 Mauricio Florez-Morris, “Joining Guerrilla Groups in Colombia: Individual Motivations and Processes for Entering a Violent Organization,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30 (2007): 615–634. 27 Opp and Gern, “Dissident Groups.” 28 Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction, second edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 118–119; Florence Passy, “Social Networks Matter. But How?,” in Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, ed. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 23–24. 29 Florence Passy, “Socialization, Connection, and the Structure/Agency Gap: A Specification of the Impact of Networks on Participation in Social Movements,” Mobilization: An International Journal 6, no. 2 (2001): 176. 30 Of course, it is also possible that people with more experience in faculty governance were simply more oriented toward work for the common good in the first place, and it is that orientation – not the network – that makes a difference in participation. Two factors reduce the likelihood that network membership is simply the result of interest, at least at SLU. First, opportunities for participation in effective faculty governance bodies were not equally available to all faculty, since in many units governance structures were run by deans and met infrequently. Thus some interested faculty would have had little experience. Second, all faculty at SLU are expected to perform various kinds of service, regardless of interest, and participation in faculty governance is widely considered to be one of the less taxing forms of service. 31 Alan Schussman and Sarah A. Soule, “Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual Protest Participation,” Social Forces 84, no. 2 (2007): 1084.

The power of the powerless faculty member 85 32 David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher Jr., and Sheldon Ekland-Olson, “Social Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment,” American Sociological Review 45, no. 5 (October 1980): 787–801; Doug McAdam and Ronnelle Paulsen, “Specifying the Relationship Between Social Ties and Activism,” American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 3 (1993): 640–667. 33 Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited,” Sociological Theory 1 (1983): 201–233. 34 Stefaan Walgrave and Ruud Wouters, “The Missing Link in the Diffusion of Protest: Asking Others,” American Journal of Sociology 119, no 6 (May 2014): 1670–1709. 35 Chaeyoon Lim, “Social Networks and Political Participation: How Do Networks Matter?,” Social Forces 87, no. 2 (December 2008): 961–982. 36 Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 135–144. 37 Most interviews took place in the offices or labs of participants; some, in my office; one in a coffee house and another in the respondent’s home. I made digital recordings. Saint Louis University’s Institutional Review Board mandated higher than normal levels of security for the recordings and the participants, fearing university retribution against participants. As a result, only I had access to the recordings, and the recordings were destroyed after I transcribed them. Respondents are identified by numbers on the transcriptions. No materials linking the code numbers to names of respondents was retained. 38 Robert S. Weiss, Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies (New York: The Free Press, 1994); James P. Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979). 39 Sharon Werning Rivera, Polina M. Kozyreva, and Eduard G. Sarovskii, “Interviewing Political Elites: Lessons from Russia,” PS: Political Science and Politics 35, no. 4 (December 2002): 683–699. 40 1467 web-based surveys were sent out; 834 replies were received, for a response rate of 56.1%, See Saint Louis University AAUP, “AAUP-slu-interim, Current issues,” https ://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/aaup-slu-interim/home/current-issues (accessed April 2, 2015); see also Mary Delach Leonard, “SLU needs new leadership, say three-fourths of faculty responses to survey,” STL Beacon, April 11, 2013. 41 The results of the official survey were not released publicly. The press was barred from the Faculty Senate meeting where the results were presented. For notes, see Saint Louis University AAUP. 42 For comparison, Arts and Sciences faculty represent roughly a quarter of the total university faculty. (The exact number varies from year to year.) The sample overrepresents Arts and Sciences faculty: 79 percent of the sample is from the College of Arts and Sciences; 21 percent from SLU’s professional schools. 43 I failed to ask this question of six people; one did not answer; and the rest were either neutral on the likelihood of success or felt unable to predict outcomes. 44 The permanent Faculty Council committees conduct considerable routine work in the College of Arts and Sciences. They approve new courses, assess the core curriculum, handle promotion and tenure, and hear cases of academic dishonesty. 45 Kevin Kiley, “Voting with No Confidence,” Inside Higher Ed, April 23, 2013, https ://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/23/votes-no-confidence-proliferate-theirimpact-seems-minimal (accessed March 18, 2015). 46 Quoted in Kiley, “Voting with No Confidence.”

6

Contested frames and the role of the media in the no-confidence movement Kathryn E. Kuhn and Mark Edward Ruff

Scholars of social movements have long used the concept of framing as a way to understand how movements attract members and create solidarity. Goffman, upon whose work the concepts of frames and framing are based, discussed frames as “schemata of interpretation” that allow individuals, and by extension groups, to organize and make sense of their experiences. While Goffman argued that most individuals would be unable to elucidate the frames from which they operate, social movement scholars and others have modified his conceptualization to allow for framing to be a more conscious effort on the parts of competing social groups, and, in a growing body of literature, the media. More recently, those who study organizational leadership and innovation have incorporated the notions of frame and framing. Indeed, as Cornelissen and Werner write, “This widespread use of the construct across these and other literatures testifies to the position of framing as a central construct within management and organization theory.”1 Snow et al. present a compelling argument that the social psychological and social movement literatures can be bridged through frame analysis and its constituent parts.2 Similarly, Hargrave and Van de Ven use frame analysis as part of their efforts to formulate a collective action model of organizational change.3 Meanwhile, communication scholars have provided a vast literature on how media frames events and thus organizes and shapes how viewers and readers understand a news story or event. All of these efforts inform the present chapter. Herein we examine how groups on both sides of the no-confidence movement operated from fundamentally different master frames. This, in turn led them to frame events in different ways: for those who were activist supporters of the no-confidence movement, David vs. Goliath, and Poke The Bear, were among the most prominent. Supporters of the president and the upper administration more generally tended to frame those activists as a small group of malcontents who were unwilling to be held accountable, and who exercised reckless disregard for the reputation of the university. Within those broader frames, however, both groups developed Rhetorical frames, smaller in scope but no less important. What both groups had in common, though, was the recognition of the importance of the media in advancing their points of view. This last point brings us to a key part of our argument. The media not only framed events, but they were also seen as potential allies (or enemies) in the

Contested frames and the role of the media 87 framing efforts of the two groups involved. Here the media played multiple roles: gatekeeper, mediator, advocate, among others. As the months unfolded, contested framing played a critical role. The media, by affording visual, audio, and other discursive spaces, set boundaries, granted access to those who may not otherwise have had it, and brought the story out of the university and into the larger community, both locally and nationally. The conflict at Saint Louis University, however, was unusual in the amount of mainstream media attention showered upon an educational institution with far lower name recognition than other schools like the University of Virginia embroiled in acrimonious conflicts over leadership at the same time. Already in its opening weeks and months, the turmoil at SLU aroused the interest of journalists nationally. The sudden resignation of the dean of the law school, Annette Clark, on August 8, 2012, generated headlines as far away as the New York-based Wall Street Journal. The unveiling of the plans by the vice president for academic affairs to replace the existing system of tenure with revolving five-year contracts led in little more than a week to a highly critical front-page article on the national weekly, The Chronicle of Higher Education.4 Articles about the conflict were even picked up by the Associated Press and printed in newspapers across the United States. Local newspapers, television and radio sent even more reporters to SLU’s Midtown neighborhood as the conflict escalated. Between August 8, 2012, and August 17, 2013, the day following the news of Lawrence Biondi’s upcoming departure from the president’s chair at SLU, the imbroglio became the subject of no fewer than 33 news stories by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, several dozen articles by the electronic-only St. Louis Beacon, 9 by the alternative Riverfront Times, and six by the St. Louis Business Journal.5 St. Louis Public Radio provided at least six updates on the controversy. Local television stations like Fox 2 News and KSDK provided extensive reports, casting their lenses not just on the resignations of figures in the senior administration, but on protesting students and faculty. Faculty and administrators were invited to discuss the controversy on forums like the Fox 2 News weekend talk-show, The Jaco Report, and Public Television’s weekly roundtable of debate, Donnybrook. In addition to running stories of their own, the two local newspapers opened their editorial pages and letters-to-the-editors page to those from both sides voicing their own opinions on the causes of the strife. The Post-Dispatch ran no fewer than 15 op-eds and at least 12 letters on the conflict from outsiders, as well as an editorial and political cartoon of its own. One of its regular editorial columnists, interviewing faculty and the president himself, devoted all or portions of five columns to the ongoing fights. The op-ed pages as well as the electronic comments section for articles, op-eds and letters, in particular, became critical battlegrounds between the supporters and opponents of the president. Most significantly, it was the president’s own op-ed from August 8, 2013, one written in response to op-eds critical of his decision to cut salary increases for “dissident” faculty, that seems to have been the coup de grace in his sudden departure as president.

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In this chapter we examine the set of frames from which two of the major groups operated. After describing the organizational context in which the noconfidence movement occurred, we first define and describe the master frames for each. We then move to an examination of the more specific rhetorical and claims-making frames both sides employed and the framing actions and reactions of both associated with them. Throughout, we also analyze the role of the media in the chain of events and the changing interpretations thereof. Our analysis runs the risk of readers reaching the seemingly obvious conclusion that dissident faculty and students employed a savvier media strategy than opponents in the senior administration. But such an epitaph to this struggle carries with it risks of simplification. The first of these is hindsight bias. It would be an error to conclude that, because the president did indeed step down on September 1, 2013, this outcome was inevitable. This claim presupposes that no 74-year-old president was capable of withstanding a seemingly unquellable insurrection. Yet, that same president had publicly declared on more than occasion that he intended to remain in office at least through 2018, the bicentennial of the university. It is also an error to assume automatically that student and faculty efforts, and in particular, their use of the media, were the sole or even primary factor leading to this outcome. We need at least to consider the possibility that the departure of the president occurred in spite of faculty strategizing, the result largely of unforced errors on the part of the senior administration. Second, and in this vein, it would be a mistake to immediately ascribe coherence to faculty and senior administration efforts in using the media. The faculty dissidents did, in fact, settle on a unified media strategy – but not right away and only after they had congealed into the group later to be known informally as the rebel alliance.” Even then, frames were subject to negotiation within the group. That group was one of numerous groups, both formal and informal, that worked in various ways to support the notion of no confidence. On a number of occasions, moreover, the best laid plans were overtaken by events and transgressions that few saw coming. Third, full disclosure by the authors is required: Mark Edward Ruff is a trained historian and former journalist (before entering graduate school in German history) who became an active participant in the struggle against SLU’s former president. After January 2014, he served as one of the co-chairs of the Public Relations Committee. Kathryn E Kuhn is a sociologist who was also an active participant in the movement. She coauthored one of the op-eds that appeared in the St Louis Post-Dispatch and later made that paper’s news when she and another faculty member were, at the president’s command, summarily thrown out of what was in fact a public, open meeting of the student government association. If a certain sympathy for the faculty point of view seeps through, we plead guilty, as neither of us can pretend to be an impartial observer. Fourth, we cannot presume to know how the inner workings of the administration, for neither of us is or has been a member. Furthermore, we do not have access to the deliberations and strategizing session held by the administration and

Contested frames and the role of the media 89 members of the board of trustees. Nonetheless, we are able to examine the frames and framing techniques at play.

Context The external environment of the university merits consideration. Two factors, both specific to the St. Louis metropolitan area, played decisive roles. First was the size of the metropolitan area. With approximately 320,000 people in the city and 2.8 million in the greater metropolitan area, the region was large enough to ensure that press coverage would reach a substantial audience – and under the right circumstances – be picked up by the national press. Yet it was small enough that a fight over faculty governance at a medium-size research university could make the front page at its one daily print newspaper and become a lead story on the four major local television news stations. In a region like St. Louis with its substantial Catholic population, SLU’s president was a household name. With little exaggeration, he was a figure of legend, one who had even tussled with the Vatican and won. In larger metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York home to dozens of colleges and universities, such a story would have generated, at most, a mention in passing. Just as a significant was a second factor. The metropolitan area was – and remains – dotted with fiefdoms. It is a patchwork of small municipalities, highly regarded cultural and philanthropic institutions, nationally known businesses and enterprises, and religious institutions. Many of these tended to be under the tight reins of an individual or a family, sometimes even for decades. Although some of these local lords – like the Busch family – were well-known nationally, the majority were visible only within the boundaries of the greater St. Louis area. Seen as paternalistic feudal lords, many were given a distinct deference by the press and local citizens. But such deference could also easily swing over into a lust for scandal-mongering when the trust placed in them was perceived to have been breached. St. Louis also bore a proud tradition of journalism, one going back to the days of the Pulitzer family. There was no shortage of muckraking journalists eager to take on a powerful local lord who had violated the trust placed in him.

Master frames Master frames are broad conceptual umbrellas that serve as a means for diagnosing the kinds of problems social movements typically address. Snow and Benford define master frames as “the interpretative medium through which collective actors associated with different movements within a cycle assign blame for the problem they are attempting to ameliorate.” The authors divide master frames into two types: restrictive and elaborative. Restrictive master frames are rigid, have tighter rhetorical structures and language, and are less thus less flexible Elaborative frames, by contrast, are “more flexible modes of interpretation, and as a consequence, they are more inclusive systems that allow for more ideational amplification and extension.”6 Master frames are most usefully understood as the

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organizational and/or social world views of those who share them. In the case of the no-confidence movement, we can identify two major master frames, one held by the upper administration and board of trustees, and the other by faculty. These frames shaped the discourse and strategies of each group. In addition, both groups sought to persuade the general public that its frame was more legitimate than the other. The upper administration and board of trustees had, over the years, adopted a master frame centered on corporatization. Reduction of uncertainty, increased centralization, an emphasis on market shares and niches, and control of workers, principles with which most of the board members were quite comfortable and familiar, guided their actions. Acting in accord with the national trend in the same direction, board members and high-level administrators used the language and logic of post-industrial capitalism to understand and shape the university. Faculty members were often questioned about their delivery of education and the marketability of the programs in which they taught. The corporatized master frame re-casts students as consumers, buyers who make rational choices in a market of competing vendors. Faculty, meanwhile, became employees first and foremost. As such, they lack the requisite experience and knowledge to understand the workings of the market. Administrators serve as individuals who control faculty impulses, financial decisions, and the amount of information the administration shared with faculty and staff. To be sure, market considerations are important in maintaining the health of a university, but the way in which the administration and board members framed those considerations boiled down to a labor versus management schemata. This point hit home particularly hard when, in a rare appearance before the Faculty Senate, the then chair of the board of trustees compared faculty dissidents to disgruntled workers in the coal industry with which he was affiliated. Faculty, on the other hand, shared the Academic master frame. Rooted in longstanding practice and endorsed at least in writing by such organizations as the Association of Governing Boards, this master frame emphasizes three principles: academic freedom, shared governance, and tenure. These principles are widely shared among faculty across the higher education landscape, but stand in stark contrast to the principles embedded in the Corporatization master frame. The Academic master frame places academic freedom at the foundation of education and research. The Corporate frame, however, does not encompass such a notion and positions such freedom as uncertainty and risk generating, both of which are undesirable. So, too, the Academic master frame emphasizes the importance of shared governance, positioning faculty as having ownership of the curricula of colleges and universities, and calling for meaningful faculty participation in decisions that impact the academic work of these institutions. The Corporatization master frame, based on a strict hierarchy, has no room for that kind of participation, much less the notion that faculty might own the curriculum. Tenure, perhaps the most contentious of the three principles, is, for those who operate under the Academic master frame, a bulwark that ensures that the other two principles remain viable. Tenure empowers faculty by offering protection against the

Contested frames and the role of the media 91 political and other machinations of those who run and regulate universities and colleges. For adherents of the Corporatization master frame, tenure deprives managers of necessary control and effectively renders potentially restive faculty fireproof. SLU’s president made numerous references to this notion, citing tenure as an obstacle to ridding the university of people who have committed acts that range from illegal to unethical. In fact, tenure does not protect faculty who have committed misconduct from firing, but that point is either lost or glossed over by the Corporatization master frame. Given these two highly incompatible frames, it is not surprising that they clash. Clashes may be small in scale or, as is the case here, events that change the university dramatically. Here we must include the media as a crucial element in the conflict. Convinced that the “other side” did not comprehend what each viewed as self-evident principles, and endeavoring to recruit supporters, both sides quickly realized that the media was the primary method by which they could make their cases; and it became clear that much of the struggle was going to be waged in the press. The 73-year-old president, 25 years at the helm and the St. Louis PostDispatch’s Citizen of the Year in 2005, was a legendary public figure rarely free from controversy. He had defied the Vatican over the sale of the Saint Louis University hospital, and had aroused the ire of local preservationists and local business owners for his use of eminent domain laws. He was a flamboyant leader, a tried and true headline generator. The parties to the conflict – board members, faculty, senior administrators – were also by dint of age and temperament likely to rely on mainstream media for news and most likely to use it for their own ends. Given this constellation of personalities and frames, how could this controversy not find its way into the press?

Precipitating factors and the emergence of rhetorical and claims-making frames What Smelser7 and others who study social movements and collective behavior term precipitating factors – triggering events that crystallize the structural strain and mobilize the energy of those affected by it, occurred in close temporal proximity in the summer of 2012. The first was the resignation of Annette Clark, dean of the School of Law. The second, and more explosive, was the introduction of a series of four proposals aimed directly at faculty. On August 8, 2012, Annette Clark announced her resignation as dean of the law school in two separate letters, the first to Biondi and the vice president for academic affairs, and the second to the law school faculty and staff, Clark openly questioned the integrity and honesty of the president. She brought her second letter to a close with the following lines that were ideally suited to quotation in the press: It is the ultimate irony that a Jesuit university would operate so far outside the bounds of common decency, collegiality, professionalism and integrity. I simply cannot be part of, and I assure I will not be complicit with, an

92 Kathryn E. Kuhn and Mark Edward Ruff administration that can’t be trusted to act honestly and in the best interests of its faculty, staff and students. Clark’s letters quickly found their way to the website, nextSTL, which posted both along with a short article.8 By 3:45 p.m., St. Louis Beacon reporter Dale Singer, who would come to play a central role in subsequent media wars, released an extensive article on the controversy on the Beacon website.9 Tim Barker, a reporter on the education beat for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, subsequently put together his own article which appeared electronically on August 8 (where it garnered 68 reader comments) and on the front page of the next day’s print edition.10 Even a blogger for the Wall Street Journal picked up the story.11 Scandal and sensationalism from a Midwestern Jesuit university were, it was apparent, not going to fall on deaf ears. The ground was ripe for claims-making, and people from diverse orientations began to more explicitly and systematically elaborate a series of rhetorical frames that served as mechanisms to both communicate and legitimize those claims. Clark’s letters triggered what would also become enduring features of the coming media wars: an immediate response from the senior administration, and the use of what we call the A Small Band of Malcontents frame. This frame cast first Clark, and later all dissident faculty as rogue actors/employees who acted only in their own interests, behaved irresponsibly, and told outright lies. Thus Clark, and, later, any faculty dissidents, could hardly be considered representative of the faculty more generally. More importantly, their claims could not be taken seriously because they were, by virtue of the frame in which they were cast, illegitimate. In Clark’s case, the immediate response and the use of the malcontents frame came from the president himself. In a letter to the law school faculty and staff sent out electronically, the president insisted that Clark was already set to be terminated and that her sudden resignation had beaten him to the punch. The president was quick to involve the mainstream media in the imbroglio as well. Announcing Clark’s successor, Tom Keefe, in the same letter, he had copies sent to the press. Both the Beacon and the Post-Dispatch quoted at length from the president’s letter. Barker’s article in the Post-Dispatch, in fact, allowed the president to have the last word. Clark’s “assertion of a lack of support for the law school,” the president was quoted as writing, “could not be further from the truth.”12 It is impossible to determine whether this was a deliberate journalistic decision or the result of an editorial decision to cut subsequent sentences and paragraphs because of limitations in the number of column inches available. Nonetheless, it was immediately clear that the press, operating under its own master frame of journalistic integrity, including adherence to principles of fairness and impartiality, was going to ensure that the administration had the opportunity to have its side of the controversy heard. For his part, the president – and this was a lesson also taken to heart by future faculty opponents – was not going to let any criticism go unanswered. Three weeks after the departure of his foe, the president was still keeping up the fight, devoting more than two pages of his monthly presidential address to the SLU community to a point-by-point rebuttal of Clark’s allegations.13

Contested frames and the role of the media 93 What made this extensive press coverage such a double-edged sword was not only that it afforded the president potentially equal airtime and newspaper coverage. It gave his supporters and faculty critics, many from outside SLU, a chance to air their opinions through electronic forums for reader comments. While many chiming in were supportive of Clark, the 68 comments posted about the story on the Post-Dispatch website also featured kneejerk remarks lambasting what was deemed to be a pampered professoriate, and most crucially, those daring to criticize the boss. One comment by a reader calling himself M.a.Harris, who would repeatedly post comments critical of the faculty during the year-long war to follow, summed it up: “What the boss says goes.” He added: “Chalk this up to a bad hire.”14 A strategy of relying on the media to air grievances thus carried the risk of giving a microphone to those likely to be critical of the professoriate. Put differently, airing grievances could bolster and strengthen the Small Band of Malcontents frame. Reading such remarks could easily give to the senior administration the impression that the public, or at least significant portions of it, was squarely behind its measures against the faculty. Such an impression, in turn, may well have toughened the administration’s resolve. The second precipitating factor was the release of what came to be known as The Four Proposals. Issued by the vice president for academic affairs, these proposals laid out a series of new measures and policies aimed, at least in theory, at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the university. One of those proposals called for five-year reviews of all faculty, including those with tenure. Tenure could be revoked if a faculty member was judged as not meeting the standards. Another established a complex, or what some called fundamentally mathematically flawed, set of metrics by which productivity was to be measured. One set of metrics was intended to determine whether particular academic departments, programs, and even schools and colleges were appropriately productive. These proposals, released in late August just as faculty and students were gearing up for a new year, hit the university with the force of a rhetorical hydrogen bomb. Although the vice president for academic affairs and others framed the proposals as appropriate measures to enhance effectiveness and productivity (all in service of the Corporatization master frame), faculty, operating from a wholly separate master frame, viewed them entirely differently. In this instance, it was faculty who first used the media to help them frame the proposals as dangerous attacks on the foundational principles of higher education. On August 30, 2012, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a front-page story that placed the opposition of the associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), B. Robert Kreiser, in its lead.15 In a phrase which found its way into the headline, Kreiser stated that the proposed policy would effectively “eviscerate tenure as it’s understood at most institutions of higher learning.” For the readers of The Chronicle, who are almost exclusively academics, this statement, issued under the aegis of the AAUP, carried enormous weight. Kreiser’s comment was an eloquent and forceful invocation of the Academic master frame. It also served a less obvious purpose: AAUP investigates and censures or sanctions universities that violate principles of

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tenure and academic freedom. Kreiser’s comment signaled that such an investigation would surely ensue and that the university would likely be placed on the censure list. While the controversy alerted those in higher education to the situation in Saint Louis, the lay public was unlikely to read that coverage. In Saint Louis, Tim Barker, having been tipped off about the news story on tenure by at least one faculty member in the week beforehand, let Kreiser’s phrasing make its way into a much shorter article that the Post-Dispatch published the following day. The headline, falling back on the passive voice, was less helpful to the faculty cause. Instead of “Faculty-Review Proposal at Saint Louis U would ‘Eviscerate Tenure,’ AAUP Says,” the Post’s headline ran, “St. Louis University Faculty Evaluations Called an Assault on Tenure.”16 Barker quoted not only Kreiser but Clayton Berry, who as the assistant vice president for communications would serve as the major spokesman of the senior administration and presumably pen many of the official responses of “the university” in the coming year. Honing the new proposals, Berry pledged, would take place through a process that would be “open, transparent and inclusive for all parties who may be affected.” Here, Berry attempted to somehow align the administration and the faculty frames, surely an impossible task. Despite the uphill battle, his phrasing was suitably vague and laden with seemingly generous buzzwords was not without effect. For one, faculty quickly realized that critics of the president were going to have to contend with the weight of the university’s public relations and communications apparatus. In addition to Berry, the public relations team included former television reporter and weekend anchor, Jeff Fowler. Both men were well-connected in the media landscape of St. Louis. As a result, few faculty were willing to go on record to voice their opposition, fearing retribution should the tenure plan be enacted.17 Later, the university hired an internationally known public relations firm, but the relationship did not last out the year. Local media’s importance should not be underestimated. Most of the businessmen making up the majority of the trustees would not find time to peruse the Chronicle of Higher Education, let alone base their decisions on it. Since most hailed from the St. Louis area, they were more likely to read the Post-Dispatch, whose coverage was more likely to also present the university’s point of view. In this instance Barker’s eleven paragraphs generated no fewer than 118 comments, a significant percentage of which excoriated the faculty. One commentator, Rich Akins, who chimed in on subsequent discussions, argued that “getting rid of the bad eggs is certainly a healthy thing for our educational experience.”18 Others insisted that tenure was a luxury to be found nowhere in the private sector: faculty accountability needed to be the order of the day. Yet those decrying faculty “deadwood” did not go completely unanswered; some commentators skeptically wondered who would be carrying out the review of faculty and making the calls as to who might stay.19 Some discerned the answer – and here surfaced an anticlerical theme that would recur in subsequent commentaries: it was “the long arm of St. Louis’ version of God’s Rottweiler,” a not especially subtle reference to the university’s president.20 Still, the public relations problem seemed insurmountable:

Contested frames and the role of the media 95 mounting a defense of tenure in the public arena outside of the hallowed halls of the academy was a losing proposition. The comments detailed above are illustrative of the variety of rhetorical frames that emerged during the year that followed. On the administration and trustees’ side, these rhetorical frames included Small Band of Malcontents, and Reckless Individuals Intent on Harming the University. These would later expand to include such rhetorical frames as Irresponsible Professors Brainwash Students, Unforgiving Faculty, and Biondi as the Savior of Midtown. On the faculty dissident side, the rhetorical frame, The President is a Tyrant emerged. As events unfolded, this frame would be augmented with We Want Our Mission Back, Culture of Fear, and others. The ways in which these rhetorical frames were employed, their timing, and the audiences at which they were aimed are key components in understanding the role of the media as well as the role of the players in the crisis.

Mobilization and the use of frames Keenly aware of both the need to have their voices heard and the power of the administration’s public relations staff, faculty worked to organize a more focused and effective social movement organization. The movement, of which the more active participants would come to call themselves the rebel alliance, had its roots in the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Council. Due to its structure and the nature of the faculty involved, the Faculty Council was a relatively effective and certainly vocal deliberative body. Throughout the year the Council called special meetings that supplemented its regularly scheduled ones, and moved to address what by then was commonly viewed as a crisis. The Council approved the establishment of three ad hoc committees to address the issues and served as the initial recruiting mechanism for the no-confidence movement. As the year progressed, the three committees morphed into one body, with individuals acting in multiple capacities at the same time. It was also in the Faculty Council that the university’s long dormant AAUP chapter was revived. The latter group quickly grew into the largest chapter in the state and was instrumental in the ultimate success of the movement. Events unfolded quickly in the fall of 2012, as both faculty and administration groups worked to persuade media audiences that their positions on issues were more legitimate than the others. For the rest of October 2012, the headlines in the press were dictated by the racing tide of teach-ins, and faculty and student protests. It was at the first of the teach-ins that the Culture of Fear rhetorical frame garnered a large audience. Armed with survey data of its own, faculty presented compelling evidence that a majority of faculty members were indeed afraid to voice opposition to the president and the administration. Furthermore, a significant portion of respondents indicated that they had at least considered leaving the university because of the hostile climate that had grown. This rhetorical frame positioned faculty not as spoiled, petty, entitled, or as the vice president for academic affairs had said, hysterical, but rather as concerned members of a larger

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community of scholars who found themselves at the mercy of an administration that thrived on intimidation tactics and threats, both implicit and explicit. The Culture of Fear frame was unintentionally supported by the vice president for academic affairs, who stood at the back of the room during the teach-in, frowning and taking copious notes. Faculty speakers were uncomfortably aware of his presence, as were the large number of students and faculty in attendance. The move reinforced the idea that any dissent would be duly noted and possibly punished. Following the teach-ins, students and faculty held a protest march and rally to which students brought hand-made signs quoting some of the statements made by faculty who presented at those events. Photos of those signs made their way to social media, particularly to the student-generated Facebook page, SLU Students for No Confidence. As the page’s audience grew, the president’s supporters and the president himself formulated a rhetorical frame of their own: Professors Brainwash Students. They argued that activist faculty wasted classroom time with discussions of the issues and threatened students with lower grades if they failed to support the faculty. An interesting spin on the Culture of Fear idea, this frame failed to capture adherents as students were quick to assert that they were adults capable of making informed decisions on their own. Recall that the administration’s master frame positions students as paying customers whose loyalty must be courted. Portraying them as pliable tools of a few overbearing faculty members flew in the face of that master frame and worked at some level to undermine the legitimacy of the president’s supporters’ claims more generally. Meanwhile, the notion of voting no confidence gained traction in some faculty groups, particularly in the Faculty Council of the College of Arts and Sciences. Its vote of no confidence in the vice president for academic affairs was followed quickly by a similar vote in the university wide Faculty Senate. In both groups, the idea of a no-confidence vote in the president himself, once viewed as the nuclear option, gained traction and generated considerable discussion. It was in these discussions that the rhetorical frame, We Want Our Mission Back, emerged. Faculty members argued that the actions of the administration, the board, and, most importantly, the president undermined the Jesuit ideals and mission of the university. They explained that the idea of men and women for others, for example, did not appear to be a guiding principle for some in the administration, or for the president. Respect for human dignity was similarly in peril due to the retaliatory tactics often used by those in power positions. When a member of the Faculty Senate announced, “I just want the mission back,” the room erupted in applause and a new frame was born. The Jesuits took the idea seriously and would, over the course of the coming months, hold a series of novenas for the university to which it invited all who wished to attend. The events of October culminated in the nearly unanimous no-confidence vote by the full Faculty Senate on October 30. Replete with arresting visual images, these events proved to be a magnet to the press, including radio and, for the first time, television. Journalists were witnessing something that seemed unprecedented – a full-fledged insurrection against a president who had long

Contested frames and the role of the media 97 been regarded as unassailable. Emboldened, a number of students and faculty began to speak out in impromptu fashion against the president before live television cameras and newspaper reporters. The chairs of the English and Theology departments were interviewed by local television affiliates and appeared on several local news broadcasts. Political science professor and Vietnam veteran, Timothy Lomperis, who had been the one of the first professors to agree to be interviewed by the press, provided the most iconic image of the entire struggle. Seated in an uncomfortable lecture hall and wearing a rumpled beige sport coat over a brown sweater and Oxford shirt, he leaned back towards the next row, his eyes closed, mouth open, and fists raised and pumped in celebration of the no-confidence vote in Biondi. The image landed on the front page of the PostDispatch, and Lomperis found portions of his pep-talk to the Faculty Senate prior to its landmark vote quoted two days later in an editorial: “This is a moment of courage. Do not be afraid of a world without Biondi.”21 Irking individual members of the board of trustees, we later learned, this image would repeatedly reappear on the Post-Dispatch webpage in its ongoing coverage of the crisis at SLU. During these frantic weeks, the senior administration pursued a public relations strategy disastrous to its cause, a vacillating strategy that for all intents and purposes changed little until the end. Even though the mainstream press repeatedly gave it a chance to defend itself publicly against the attacks of critics, it alternated between refusing comment, thereby ceding the ground to critics, and lashing out at critics. The president, in particular, developed a knack for finding the most inopportune time to use his bully-pulpit. He sent out his October president’s message electronically just seventeen minutes before the start of the Faculty Senate meeting on October 30 set to deliberate over the motion of no confidence in him.22 In this 17-page letter signed by all of the Vice Presidents, the president returned to the Small Band of Malcontents frame, and accused “some members of the faculty” of presenting “a distorted view of the University in an attempt to divide our SLU community.” He spoke of “socalled teach-ins” and argued that the information disseminated in these forums as well as on social media “has done nothing but harm our University.”23 He added page after page of statistics carefully crafted to rebut faculty allegations of the university’s decline in national rankings like those of the U.S. News and World Report. He no doubt intended this recitation of data for the press. But his lengthy email inflamed passions to such an extent that some attributed the success of the nearly unanimous vote of no confidence to his intervention; the vote could have been far closer – or even gone the other way – had he put on a display of contrition.24 The faculty opposition also began to launch a flurry of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor in both the Post-Dispatch and the Beacon.25 These letters and op-eds utilized the frames we describe above, including a lengthy report detailing the culture of fear, describing the president’s tyrannical actions, and detailing the ramifications of those actions. The report also introduced a new one: Clean Up the Mess. This frame emphasized the decline of the university in national rankings,

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the apparent lack of planning in key areas such as finance, and the increasingly frantic efforts on the part of the university and its leadership to quell faculty unrest. This rhetorical frame was also prominent in commentaries in the mainstream media. To illustrate: Post-Dispatch Columnist Bill McClellan, responding to a request from Mark Edward Ruff, wrote the first of what would be several supportive columns on the subject, one that on December 9 indeed compared the attempts to clean up the “mess” at the history museum and at SLU.26 Meanwhile, students active in the no-confidence movement were increasingly finding their way into the newspapers and airwaves.27 Elizabeth Ramsey, spokesperson for the SLU Students for No Confidence Facebook page, appeared alongside Kenneth Parker and one other student on the locally aired Jaco Report.28 The Facebook page she helped steer, moreover, became a major player in the media struggle, even becoming the subject of reporting by the mainstream press. In one incident, it posted a leaked letter from the chairman of the board of trustees, who had urged board members not to respond to letters from faculty and students and to requests for comments by the media on the advice of a consulting firm, Fleishman-Hillard, it had hired to help manage the crisis.29 The anger fueled by this revelation proved so great that it became the subject of yet another article by the Post-Dispatch, one that generated 25 comments.30 The controversy also gave legitimacy to the Clean Up the Mess frame, a frame which gained increasing currency in 2013.

Contested frames and frame confusion We have thus far focused on the contrasting frames used by groups on either side of the no-confidence question. The contest grew both more and less complicated in the months following the no-confidence votes. Frames remained a field of contest, but another phenomenon one not explored thoroughly in the extant literature, came to the forefront: frame confusion. Frame confusion, we argue, occurs when claims makers, fearing that they are losing legitimacy, start mixing rhetorical frames in seemingly random fashion, asserting one and then another without a logical connection. Such confusion, at least in this case, can undermine the legitimacy of all of the rhetorical frames a group has employed. What created this frame confusion? One answer is the different tack faculty took in the winter and spring of 2013. Having observed the tactics of the administration, and of the president, the rebel alliance turned to a classic insurgent strategy that eventually succeeded beyond our wildest hopes: Poke The Bear. The reasoning was as follows: faculty would goad the hot-tempered president with a hair trigger and a proven record of grasping for the last word into overreacting. Ideally, he would publicly lambaste his critics and retaliate. Once these acts were publicized, he would lose his moral authority, a sine qua non for a president at a Jesuit school. We had reason to believe that our long game was not just a fool’s errand. One of the Post-Dispatch reporters had specifically asked one of us to keep her updated on any acts of retaliation.31 Publicizing any such acts, we believed, would give credence to our rhetorical frames of a “climate of fear” and

Contested frames and the role of the media 99 Biondi as a tyrant.” Ultimately, Biondi’s own words and actions would come to be seen as “beneath the dignity” of his office and, in turn, give the board grounds to remove him. The Poke The Bear strategy proved wildly effective. The rebel alliance was continually surprised that the senior administration took our bait and responded publicly to faculty op-eds. Developing sports metaphors that a number of us had been using, Robert Cropf and Kathryn Kuhn put together an editorial, “Who’s on First at SLU?” that appeared in the electronic-only version of the PostDispatch on February 6, 2013.32 Six of the highest-ranking senior administrators, including five vice presidents, almost immediately posted a harsh rebuttal. Singling out both authors, they wrote that “to suggest that SLU is a rudderless ship or that the administration is conspiring to keep the faculty in the dark is inaccurate, irresponsible and damaging to our university.”33 The faculty dissidents responded by drafting an open letter to interim vice president for academic affairs, Ellen Harshman, questioning the letter’s characterization of the two faculty authors. The next day, Mark Edward Ruff’s op-ed, relying on some of the same sources of information as Cropf and Kuhn, ran in the print edition of the Post-Dispatch. Unbeknownst to Ruff (and possibly in a sign of sympathy), staffers there had taken a 2005 photo of Ruff from his webpage and juxtaposed it with an extremely unflattering photo of Biondi that resembled Shrek the Ogre. That day, Ruff was told by the editor of the editorial page that Clayton Berry had sent in a rebuttal “like clockwork.”34 But inexplicably, it never ran. We speculated (and there were good grounds to do so, we later learned) that an order had come down from the level of the board to cease public responses to faculty provocations. In addition to the success of the Poke The Bear strategy, dissident faculty benefitted by a jaw dropping array of unforced errors by the senior administration. First and foremost of these was an interview that the president gave to Bill McClellan and which ran on December 21.35 To even McClellan’s surprise, Biondi showed no regret for his actions. He defended the controversial proposals to eliminate tenure; he expressed his disappointment in “some” of his faculty. He scoffed at the notion that there was a climate of fear on campus; when he asked faculty whether there was such an atmosphere, they had laughed, he claimed. He ascribed the entire conflict to miscommunication. “Perhaps he could win over his critics if he seemed more contrite,” McClellan queried at the close of his interview. “I’ve gotta be myself,” Biondi responded. Then in a rather abrupt pivot, Biondi pledged to lead the university in a more collaborative and conciliatory manner. “To those of you who have been critical of my leadership, I have listened.”36 In fact, Biondi’s letter gave little ground to critics, whose remarks, he insisted, had “hurt me personally” and “our wonderful University.” Here the president sought to frame dissidents as Unforgiving Faculty who had callously disregarded his feelings. While some readers were persuaded by the president’s words, others found his less than subtle shots at faculty were at odds with his own claims. This sudden shift and the contradictions in the president’s letter are examples of the frame confusion we described above.

100 Kathryn E. Kuhn and Mark Edward Ruff But this feint of compromise was within days eclipsed by more unforced errors by Biondi’s team. On March 4, Thomas Keefe, Interim Dean of the Law School and a recent appointee to the board of trustees, resigned following allegations of sexual harassment. Keefe had raised eyebrows just weeks after his appointment had been announced when, in an interview with the Missouri Lawyers Weekly, he denied that he would be the president’s “butt-boy.”37 Sniffing a sensational story – involving the president, a trial lawyer, sex, school and SLU - television reporters flocked to the SLU campus, placing the story towards the top of its local news broadcasts. The print media followed suit with a slew of unflattering articles about the trial lawyer.38 The faculty in the rebel alliance decided against serving up any commentaries, opting to let the revelations and innuendo speak for themselves. And just as this news cycle was coming to a close, a mid-ranking administrator and former work study student in the office of the president printed an op-ed in the Post-Dispatch that ran in tandem with an op-ed by Tim Lomperis. The former piece drew upon several rhetorical frames that at once positioned faculty as a group of plotters intent on harming the reputation of an innocent man and as a group of people who were wasting everyone’s time engaging in a ludicrous fight. While more subtle than some of the other instances of frame confusion, this op-ed, too, relied on rhetorical frames that did not appear to be congruent with one another. In a line that accurately reflected the senior administration’s position, Mike Lucido, the head of Risk Management, excoriated the “malcontents,” even opening his piece with a definition of “malcontent” provided by the Merriam-Webster dictionary.39 He accused faculty “in this ridiculous fight” of running “witch-hunts” and of “trying to destroy the nearly 200-year-old reputation of a great university.” Most of the dissidents concluded that since the senior administrators had presumably been urged no longer to air their responses to faculty dissidents publicly, those lower down in the administrative food-chain had either been called upon to do so or had voluntarily stepped forward. Presumably these lower level administrators were less conversant with the Corporatization master frame, and certainly less experienced in rhetorical framing more generally, thus the frame confusion. So much for reconciliation, it seemed, and events quickly bore this assessment out. New rounds of confrontation, all waged in front of the media, wound up validating faculty arguments of a “climate of fear.” The first centered on a campus-wide climate survey commissioned by the board of trustees. Critics of the administration deemed the survey inadequate, because of its dearth of questions about the president’s leadership.40 They began preparations for a survey of their own, one to be carried out officially under the auspices of SLU’s AAUP chapter led by Stacey Harris. In less than a week, Harris was threatened with a potential lawsuit for copyright infringement by the university’s General Counsel. The new survey, Harris was informed, could be seen as derivative of the old survey and as an infringement of the university’s copyright. This story not only hit the local press but went national. The STL Beacon quoted AAUP associate secretary Kreiser as describing the university’s actions as “remarkable, incomprehensible and almost bordering on unconscionable …. I’ll add the word stunning.”41 Organs

Contested frames and the role of the media 101 like the Chronicle of Higher Education commented on this crude attempt at intimidation.42 A single-question AAUP survey went forward and showed overwhelming support for the notion that it was time for SLU to choose a new president.

The end of the contest Less than one month before a widely-publicized gala to honor Biondi’s 25 years of service as president to the university, events rapidly spiraled out of control. Among the most important was the announcement from the chair of the board of trustees that he intended to step down. The local press immediately zeroed in on the story, using words like “tumult” to describe the preceding year.43 Members of the rebel alliance were struck by the changes in how the local press framed the news story. What had started out as a dispute over esoteric policies had now become a year of tumult and upheaval. Not long after the board chairman announced his pending resignation, the administration began adopting a more bellicose line towards critics. Just prior to a scheduled meeting of the Student Government Association, the Beacon reporter, Dale Singer, was told that the meeting was off limits to the press; as if to emphasize this point, campus security was posted just outside the room. Of all the reporters regularly covering the ongoing conflict at SLU, Singer had written articles that had presented the faculty’s side in greatest detail. This one-sidedness was a result not just of the electronic format of the Beacon but of the fact that, to his regret, university officials continued to refuse to speak to him.44 Once the meeting began, the president noticed two faculty members active in the opposition, Kathryn Kuhn and Greg Beabout, sitting in what was to be an open public meeting. He whispered loudly to the SGA president, “make them leave. Make Kathryn and Greg leave.” The SGA president, caught off guard, immediately ordered them to leave the meeting. Punctuating the order was the appearance of an armed campus security guard, apparently detailed to ensure that the two faculty members leave the meeting. This violation of SGA policy made headlines in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the local press.45 As Tim Barker put it, it set the stage for a potentially “contentious encounter” the following week, when both the president and the chairman of the board of trustees were slated to appear before the Faculty Senate.46 As it turned out, both called off their scheduled appearance, an apparent violation of an agreement with the Board of Trustees Executive Committee from the previous December.47 Faculty, including Senate president Mark Knuepfer, voiced their unhappiness publicly, and Clayton Berry, in a departure from previous policy, issued a statement quoted in the Post-Dispatch that bore little in the way of subtlety: “The personal attack against Father Biondi from the President of the Faculty Senate is disrespectful and shows the kind of unwarranted rhetoric that has been aimed at the president, the administration and now at the Board of Trustees.”48 Once again, the Unforgiving Faculty frame came into play. In the days and hours leading up to the gala, the dissident faculty did everything they could to attract the attention of the local media. They unleased a flurry

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of op-eds in the Post-Dispatch and Beacon. Dressing in orange-colored t-shirts proclaiming “No Confidence,” they sponsored a protest march beginning in the center of campus, moving to Biondi’s residence where a list of grievances was posted, and finally moving along the northern perimeter of campus to his office at the administration building. They put on an alternative gala, held at the same time as Biondi’s celebratory gala, even though the meeting of the board of trustees had already taken place earlier that day and any critical decisions had already been made. Radio, television and the newspaper reporters did indeed cover these events. But their coverage of these events was dwarfed by the press reports of the “real” gala where Biondi announced his “intent” to retire.49 This announcement, in turn, led to an outpouring of sympathy and best wishes for the leader hailed for having transformed a campus and its neighborhood.50 Ironically, it was only after he had for all intents and purposes lost the contest that the Biondi as Savior of Midtown frame gained a wide following. Biondi’s announcement of his intent to retire did not resolve the conflict. The problem was that Biondi gave no specific timetable for when he would leave the helm. He stated merely that he would assist in the search for his successor. As Kenneth Parker, associate professor of theological studies, put it in an interview with the Post-Dispatch, Biondi could “use his remaining time in office to punish those who have openly opposed him.”51 Parker’s forecast was, indeed born out in the coming months. The president specifically cut back salary increases approved by departmental chairs and deans for those active in the opposition. Targets included departmental chairs, Jesuits who had written a letter to the board of trustees calling for changes at SLU, dissident professors and even leaders in the Faculty Senate. In the middle of July, the faculty dissidents developed a plan of action, and it drew on the tried and true strategy of goading the president into a public relations blunder. They also returned to the frames of Biondi as Tyrant and Climate of Fear. The faculty opponents of Biondi found no difficulties in getting the local media and even the Chronicle of Higher Education to run a news story on the reductions in scheduled salary increases – with the exception of the Post-Dispatch.52 They opted instead to run op-eds in the St. Louis daily. Don Stump drafted an editorial, “Biondi’s Acts of Retribution and the Need for New Leadership at SLU.”53 Like almost all of the op-eds that had been previously published, it was vetted by the entire group of dissidents before being sent out. Tim Lomperis followed this up with a letter to the editor run by the Post-Dispatch two days later.54 For his part, the president returned to the Small Band of Malcontents and Pampered Professoriate frames. Once again, he took the bait, just as he had done in response to Annette Clark’s allegations almost a year earlier to the day. Referring specifically to the “recent commentaries from two faculty members,” he published his own op-ed in the Post-Dispatch on August 8, 2013. This year’s salary review process, he claimed, was no different from any other year; the board had given him the authority over how to weigh faculty performance.55 The complaints of a “few faculty members,” he insisted, “continue the saga of behavior from a small number of dissident faculty members, who obviously lack the stark

Contested frames and the role of the media 103 reality that their profession, like any other, requires them to be accountable. The past year’s turmoil from these complainers has been self-inflicted, self-absorbed and self-serving, and not in the best interest of our students’ hopes and dreams.” He added: “Our students come to SLU not to be subjected to these dissenters’ selfabsorbed motivation to be independent of professional accountability.” Few university presidents would have ventured to print such words about their faculty, particularly since they carried potentially problematic legal implications. Even though many commentators eagerly chimed in against the faculty “whiners”, it seems indisputable that this penultimate foray into the public arena proved to be his coup de grace.56 Just eight days after his op-ed appeared in print and just days after the Post-Dispatch ran a news story on the renewed strife between Biondi and the faculty, Biondi’s resignation was announced, effective September 1. Was this merely a coincidence in timing or was there a connection between the events? Based on what certain board members told us, we concluded the latter. Biondi had effectively admitted to having arbitrarily cut the raises for the faculty dissidents, claiming that the board had given him the authority to do so. Such admissions went too far, potentially opening the university up to legal actions. The year-long conflict was finally over, even if Biondi continued to fulminate against opponents and included a link to his op-ed from earlier in the month in his final message on August 30, 2013, as president to the university community and even if the president of the board of trustees would later dismiss “most of the controversy” surrounding the president, who was an “urban legend.”57

Conclusion It can be argued that the administration, board, and president were their own worst enemies. The restrictiveness of their master frame, with its emphasis on hierarchy, rationality, and obedience to rules and regulations, rendered their efforts to employ emotionally laden rhetorical frames highly problematic. Indeed, those efforts were the largest contributor to the frame confusion that plagued the president and others. So, too, the vacillating strategies we described above are evidence of frame confusion among those supporting the president. This confusion, we argue, played a role in shifting the views of some of the players in the mainstream media, and, by extension, at least a portion of the lay public. But the faculty’s success also stemmed, in part, from a strategy that it gradually put together between the fall and winter of 2012. The dissidents succeeded in transforming the story from one about faculty governance (a topic as arcane as it was unpopular) into a referendum on an arrogant and imperious cleric. Put differently, faculty members were able to adjust their own master frame and to develop persuasive rhetorical themes that were bolstered in large part by the administration and president. Operating from a more elaborative master frame, faculty members were able to incorporate and extend rhetorical frames without resulting in the confusion experienced by supporters of the president. Thus, they turned the story of their fight into that of “David versus Goliath.” In this vein, McClellan spun it as the cautionary tale, one of a downfall of a tyrant. He likened Biondi to

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Al Capone, Arab dictators and the Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista. Giving credibility to both of these narratives, the senior administration played directly into the hands of the insurgents. Heavy-handed measures, including threats of lawsuits and ordering faculty members and a journalist to leave public meetings seamlessly validated the rhetorical frame of a “climate of fear.” The faculty insurgents, moreover, were perceived by many, including some on the board, as rabble-rousers. In the words of Biondi, they were a “small band of malcontents.” Paradoxically, this categorization wound up strengthening the faculty position. Since it was the same group of dissidents who spoke out in the public arena, Biondi concluded that an unrepresentative group of faculty and students were driving the struggle, and more critically, that they lacked support from the overwhelming majority of their peers. In his interview with McClellan, Biondi specifically pointed to the existence of a social media page, “SLU Students for No Confidence in ‘SLU Students for No Confidence.’”58 Nothing could have been further from the truth, as the nearly unanimous votes of no-confidence and the results of both the administration’s and the dissidents’ survey of the campus climate had made amply clear. But it seems that the president was the person most persuaded by his own rhetorical frames. In dismissing critics as malcontents and listening only to sycophantic supporters, Biondi no doubt believed that he could easily withstand what little hue and cry would take place in response to his acts of retribution against seemingly unpopular faculty. But in retaliating, he showed that he had no grasp of the classic strategies employed by insurgencies. The goal of the dissidents was to convince the public, and by extension the board, that Biondi had lost the moral authority requisite for a Jesuit president at a Jesuit university. In a terrain of contested frames, the opposition gained the upper hand at least in part due to the careful deployment of rhetorical frames that tapped into broader cultural beliefs. David, it seemed, was not such a bad guy after all. The effective framing of faculty as David, facing a culture of fear, under the thumb of a tyrant, and wanting to recover a time-honored mission, tapped into the cultural narrative of the morally principled underdog seizing victory from the jaws of defeat.

Notes 1 Joep Cornelissen and Mirjam Werner, “Putting Framing in Perspective: A Review of Framing and Frame Analysis across the Management and Organizational Literature,” Academy of Management Annals 8, no. 10 (2014). 2 David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 4 (August 1986): 464–481. 3 Timothy J. Hargrave and Andrew H. Van De Ven, “A Collective Action Model of Institutional Innovation,” Academy of Management Review 31, No. 4 (2006): 864–888. 4 Audrey Williams June, “Faculty-Review Proposal at Saint Louis U would ‘Eviscerate Tenure,’ AAUP Says,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 30, 2012. 5 Ruff tallied 36 articles by the STL Beacon, but the figure has to remain approximate, since several of these stories were either updated or combined with other stories. These figures do not include the reports covering the allegations of sexual harassment against

Contested frames and the role of the media 105 6 7 8

9 10 11

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and subsequent resignation of the president’s hand-picked successor as Dean of the Law School. David A. Snow, and Robert D. Benford, “Master frames and cycles of protest,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. A.D. Morris and C.M. Mueller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 140. Neil J. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (New York: The Free Press, 1963). Alex Ihnen, “SLU Law Dean Annette Clark resigns citing numerous disputes with President Fr. Biondi,” NextSTL, August 8, 2012. http://nextstl.com/2012/08/slu -law-dean-annette-clark-resigns-citing-numerous-disputes-with-president-fr-biondi/ (accessed July 25, 2014). Dale Singer, “SLU Law Dean resigns, blasts administration’s tactics and commitment,” STL Beacon, 8 August 2012. Tim Barker, “Discord rocks SLU Law School,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9, 2012. Jennifer Smith, “Dean resigns in row over Law School autonomy,” WSJ Law Blog, August 8, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/08/deans-noisy-resignation-sheds -light-on-battle-for-law-school-autonomy/?KEYWORDS=%22lawrence+biondi%22 (accessed February 11, 2020). Ibid. Lawrence Biondi, August 2012 Message, August 28, 2012, 1–4. Comment by M.a.Harris, https://www.facebook.com/plugins/comments.php?api_ key=205112096200104&channel_url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ak.facebook.com%2F connect%2Fxd_arbiter%2FoDB-fAAStWy.js%3Fversion%3D41%23cb%3Df22be 33bd3e2ce4%26domain%3Dwww.stltoday.com%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F% 252Fwww.stltoday.com%252Ff3e1d95f9e9a2c8%26relation%3Dparent.parent&href= http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stltoday.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Feducation%2Farticle _8fd025bf-31e9-58d2-a720-acaa2fe74bf8.html%3Fmode%3Dcomments&locale=en _US&numposts=50&sdk=joey&width=620# (Accessed July 25, 2014). For a letter comment by M.a.Harris, see the comments section following the editorial, “The SLU Crisis: Faculty and Student Concerns Must Be Addressed,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 2, 2012. June, “Faculty-Review Proposal.” Tim Barker, “St. Louis University Faculty Evaluations Called an Assault on Tenure,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 31, 2012. For another example of the faculty reluctance to speak out publicly, see Tim Barker, “St. Louis University Drops Proposal to Review Tenure,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 18, 2012. Barker wrote: “Professors complained privately about a new ‘post-tenure review’ process in which tenured professors would have to justify their tenure every six years.” Rich Akins, as posted in the comments section of Barker, “St. Louis University Faculty Evaluations.” http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/st-louis-university-facul ty-evaluations-called-an-assault-on-tenure/article_9b93df71-ce1d-5fe1-b38e-c7dc2 b2b1c65.html?mode=comments (accessed July 25, 2014). Ibid.; see commentaries by Scott T. Meier, Brian Douglas, Harvey Chiles and Robert Smith. Ibid.; see the commentary of David McCrary. Editorial, “The SLU Crisis: Faculty and Student Concerns Must Be Addressed,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 2, 2012. Todd Frankel, “At St. Louis University, a President Known for Battles Is Now Caught in an Unfamiliar Fight,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 November 2012. Lawrence Biondi, S.J., Letter to SLU Trustees, Faculty, Staff and Students, October 30, 2012. This was the view expressed by Bonnie Wilson in the Post-Dispatch – and by the writer himself. See Todd Frankel, “At St. Louis University.”

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25 Matt Mancini, letter to the editor, “SLU Trustees Outsource Their Duties,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 6, 2012; Ellen Carnaghan, “What’s Actually Going on at SLU,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 20, 2012; Robert Cropf, Scott Cummings, and Daniel Monti, “Cracks in SLU’s Iron Curtain,” STL Beacon, December 4, 2012. 26 Bill McClellan, “History Museum, SLU put a call in to Mess Busters,” St. Louis PostDispatch, December 9, 2012. 27 See the comments by Christina LaFon in Adam Allington, “SLU Faculty, Students, Want Father Biondi Out,” St. Louis Public Radio, November 6, 2012. 28 Fox 2 News, The Jaco Report, November 18, 2012, http://fox2now.com/2012/11/18/ jaco-report-nov-18-2012/ (accessed July 28, 2014). 29 Thomas Brouster, memo to Saint Louis University Trustees, November 30, 2012, as posted on https://docs.google.com/a/slu.edu/file/d/0B7HsEqmC0EunUGFoZDc4QjF GWUk/edit?pli=1 (accessed July 29, 2014). 30 Nancy Cambria, “Letter Reignites Faculty Anger at St. Louis University,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 3, 2012. 31 Nancy Cambria to Mark Ruff, October 12, 2012. 32 Robert Cropf and Kathryn Kuhn, “Who’s on First at SLU?,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 6, 2013. 33 Philip Alderson, Ken Fleischmann, Jay Goff, Ellen Harshman, David Heimburger, and Gary Whitworth, “Faculty Members Misrepresent the Work of SLU Administration,“ Letter to the Editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 7, 2013, https://www.stltoday .com/opinion/mailbag/faculty-members-misrepresent-the-work-of-slu-administration/ article_a8aba6a4-795c-5bf4-9168-5014ce4cefe0.html (accessed February 15, 2020). 34 Tony Messenger to Mark Ruff, February 8, 2013. 35 Bill McClellan, “Father Biondi Takes SLU Controversy in Stride,” St. Louis PostDispatch, December 21, 2012. 36 Lawrence Biondi, S.J., to SLU Trustees, Faculty, Staff, Students, Parents and Benefactors, February 27, 2013. 37 Melissa Meinzer, “Excerpts: New SLU Law Dean: I Am Not Biondi’s ‘Butt Boy,’” Missouri Lawyers Media, August 24, 2012, http://molawyersmedia.com/2012/08/2 4/excerpts-new-slu-law-dean-i-am-not-biondis-butt-boy/ (accessed February 29, 2020.). 38 Sam Levin, “SLU Law Dean Resigns Over Offensive Remarks. ‘If I Was Them, I’d Fire Me,’” Riverfront Times, March 5, 2013; Adam Allington, “Interim SLU Law School Dean Resigns Amid Controversy,” St. Louis Public Radio, March 4, 2013; Nancy Cambria, “SLU’s Interim Law School Dean Says He’s Done, ‘Too Politically Incorrect’ for the Job,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 4, 2013; Tim Barker, “St. Louis University Names New Dean of Law School,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 5, 2013; Dale Singer, “SLU’s Keefe Says He Left to Avoid Being Lightning Rod,” STL Beacon, March 6, 2013. 39 Michael Lucido, “It Is Time to Speak Against Injustice,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 6, 2013. 40 See Tim Barker, “SLU Campus Survey Riles Biondi’s Critics,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 27, 2013; Dale Singer, “SLU Survey Aims at Gauging Climate on Campus,” STL Beacon, March 27, 2013; “Biondi critics riled up over SLU Survey,” St. Louis Business Journal, March 27, 2013. 41 Dale Singer, “SLU Threatens Legal Action over New Faculty Survey,” STL Beacon, April 1, 2013; Joe Holleman, “Survey Says: Breaking up at SLU Is Hard to Do,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 1, 2013; Sam Levin, “Saint Louis University: Administration Threatens Legal Action over Professor’s Survey,” Riverfront Times, April 2, 2013; “SLU Threatens to Sue over Faculty Survey,” St. Louis Business Journal, April 2, 2013; 42 Peter Schmidt, “Saint Louis U Threatens Faculty with Copyright Suit over CampusClimate Survey,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2, 2013, http://chronicle.com

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/article/Saint-Louis-U-Threatens/138237/?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium =en (accessed January 23, 2020); Mike Masnick, “Copyright as Censorship: University Threatens Own Faculty for Copyright Infringement for Campus Survey,” Techdirt, April 4, 2013. Dale Singer, “Chairman of SLU Board of Trustees Stepping Down,” STL Beacon, April 13, 2013; Nancy Cambria, “St. Louis University Board Chair Resigns,” St. Louis PostDispatch, April 12, 2013; Adam Allington, “SLU Chairman of the Board Steps Down,” St. Louis Public Radio, April 12, 2013; Interview with Dale Singer, August 4, 2014. See the latter portions of the article, Dale Singer, “Biondi, SLU Board President, Won’t Meet with Faculty,” STL Beacon, April 29, 2013; Nick DeSantis, “Tensions at Saint Louis U. Flare over Professors’ Removal from Meeting,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 26, 2013, https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/tensions-at -saint-louis-u-flare-over-professors-removal-from-meeting (accessed February 15, 2020); Tim Barker, “Flare-Up at SLU over Faculty Members Removed from Student Government Meeting,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 25, 2013. Barker, “Flare-Up at SLU.” Singer, “Biondi, SLU Board President, Won’t Meet.” Nancy Cambria, “Canceled Biondi Appearance angers SLU Faculty,” St. Louis PostDispatch, April 29, 2013. Fox 2 News, “SLU Staff and Students March against Father Biondi,” May 1, 2013, http://fox2now.com/2013/05/01/protest-march-against-father-biondi-planned-for-we dnesday/ (accessed July 31, 2014); Michele Munz, “Biondi’s Retirement Brings Relief to SLU Students Sick of Campus Drama,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6, 2013; Bill McClellan, “My Dinner at Chaifetz,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6, 2013. Joan Kiburz, “Biondi Created Gorgeous Campus at SLU,” letter to the editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 2013; Alderman Fred Wessels, “Biondi Changed the Face of Midtown,” letter to the editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 2013; Deanna Heuermann, “SLU Progressed to First-Rate Institution,” letter to the editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 2013; Bret Riegel, “SLU needed Biondi’s Personality to Make It All Happen,” letter to the editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 2013. Tim Barker, “Critics Are Relieved as Biondi Announces He’ll Step Down at SLU,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5, 2013. Dale Singer, “SLU Criticized for Reduced Faculty Raises,” STL Beacon, July 19, 2013; Rachel Lippmann, “SLU Professors Allege Smaller Raises Are Retaliation for Speaking Out against Biondi,” St. Louis Public Radio, July 18, 2013; “Saint Louis Faculty Allege Retaliation by Raise – or Lack Thereof,” Inside Higher Ed, July 19, 2013; Seth Zweifler, “Nearing Retirement, President of Saint Louis U Still Stirs Controversy,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2013. Donald Stump, “Biondi’s Acts of Retribution and the Need for New Leadership at SLU,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 2, 2013. Timothy Lomperis, “Biondi Should Go Now,” letter to the editor, St. Louis PostDispatch, August 4, 2013. Lawrence Biondi, “Biondi: Criticism of SLU Raises Didn’t Tell the Whole Story,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 8, 2013. For one example, see Ben Janson, “Agrees That Whiners Should Leave,” letter to the editor, St. Louis Post Dispatch, August 21, 2013. See the many comments by Rich Akins in response to Lawrence Biondi, “Biondi: Criticism of SLU Raises.” http:// www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/biondi-criticism-of-slu-raises-didn-t-tell-th e-whole/article_b879fc80-c49d-537e-9104-d879a0197d71.html?mode=comments. Lawrence BIondi, S.J., Letter to SLU Trustees, Faculty, Staff, Students, Parents and Benefactors, August 30, 2013; Koran Addo, “SLU Changes Leadership for the First Time in 26 Years,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 1, 2014. Bill McClellan, “Father Biondi.”

7

Almost empty places Jesuit mission and identity as rhetorical Topoi Paul Lynch

Anyone who works at a Jesuit school is likely to hear frequent rhetorical recourse to “the mission,” an appeal that presumes a widely held understanding of the institution’s character and identity. “The mission” can be invoked in a variety of contexts for a variety of claims. It can be employed to support curricular arguments, as in, “Of course we need nine hours of theology in the core. That’s just fundamental to the mission.” It can be employed to support arguments about academic excellence, as in, “If we don’t hire the best faculty and give them the strongest support, how we can we uphold the mission?” Increasingly, it can be employed in disputes about compensation for adjuncts, as in, “Of course we have to pay better; otherwise, how can we say that we’re living out the mission?”1 The fight over SLU’s future provided many opportunities for the mission appeal. Critics charged the president with failing to live up to the institution’s professed ideals. There were claims that SLU had “departed from the Jesuit tradition that is the source of much of its greatness and hope for the future”2 and that President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., was not “focusing his last years on supporting SLU’s academic and spiritual mission.”3 Yet Fr. Biondi himself made precisely the same arguments in various defenses of his record. Citing the number of SLU students who received Pell Grants, he wrote, “This is significant because it demonstrates our mission-driven commitment to providing access.” In addition, he insisted that student support services “play an essential role in helping fulfill our Jesuit mission to educate the whole person.”4 Nor was Fr. Biondi the only Jesuit who appealed to the mission. Two weeks ahead of a key no-confidence vote, 15 Jesuit professors praised their lay colleagues for “the many ways in which you are living out the mission of Saint Louis University.”5 This statement seemed to endorse faculty resistance – or at the very least refused to condemn it. All these appeals presume that Jesuit mission and identity possess some public meaning firm enough to found arguments. Yet the very ubiquity of reference to “the mission” also suggests that the idea is too broadly construed to resolve disputes. It is clear that “the mission” possesses rhetorical power; otherwise, no one would invoke it. The mission is not meaningless. But neither is it definitively meaningful. Even SLU’s Jesuits, the supposed source of the university’s mission, seemed to wrestle over who had the right to claim it.

Almost empty places 109 Given this excess and instability, the ideas of “mission” and “identity” might be best understood not as some definitive (or prohibitive) content, but rather as topoi – rhetorical “places” from which and through which a variety of claims might be invented. Since Aristotle, rhetoricians have conventionally understood topoi as patterns or structures for inventing arguments. For example, from the topos of “more and less,” one might argue, “If not even the gods know everything, human beings can hardly do so.”6 The content of this argument, which presumes some prior conventional understanding about gods and humans, might shift from context to context. In another culture, one might be more inclined to say “if the people do not know what they want, the President should not know what he wants.” But the shape of the argument endures, and that shape offers a pattern for constructing arguments. As suggested by the word’s Greek etymology, topoi are like landmarks within a rhetorical territory. They can provide the means by which rhetors may map available paths of deliberation. Wayne Booth takes the topological metaphor a step further and defines topoi as “the almost-empty places-of-agreement where those who think they disagree can stand as they hammer out their disagreements.”7 Topoi are “almost-empty” insofar as they possess enduring forms with which and through which rhetors think through new deliberative situations. But Booth’s definition also suggests that topoi are places in the more literal sense of the arenas in which those arguments may be made. Topoi are structures not just of conflict, but also community. They therefore afford opportunity not only for persuasion, but also for identification, the community creation (and re-creation) that is often a pre-condition for what we traditionally think of as persuasion. In other words, before rhetors can appeal to a set of commonplaces, there must be a common place. The pre-condition of identification was implicit in SLU’s discourse of crisis, much of which centered around who was and was not a part of SLU’s community. The start of the struggle, for example, has often been dated to the resignation of the law school dean, which was swiftly followed by the administration’s rival claim that she was about to be fired. It might also be dated from the then-provost’s infamous proposals for post-tenure review, which would have allowed allegedly “dead wood” to be cut away. These moments were followed by the no-confidence votes, along with the president’s dismissal of his critics as “a small number of dissident faculty.” Throughout these events, the question of who could deliberate became at least as important as any deliberative content. Ultimately, then, my argument is that the struggle over (or rather, through) the mission topos was resolved not with more persuasive content, but with more persuasive community.8 That is to say, the effect of the no-confidence movement was not so much to change the meaning of “the mission,” but rather to extend the number of those who could claim it. This outcome challenges conventional assumptions about the nature of rhetorical activity. Implicit in much rhetorical criticism is the idea that rhetors should articulate the most persuasive arguments for their various audiences. But in the case of SLU, the most persuasive arguments were not so much the content of mission and identity, but rather the question of who could shape or assert that content.

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Though the mission might have seemed to be the de facto possession of those with “S.J.” after their names, even the claims and counter-claims of Jesuits themselves could not resolve conflict.9 Such rhetorical problems are of course not limited to Jesuit schools. Any mission-driven institution – public or private, religious or secular – will face arguments over what precisely its mission means and entails. But SLU’s particular Jesuit heritage occasioned an ironic sort of crisis in which non-Jesuits would critique and eventually help expel a Jesuit president for failing to live up to Jesuit ideals. In so doing, the most important rhetorical achievement of SLU’s no-confidence movement was to open the almost empty place of “the mission” to all.

Jesuit mission and identity: a brief history To say that Jesuit mission and identity are disputable is not to say that they lack any specific meaning at all. Even non-Jesuits will produce similar descriptions of Jesuit ideals. Sarah Bonewits Feldner, associate professor of communication at Marquette University, defines Jesuit education as “rooted in a liberal arts curriculum coupled with spiritual development. Jesuit education is framed as education for the whole person (spiritual and moral). The Ignatian principle of helping manifests itself in education that is centered on reflection, social justice, finding God in all things, and cura personalis (care for the whole person).”10 In a similar vein, a group of scholars at Creighton University writes, “The 450-year tradition of Jesuit education has come to mean commitment to high intellectual and ethical standards, personal concern for every student, and the ability to ‘find God in all things,’ particularly the poor and oppressed.”11 The overlap of these definitions, offered by lay people, is notable. Yet in Do You Speak Ignatian?, a glossary of Jesuit terminology now in its 12th edition, Jesuit Gary Traub defines “Education, Jesuit” not with an assertion, but with a series of questions: Will so-called Jesuit institutions of higher education simply merge with mainstream American academe and thereby lose any distinctiveness and reason for existing – or will they have the creativity to become more distinctive? […] While developing the mind, surely, will they also develop a global, cross-cultural imagination and a compassionate heart to recognize and work for the common good, especially for bettering the lot of the poor and voiceless … or will the dominant values present in them be self-interest and the “bottom line”?12 Fellow Jesuits J.A. Appleyard and Howard Gray seem to confirm Traub’s implicit read of the scene: “The conversation about the mission and identity of Jesuit colleges and universities is more than thirty years old and shows no sign of reaching terminal clarity soon.”13 Appleyard and Gray, who both have served as administrators at Jesuit universities, trace the mission conversation through three major phases: the control model, the professional model, and the mission model. The control model, they write, characterized Jesuit schools in the years

Almost empty places 111 following World War II and featured a top-down style of decision making with Jesuits firmly in charge, holding not only the presidency but also most of the upper administration positions. In such an arrangement, mission and identity were simply never at issue: “it was assumed that the Jesuits, collectively, took responsibility for such matters.”14 Then came Vatican II, which sought to move the Church “from the serene, lordly mountaintop of certitude and clarity down into the messy valley of human challenges, risks, and ambiguities.”15 Catholic universities would soon follow. Gaudium et Spes, one of the four pastoral constitutions of Vatican II, would inspire the “Land O’Lakes Statement” in 1967. Produced by the International Federation of Catholic Universities, “Land O’ Lakes” insisted on the academic independence of Catholic universities. “To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.”16 This declaration signaled a shift away from the control model and toward greater academic professionalization.17 While “Land O’Lakes” does insist that Catholicism should be “perceptively present and effectively operative,”18 the claim of academic freedom was decisive. This move toward academic independence was complemented by a similar move toward institutional independence. In 1967, the same year as “Land O’ Lakes,” Saint Louis University became the first Jesuit school to create a lay board of trustees, while at the same time the local Jesuit province officially separated itself from the university.19 Four years later, 20 of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities had done the same.20 In essence, this development meant that the Jesuits no longer directly controlled the universities defined by Jesuit identity. These events occasioned what Appleyard and Gray call the “professional model,” in which Jesuit schools sought, as Jesuit Raymond Schroth puts it, to “compete for excellence on the same terms as secular schools.”21 Departments looked for the best and brightest faculty members that they could recruit, not at their religious affiliation or their identification with the school as Catholic and Jesuit.22 Undoubtedly, this shift pushed Jesuit schools toward greater academic and professional achievement. But for some, the new orientation undermined the commitment to mission. “The most severe critics would claim that, in the process of making this very obvious progress, our colleges and universities have lost or are losing their identity as Jesuit and Catholic.”23 Appleyard and Gray suggest that the professional model shifted the seat of Jesuit identity “from the president’s office to campus ministry (which also became an area where professional credentials counted).”24 To address this anxiety, Jesuit schools, including Saint Louis University, began to name vice presidents for mission. From this development comes Appleyard and Gray’s third phase, which they call the “mission model,” an attempt to maintain a difficult balance. In the mission model, the university still wants top researchers, but it seeks to connect that academic knowledge to Jesuit spiritual practice. If the control model was no longer viable, and the professional model had come to be seen by some as an overcorrection, the mission model would offer a third way. It would challenge the supremacy of the professional model while maintaining

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the academic gains brought by professionalization. The operative question of the mission model would be this: “how do faith and learning mutually challenge and enrich each other?”25 Answering that question has been complicated by other developments in the Jesuit order’s sense of its own mission and identity. Beginning with the election of Superior General Pedro Arrupe in 1965 (the year of Gaudium et Spes), the Jesuits would follow the church in moving toward more direct engagement with the world and its problems. Arrupe’s most famous statement on these matters is his 1973 address “Men for Others,” whose title, now often recast as “Men and Women for Others,” has become a shibboleth in Jesuit schools. Simply put, the idea of “Men and Women for Others” is that students at Jesuit schools should see service to the world as a fundamental part of their own vocations. Jesuit education, Arrupe insisted, had to be reimagined to shape people “completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for men is a farce.”26 In other words, being “religious” required something in addition to formal piety. Two years after this speech, the 32nd General Congregation of the Jesuits would insist that “[t]he mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.”27 Not everyone – including some Jesuits – welcomed what Jesuit leadership acknowledged was a “new direction.”28 But even for those who did welcome it, a challenge remained: how could the new social justice apostolate be reconciled with the older and more familiar educational apostolate? A quarter-century after “Men for Others,” the order was still working on the problem. In an address offered in 2000 at Santa Clara University, superior general Peter Hans Kolvenbach told his audience that “Arrupe did not ask for the suppression of the apostolate activity of education in favor of social activity.”29 Kolvenbach added that the Jesuit idea of formation, which should go beyond the classroom, “does not make the university a training ground for social activists.”30 These reassurances suggest a certain level of anxiety as to whether the “mission model” had undermined the university’s traditional academic purpose. At the same time, Kolvenbach refused to retreat from the idea that research and teaching should be oriented toward a religious purpose. “A legitimate question, even if it does not sound academic, is for each professor to ask, ‘When researching and teaching, where and with whom is my heart?’”31 Despite his reservations, the title of his address, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education,” signaled an ongoing commitment to the direction ushered in by Arrupe. All of these developments have contributed to bringing the idea of “the mission” to the forefront of Jesuit schools. In so doing, they have occasioned other challenges. As Feldner notes, faculty and staff may “embrace the significant spiritual purpose of the organization, yet they feel unable to live up to the greatness embodied by the mission.”32 Here, the mission may cause a sense of disquiet among those being asked to carry it out. One faculty member ruefully recounts his own experience: “when cura personalis33 bumps up against the normative requirements of scholarship, the norms often win out.”34 Whatever claims to the

Almost empty places 113 mission a Jesuit university might make, it remains in tension with the professional model. Meanwhile, the mission is also a place from which critics note the ways in which universities fail to live up to the mission in other ways, such as on issues like child care or maternity leave.35 As these various issues suggest, the movement between Appleyard and Gray’s models is not linear, nor are the boundaries impermeable. Certainly that was the experience at SLU. For example, the president’s critics, and some of his most ardent defenders, described his management approach in terms that suggest the control model.36 Meanwhile, the professional model, which places a lay board in charge of a Jesuit university, also shaped the crisis. The board publicly supported the president throughout the crisis, appearing to critics to be deferent to the old habits of the control model, in which it was assumed that Father knew best.37 Yet the professional model of academic excellence also provided grounds for criticism of the president, as detractors regularly cited SLU’s decline in the US News and World Report as evidence that he was no longer interested in academics. The professional model provided more than one audience for the no-confidence movement insofar as the president was answerable not only to his order, but also to his board. But most importantly, the mission model provided rhetorical grounds for many of the president’s opponents to argue that the school had lost all sense of its true purpose. It quickly became apparent that, to paraphrase Appleyard and Gray, it would no longer be assumed that the Jesuits simply took responsibility for such matters as mission.

Mission as identification Although the no-confidence movement was successful – insofar as the president left office earlier than he intended – it is uncertain that traditional persuasion played much of a role. During his 25th anniversary gala speech, in which he announced his retirement, the president made it clear that he remained unmoved by the appeals of his opponents. Referring to the many construction projects he had overseen during his tenure, he expressed gratitude that buildings are easier to deal with than people. “Of course, it has never been only about bricks and mortars. Thank God. Because bricks and mortars do not hold rallies or even demonstrations. They quietly sit there.” It is clear from these and other remarks that he was not persuaded, at least not in the familiar sense of an open-minded person calmly coming to agreement with his interlocutors based on the power of their arguments. But persuasion is not the only way to understand the rhetorical effects of the mission appeal. Identification, as outlined by American rhetorician Kenneth Burke (1897–1993), offers another productive means of analysis. If “persuasion” indicates the intentional, artful efforts by which a rhetor appeals to an audience, “identification” suggests an orientation toward others that is prior to persuasion. At its most basic, identification speaks to the ways in which diverse individuals or constituencies come to identify their interests in common.38 It speaks, in other words, to how we experience and manage belonging. “Thus, a person may think of himself as ‘belonging’ to some special body more or less clearly defined (family, race, profession, church, social class, nation, etc., or various combinations of

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these).”39 In these situations, one’s identity might do all the work of traditional persuasion. At a deeper level, however, identification describes an inclination toward managing division that may be present in all discourse. When expressed in partisan terms, however, this tension between identification and division becomes for Burke decidedly rhetorical. It is the activity of what he calls “the state of Babel after the fall.”40 In such situations, particularly those that lack conventional arenas for deliberation, Burke named identification as central to rhetorical activity.41 In post-fall Babels, Burke argues, identification is a much more powerful proof than any standard appeal. Nor is identification an unquestionable good (or division an unquestionable failure): Burke reminds us that “war” is the “ultimate disease of cooperation.”42 An honest division is quite preferable to a dishonest identification. Identification can happen by the creation of a “rapport” with an audience; it can happen by “antithesis,” in which an “us” is made by our being “not-them”; it can happen by “inaccuracy,” as when a sports fan cries “we” won.43 Of these, the third may be most powerful and most dangerous. Of the word “we,” Burke writes, “surely first prize for the vagaries and vaguenesses of identification must go to that tiny first-person plural pronoun.”44 In effect, the crisis at SLU was a question of “we.” Who was in the community? How was it maintained? How did it manage division? Prior to crisis, identification-by-division (us-vs.-them) seemed to be the norm. For example, the president had succeeded so thoroughly in separating the board and the faculty that only in November 2012 did board members’ email addresses even became available (and even then only on the “SLU Students for No Confidence” Facebook page). But in the wake of the no-confidence votes, new “we’s” began to form. The executive committees of the Faculty Senate and board of trustees began meeting and produced what became known as the “six points” – six statements committing both bodies to reform (or at least talking about how to talk about reform). Meanwhile, faculty opened both “official” lines of communication and unofficial ones. Critics took to the thoroughfares of the campus and occasionally to the city streets to insist on the president’s resignation. As they staked these literal places, they also staked rhetorical places. A flurry of writing – everything from op-eds in local newspapers, internal reports on the state of the university, and hand-lettered protest signs – put the confrontation squarely in the public eye. This explosion meant that the almost empty places of mission and identity were now overflowing with disputants and discourse. Critics could appeal to a new audience of spectators, including other faculty and students, board members, the Jesuit order, and the wider public in and beyond St. Louis. In Appleyard and Gray’s terms, SLU’s version of the control model was giving way to a wider understanding of the mission model. This is not to say that the mere existence of rhetorical activity was sufficient to dislodge the president, a claim that would reduce rhetoric to brute power. Both talking to the president and then past the president demanded a great deal of traditional rhetorical activity, including the acknowledgement of multiple audiences along with the appeals most appropriate for those audiences. The quality of the arguments mattered as much as their quantity.45 But most importantly,

Almost empty places 115 the presence of public deliberation made the case not simply for the president’s removal, but also for the idea that no single person, not even a Jesuit, could alone represent the university.

Mission as an almost empty place Within this evolving rhetorical situation, the topos of mission also began to evolve. What began simply as general appeals to the mission became specific deliberation about the mission itself. Most importantly, both Jesuits and non-Jesuits were arguing on equal terms about the nature of the mission. On October 19, 2012, several Jesuits published an open letter praising their lay colleagues for their service to the university. This message, signed by 15 Jesuit faculty and administrators, appeared between two Faculty Senate no-confidence votes, the first against the Vice President for Academic Affairs (September 25), the second against the President (October 30). The letter does not mention the president, either by name or by title. Its description of the crisis is similarly circumspect, using phrases such as “critical moment,” “recent events,” and “serious challenges.” However, when the question comes to identifying a constituency with the mission, the letter is quite clear: Given the care we have for the identity and mission of this Jesuit apostolate, and as one group among many in this community, we cannot help but give voice to our moral convictions. Many of us have been working quietly to exert a constructive influence in the ways that we can. We also wish to let you know that we share your concerns for the good of the university. Your desire to care for the well-being and promote the mission of SLU is very much in keeping with its Jesuit character.46 The letter unmistakably identifies the university’s Jesuit mission with the nonJesuit faculty and the 15 Jesuit signatories, a group that excludes the president. What might have been unthinkable during the control era – when Jesuit identity was so unquestioned that it might have been strange to talk about Jesuit “identity” at all – had now become rhetorically possible: Jesuits appeared willing to link their identity and mission with lay faculty. Similar ironies soon followed. A few days later, Fr. Michael Barber, S.J., dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (and signatory of the October 19 letter), spoke about the crisis at the fall college assembly. He opened his remarks by noting that, given the current circumstances, “it is not appropriate to conduct the Fall Faculty Assembly as we would any fall assembly.” He then praised the faculty for “taking risks because of your sense of responsibility to and for others.”47 As with the letter, Barber never names the president, nor does he refer to specific aspects of the unfolding crisis. Yet his identification of the mission with the lay faculty is unmistakable: “we have been a community of people who are morally responsible to and for each other.” “Jesuit-ness,” at least as articulated by Jesuit faculty, was again identified with lay colleagues.

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The communications committee for the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council seemed to take a cue from these remarks. On November 2, 2012, they addressed a letter to the provincial, Douglas Marcouiller, S.J., associate professor in economics.48 Though none of the authors were Jesuits, they did not hesitate to frame their concern in Jesuit terms, as though they saw themselves as part of the same moral community as their Jesuit colleagues. The first paragraph seeks not only the “intervention” of the Jesuit community, but also its “spiritual counsel.” After describing the circumstances and outcomes of the no-confidence votes, the letter laments that “the companionship that stands as the hallmark of any Jesuit community is broken.” The phrase “Jesuit community” usually connotes Jesuits only. (At SLU, for example, the “Jesuit community” mostly lives at the aptly named Jesuit Hall.) Here, however, Jesuit community is stretched to include the faculty writing the letter. In addition, the letter articulates the sense that the faculty is being prevented from advancing “the Jesuit education mission of free and open inquiry as well as fulfill[ing] its divine calling to serve as men and women for others.” This latter phrase reveals another overlap between the professional and mission models. In one gesture, it claims the academic value of inquiry (as also articulated in “Land O’ Lakes”) while at the same moment linking that value to Arrupe’s 1974 address. Finally, the letter closes with its boldest argument: We have taken the unusual step of sending this expression of spiritual concern up the Jesuit chain-of-command because we urge the Jesuit Community to undertake a process of spiritual discernment with their brother-in-the-faith Lawrence Biondi to determine whether his calling from God is to continue down this path of confrontation or to play the servant role of re-invigorating the Jesuit mission of Saint Louis University by stepping aside in a way that will earn the gratitude of the university community—and restore its spiritual health.49 More than a simple appeal to mission, this passage assumes a familiarity with the Jesuit way of proceeding and even instructs the Jesuits on their next steps. In his response, the provincial would clarify that way of proceeding, writing “the Jesuit ‘chain of command,’ as you describe it, runs through the local provincial to the superior general.”50 The provincial thus makes clear that only two people are empowered to remove a Jesuit from his position: the provincial and the superior general of the worldwide society. Yet the provincial declined to remove the president or even make public statement, even though other Jesuits persisted in public action, including sponsoring a nine-day “novena of grace,” which was held December 4–13, 2012, near a statue of St. Ignatius on campus. In addition, Fr. Chris Collins, S.J., assistant professor in the department of theological studies, would offer the invocation at a protest outside the December 15 board meeting. Yet the most explicit appeals to the mission would continue to come from nonJesuits. In February 2013, a group of lay faculty created the “Heithaus Haven,” a blog designed as “an online space for members of the Saint Louis University community to deliberate on the core values of our institution.”51 The blog would take

Almost empty places 117 its name from Claude Heithaus, a Jesuit who publicly called for the racial integration of SLU in 1944 against the will of his superiors. At SLU, the name Heithaus yokes fidelity to mission with dissent from administration. In addition, the vast majority of Heithaus bloggers were lay faculty, who had now claimed Heithaus’ identity as their own.52 The Haven was also a forum for direct challenges to the Jesuits, including one written by the author of the present article. “Fr. Heithaus’s Example: A Duty to Lead” represents an overt public accusation of leadership failure on the part of the local Jesuits while articulating the same issues of identification that characterized the entire crisis. Once again, the essay reveals enduring ambiguity around Appleyard and Gray’s competing models of governance. I have also heard the argument that the Jesuits would set a bad precedent if they were to intervene in the current situation. Saint Louis University is run by a lay board, not by the Jesuits themselves; were they to interfere now, the argument goes, they would send a dangerous signal to any future president.53 This argument, while never offered publicly by the provincial, did circulate in the university community (thus, the somewhat vague opening “I have heard”). “Duty” rejects this argument on the grounds that the present circumstances are so extraordinary that any intervening action is unlikely to set a precedent. Moreover, the essay observes that some Jesuits would like to see action, but feel constrained from speaking: “many Jesuits feel embarrassed and angered by what is happening at SLU. Will they say so publicly?”54 Here, we see an intensifying of the challenge. Where the open letter of November 2, 2012, had urged local Jesuit leaders to undertake an internal process of deliberation, this essay urges Jesuits beyond the leadership to enter more explicitly into public debate. Challenges to Jesuit leadership and critiques of what seemed to be many to be Jesuit silence would continue to intensify. On April 4, Kenneth Parker, associate professor of theology, published a commentary in the student University News. His main purpose was to reject the president’s stated desire to reestablish trust with the faculty, which he described as “‘déjà vu all over again.’” The essay goes on to cite previous promises that had been broken. But Parker reserved his most challenging critique for the Jesuits themselves: Perhaps the greatest scandal is the invisibility of Jesuit spiritual leadership in this time of crisis. Lay faculty (many non-Catholic) and students are in the forefront of this conflict, defending the Catholic Jesuit character of Saint Louis University. Yet superiors of the Society of Jesus have yet to take a clear public stand in a matter central to the integrity of a great Jesuit university. Hand wringing in private is no longer sufficient. The tone of this appeal is much sharper than the similar appeals in “Duty.” It moves from a rhetorical question to a rhetorical accusation, punctuated by the image of private hand wringing. The commentary also observes the central irony of lay and non-Catholic faculty defending Jesuit mission and identity while Jesuit

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leadership sits silent. Parker does employ his own rhetorical question, but to a much more damming effect: “Is there spiritual substance to the Christian values Jesuits have taught us?”55 Another major statement on Jesuit mission and identity would appear on May 2, just two days before the president announced his decision to step down. Fr. Paul Stark, S.J., vice president for what was then called the Office of Mission and Ministry, published an essay in “Newslink,” SLU’s daily electronic newsletter. “The Mission Really Does Matter” critiques the discourse of mission at SLU, essentially arguing that the mission is widely misunderstood because it is construed too narrowly, too selectively, and too prescriptively. “Difficulties arise,” Stark writes, “when a speaker considers the Mission specific only to his or her particular situation at that moment or when the Mission is used as a proof text for what he or she champions, or disdains, at a given moment or particular situation.” At the same time, Stark urges his readers not to reduce the Mission to a couple of nice phrases that serve whatever purpose we’re championing at any given moment, but know it for what it is: a document calling and guiding us far beyond ourselves, in a practical and a philosophical sense. Since the no-confidence movement was making appeal to the mission far more often than the president or his supporters, one has to assume that Stark’s complaints are directed against the dissidents. Yet his failure to acknowledge these disagreements openly and explicitly suggests an unwillingness to stand in the “almost-empty place” with them in order to “hammer out their disagreements.” The essay cites the following passage from a pre-accreditation self-study: “There is strong evidence that the University community is very mission-oriented. Commitment to mission drives the work of countless faculty, staff and students. There also is evidence that an in-depth understanding of SLU’s mission is not necessarily shared and often lacks comprehension beyond taglines, i.e., warrants a deeper grounding in Jesuit fundamentals” (emphasis in original).56 Many in the SLU community might agree with this assessment. Yet it seems strange that the Jesuit vice president for mission and ministry would emphasize an observation, produced by a SLU committee, which would seem to critique his own office. If Jesuit leadership had seemed to forfeit the topos of mission through omission, this piece seemed to forfeit it through commission. Yet many Jesuit faculty not in leadership persisted in articulating the mission differently. After the president revealed he had reduced the merit increases of several faculty critics, three Jesuits wrote a letter to the editor rejecting the president’s characterization of the faculty as “self-absorbed” and “self-serving.” The three were all signatories of the October 2012 letter, and once again they identified the mission with the critics: “We feel proud to call ourselves their partners and we look forward to working together to build a university community clearly dedicated to the ideals of the Catholic, Jesuit tradition.”57 On the same day this letter appeared (August 16, 2013), 14 lay faculty signed a letter criticizing Fr. Biondi for slashing

Almost empty places 119 the merit increases of several dissident faculty, including Jesuits whose salaries contribute to maintenance of local Jesuit communities: “That Father Biondi would treat his own brothers as collateral damage suggests the final loss of his moral compass.”58 Once again, the lay faculty are much more direct than their Jesuit colleges in defending the Jesuit identity – here personified as actual Jesuits. To be sure, there was little danger that any retired Jesuit would actually suffer as a result of Fr. Biondi’s action. But publicly and symbolically, it was left to the lay faculty to express the most extended public concern that Jesuit identity was under threat. On the same day these letters appeared, the chairman of the board of trustees announced that Fr. Biondi would step down as of September 1, 2013. An interim president would be appointed, and a search for new leadership would be undertaken. The immediate crisis that had occasioned SLU’s examination of the mission was over. The question now is how that examination might continue, particularly given the growing confidence of lay faculty in defining that mission. As with faculty critics of Fr. Biondi, lay faculty implicitly claim the right to deliberate over Jesuit identity on an equal footing with actual Jesuits. This may prove to be the most long-lasting effect of SLU’s no-confidence movement.

The mission as thought In The University in Ruins, Bill Readings observes a fundamental shift in the nature and purpose of the modern university. Universities were once guardians of culture and the nation-state, but the decline of the latter has undermined the need for maintenance of the former. We now have the university as corporation, in which students are customers, education is job training, and culture is beside the point. The primary rhetorical symptom of this shift is the emergence of the term “excellence” as the sign of approbation for all manner of endeavor. Although “excellence” may seem, at first glance, a perfectly reasonable standard by which to judge a university’s work, the problem is that the term lacks any durable content. In fact, the central power of this term is precisely the lack of enduring connection to an articulated set of values. Readings relates an anecdote about Cornell University’s “excellence in parking” award, which, in the case he cites, meant that parking services “had achieved a remarkable level of efficiency in restricting motor vehicle access.”59 Perhaps that was a good idea, but the use of the term “excellence,” which is seen as “incontestable ground,” serves to obscure debate over the set of ideals by which the “good” might be defined.60 In Wayne Booth’s terms, excellence is too vacuous to even be a topos, and this lack of form makes discussion of its meaning as irrelevant as a discussion of culture. One might be tempted to conclude the same thing about “the mission” at SLU. But the leadership crisis may have finally revealed the need for a sustained examination of mission, as seen in the position description for SLU’s new president, published in October 2013: At its heart, a Jesuit and Catholic university has as its primary mission the education and formation of students in such a way and in order that they may

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Surely some of this language would be found in the position description for any Jesuit presidency. But it seems an unmistakable admission of a sense of failure that the job description speaks of “enlivening” mission and identity. (It is also worth noting that the man who would eventually take this job is a layperson, the first to lead SLU in its 200-year history.) We should also note the nexus of mission, identity, and rhetoric. The statement not only puts mission and identity at the head of the description’s priorities, but it also suggests that the president’s first job is to communicate both. Unfortunately, the idea of “competence” suggested in the description continues to imply that communication is a simply matter of clarity: communicate the mission clearly, and people will finally “get it.” But if SLU is to maintain the rhetorical viability of the topoi by which it is identified, those topoi must remain open for deliberation and contest. They must be ideas that occasion dispute rather than ideals that quell dispute. Moreover, the responsibility of doing this rhetorical work belongs to all members of the community. Here, I follow Readings in suggesting that all faculty think of themselves as rhetors. The rhetor-professor is not one who, in Paulo Freire’s imperishable metaphor, simply deposits information into the empty minds of students.62 Instead, the rhetor-professor acknowledges that he or she speaks in a specific situation and to a specific audience (both of which will change when the semester does). The purpose of this rhetorical approach is not to transfer “truth,” but rather to occasion “thought.” “Excellence works because no one has to ask what it means. Thought demands that we ask what it means.”63 In the rhetorical university, truth does not speak for itself. It is instead articulated within contingency, thereby revealing what is at stake for those doing the articulating. That does not mean that academics should forgo their disciplinary work in favor of constant reexamination of their institution’s mission statement. Nor does it even require formal training in rhetoric. As a rhetorician and participant in the no-confidence movement, I was repeatedly struck by the rhetorical adroitness of faculty from across the university. The strategic and tactical deliberations of the no-confidence movement naturally tended toward rhetorical concerns: audiences, purposes, and the ever-evolving context of our claims. The faculty (correctly, in my view) surmised that fighting over issues like tenure in public would almost certainly be to the president’s advantage. They also quickly recognized that the president would not be a receptive audience, so they found other audiences. Most importantly, they understood what rhetoricians call kairos, or the most appropriate moment for rhetorical action. They knew both when to speak and when to keep silent. (Surely their Jesuit colleagues were engaged in similar decisions, even if the lay faculty did not always agree with their choices.)

Almost empty places 121 In my memory of those meetings, words like kairos and topos never came up, and the word rhetoric was invoked (alas) most often to condemn the president’s discourse. Put simply, formal rhetorical training did not seem necessary for rhetorical success. Far from despairing over this fact, I take comfort in it. One of rhetoric’s most enduring claims, first made in ancient Athens and repeated in the 20th-century revival of the art, is that all public discourse is by its very nature rhetorical. Public conflict cannot be settled by direct recourse to facts or principles, even those listed in mission statements.64 For some, our enduring rhetorical situation might be disappointing. Surely in a better world the true and the right would be obvious and dipositive. But I prefer the world in which people have to argue, in which they have to offer claims and amass evidence and craft their messages for particular audiences. Such rhetorical activity can be messy and confusing, but it is much more likely to ensure that a multiplicity of voices is heard. Far from weakening the mission’s meaning, the no-confidence movement reanimated it by turning it into a rhetorical topos, a place and occasion for further deliberation. The fight over SLU reminded the community that the university’s mission is not a foundation or a ground, but a project, a project that requires constant cultivation and maintenance. Viewed in this light, it should be a source of relief, rather than disappointment, that appeals to mission and identity are more likely to occasion disputes rather than to settle them. The one consolation of crisis is that it demands Thought.

Notes 1 Whether such appeals will be successful is another matter. Increasingly, adjuncts at Jesuit universities are turning to the National Labor Relations Board for help. See Marie Rodhe, “Labor Board: Adjunct Professors at Catholic University Can Form Union,” National Catholic Reporter, April 25, 2014, http://ncronline.org/news/faith -parish/labor-board-adjunct-professors-catholic-university-can-form-union (accessed April 29, 2014). 2 Faculty Evidence and Communications Committees, “Report to the Board of Trustees on the State of Saint Louis University,” December 10, 2012, 3. 3 Donald Stump, “Signs of Spring at St. Louis University,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 2, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/signs-of-spring-at-st-louis -university/article_9cb7397f-a9b2-5331-bf7c-955910f83c28.html (accessed May 29, 2014). 4 Lawrence Biondi, Memo to SLU Trustees, Faculty, Staff and Students, October 10, 2012. 5 Though the letter avoided direct criticism of the president, it unmistakably identified the university’s mission with the faculty rather than the administration. It was later revealed that Biondi’s attempts to sign the letter had been rebuffed. Bill McClellan, “Fr. Biondi Takes SLU Controversy in Stride,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 21, 2012, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/father-biondi-tak es-slu-controversy-in-stride/article_e538c3eb-7259-5dbd-be28-b8ae0939d6ab.html (accessed May 29, 2014). 6 Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), II.23.4. For a good overview of the concept of topoi, see John Muckelbauer’s The Future of Invention (New York: SUNY Press, 2008), 129–142.

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7 Wayne C. Booth, “Kenneth Burke’s Religious Rhetoric: ‘God-Terms’ and the Ontological Proof,” Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry, ed. Walter Jost and Wendy Olmstead (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 32. 8 My analysis limits itself to faculty claims to mission and identity first to manage the size of this study and second to focus attention on how non-Jesuit faculty claimed the right to argue about the Jesuit mission. 9 Ten years ago, it was predicted that there would be about 12 Jesuits for each of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities. James M. Purcell, “Branding and Jesuit Higher Education,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education 25, no. 7 (2004): 1–3. 10 Sarah Bonewits Feldner, “Living Our Mission: A Study of University Mission Building,” Communication Studies 57, no. 1 (2006): 69. 11 Erika L. Kirby, M. Chad McBride, Sherianne Shuler, Marty J. Birkholt, Mary Ann Danielson, and Donna R. Pawlowski, “The Jesuit Difference (?): Narrative of Negotiating Spiritual Values and Secular Practices,” Communication Studies 57, no. 1 (2006): 88. 12 Gary Traub, Do You Speak Ignatian? 12th ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Xavier University, 2012), 3. 13 J.A. Appleyard and Howard Gray, “Tracking the Mission and Identity Question: Three Decades of Inquiry and Three Models of Interpretation,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education 18, no. 3 (2000): 4. 14 Ibid., 11. 15 Charles L. Currie, “Pursuing Jesuit, Catholic Identity and Mission at U.S. Jesuit Colleges and Universities,” Catholic Education: A Journal of Theory and Practice 14, 3 (2011): 346–357, 349. 16 Alice Gallin, American Catholic Higher Education: Essential Documents, 1967-1990 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 7. 17 Many of signatories were Jesuits, including Robert J. Henle, Academic Vice President of Saint Louis University and Daniel L. Schlafly, the first lay chairman of SLU’s Board of Trustees. Gallin, American Catholic Higher Education, 12. 18 Gallin, American Catholic Higher Education, 7. 19 Raymond Schroth, The American Jesuits: A History (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 249–250. 20 Ibid., 250. 21 Ibid., 249. 22 Appleyard and Gray, “Tracking the Mission,” 12. 23 Currie, “Pursuing Jesuit, Catholic Identity,” 349. 24 Appleyard and Gray, “Tracking the Mission,” 12. Appleyard and Gray also argue that the professional model was accompanied by a “Permissive Model,” in which the institution gradually dropped any responsibility for students’ personal development. “The idea that the university should act in loco parentis seemed a quaint holdover from a more innocent age” (9). Faculty were there to teach their disciplines, and the administration was there to maintain basic order. But the idea that the university should form students (rather than simply “educate” them) had become seriously attenuated. 25 Ibid., 13. 26 Pedro Arrupe, “Men for Others,” A Planet to Heal: Reflections and Forecasts (Rome: International Center for Jesuit Education, 1977), 95–108, 96. 27 Documents of the Thirty-Second General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (Washington, DC: The Jesuit Conference, 1975), 17. Traub’s Do You Speak Ignatian? also contains an entry for “the service of faith and the promotion of justice,” 14. 28 Peter Hans Kolvenbach, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education,” October 6, 2000, http://www.marquette.edu/missi on/documents/TheServiceofFaithandthePromotionofJusticeinAmericanJesuitHighe rEducation--Kolvenbach.pdf, 2 (accessed May 28, 2014). 29 Ibid., 2.

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34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45

46 47 48

49 50

Ibid., 8. Ibid., 9. Feldner, “Living Our Mission,” 77. Meaning “care for the whole person.” The notion of cura personalis, which comes from Ignatian spirituality, seeks to adapt both religious and educational practice to the particular needs of the retreatant or student. It is meant to reflect the full dignity of the individual (Traub, Do You Speak Ignatian?, 1). Kirby et al., “The Jesuit Difference (?),” 91. Feldner, “Living Our Mission,” 80; Kirby et al., “The Jesuit Difference (?),” 94. In a commentary published on April 11, 2013, a few weeks before Biondi announced his retirement, SLU trustee Joe Adorjan wrote, “Is he direct, hard-charging and visionary? Yes. Is he demanding and challenging? Yes.” “Biondi Keeps SLU’s Best Interests at Heart,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. April 11, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/ opinion/columns/biondi-keeps-slu-s-best-interests-at-heart/article_dc512057-64b15a48-878d-4a4b5a36aa50.html (accessed May 29, 2014). At one point, board chairman Thomas Brouster instructed members not only to refuse media requests, but also to ignore any communication from faculty and students. This was revealed in a leaked memo, dated November 30, 2012. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1950), 20. Kenneth Burke, “The Rhetorical Situation.” Communication: Ethical and Moral Issues, ed. Lee Thayer (London: Gordon and Breach, 1973), 268. Burke, Motives, 23. In fact, he finds a system of conventional persuasion like Aristotle’s to be “so deliberate [that] it didn’t seem to cover kinds of situations which were not characterized by the clear, formal purposiveness that classical books on rhetoric were primarily concerned with.” Burke, “The Rhetorical Situation,” 268. Burke, Motives, 22. Burke, “The Rhetorical Situation,” 268–269. Ibid., 271. These arguments included the Faculty Evidence and Communications Committees’ December 2012 “Report to the Board of Trustees on the State of Saint Louis University” and the “Report of the Faculty Senate Assessment Task Force” in April 24, 2013. Both of these can be found at the website of SLU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, https://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/aaup-slu-interim/home/cur rent-issues (accessed February 20, 2020). Michael Barber et al., “A Letter from the Undersigned Jesuit Faculty to the rest of the Faculty of Saint Louis University,” October 19, 2012. Michael D. Barber, S.J., “Address to the Faculty Assembly of the College of Arts and Sciences,” October 23, 2012. The provincial is the head of a given province of the society. He is in charge of the members of his province and also has the power, within his province, to approve the appointment or request the removal of Jesuits from other provinces who work within in his province. Fr. Biondi was a member of what is now the Midwest province, while SLU is part of what is now the Central and Southern province. At his hiring, Fr. Biondi’s own provincial (i.e., Midwest) would have to agree to send him, and the Central and Southern provincial would have agree to allow him to work within the province. Conversely, if the provincial of the Central and Southern province no longer wanted to allow Fr. Biondi to work there, he could ask the provincial of the Midwest province to recall him. Communication Committee for the Faculty Council of the College or Arts and Sciences, “Expression of Spiritual Concern Regarding the Presidency of Lawrence Biondi at Saint Louis University,” November 2, 2012. Douglas Marcouiller, email message to author, November 6, 2012.

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51 Heithaus Haven, “About the Heithaus Haven,” http://heithaush.blogspot.com/p/about -heithaus-haven.html (accessed June 20, 2014). 52 The blog’s sole Jesuit contributor was Fr. Claude Pavur, S.J., faculty in classics, who lamented what he saw as the fragmentation of the university. Pavur offered a suggestion that seems to recognize instability around the competing models of governance. The university, he wrote, should create “a standing, stable, competent body that has the charge of taking the many critiques of higher education, reading them, digesting them, weighing them, and then deciding on their applicability to our community in light of our mission and identity.” The focus of this “new kind of board” would not include “budgets, buildings, or brawn,” nor “social life or service or technology or extracurricular events, but on the education students are receiving, particularly in the classrooms and in the curricula, according to our mission and identity.” Claude Pavur, “Semper Ref!: On Alasdair MacIntyre’s ‘The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University,’” Heithaus Haven, March 4, 2013, http://heithaush.blogspot .com/2013/03/semper-ref-on-alasdair-macintyres-end.html (accessed March 7, 2020). 53 Being the author in question offers one analytical advantage: when I wrote the present chapter, I had not yet read Appleyard and Gray and had no sense of the competing models of governance they describe. My lack of knowledge in February–March 2013, the period in which I wrote the chapter, offers evidence for the idea that rhetoric speaks us as much as we speak it. 54 Paul Lynch, “Fr. Heithaus’ Example: A Duty to Lead,” Heithaus Haven, March 18, 2013, http://heithaush.blogspot.com/2013/03/duty-to-lead.html (accessed May 29, 2014). 55 Kenneth Parker, “Biondi No Scrooge on Christmas,” University News, April 4, 2013, http://www.unewsonline.com/2013/04/04/biondi-no-scrooge-on-christmas/ (accessed June 18, 2014). Parker’s article attracted a couple of responses. These included a challenge from one Jesuit, who argued that it would be extremely unwise for the Jesuits to intervene in the situation (James Veltrie, S.J., “Fr. Veltrie Responds to Dr. Parker,” April 11, 2013, http://www.unewsonline.com/2013/04/11/fr-veltrie-responds-to-dr-p arker/ (accessed June 20, 2014)). The second came from three other Jesuits, who wrote, “Prof. Ken Parker understandably invites Jesuits to take a clear public stand during the present situation. We are fully dedicated to the mission of this university, and we are doing everything we think will be effective to realize that mission and enable it to be lived out in the current situation. We believe that the mandate in the mission statement to ‘transform society in the spirit of the gospels’ includes transforming our university in the same spirit.” Mike Barber, Ron Mercier, and Steve Schoenig, “Jesuits Seek to Transform University in Spirit of the Gospels,” The University News, April 11, 2013, http://www.unewsonline.com/2013/04/11/jesuits-seek-to-transform-university-in-sp irit-of-gospels/ (accessed June 18, 2014). 56 Paul Stark, “The Mission Really Does Matter,” May 2, 2012. 57 Christopher Collins, Bill O’Brien, and Steve Schoenig, “Upholding a Jesuit Tradition,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 16, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/mai lbag/letters-to-the-editor/upholding-a-jesuit-tradition/article_bb0e217b-5ac9-5d05-8c 56-5a6adcdbad2f.html (accessed May 29, 2014). 58 Joseph Baldassare et al., “Biondi’s Collateral Damage,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 16, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/mailbag/letters-to-the-edito r/biondi-s-collateral-damage/article_962775f8-414e-5edc-a8fd-cc805076de53.html (accessed May 29, 2014). Again, full disclosure: I took the lead in writing this letter, which was vetted and revised by several other faculty, all non-Jesuit. 59 Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 24. 60 Ibid., 23. 61 Saint Louis University President Position Description, October 2013, http://www.slu. edu/Documents/university/Saint%20Louis%20University%20Presidential%20Positi on%20Description.pdf (accessed May 29, 2014).

Almost empty places 125 62 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 1970), 71–72. 63 Readings, University in Ruins, 160. 64 Rhetorical scholar James J. Murphy writes of the “Platonic rhetorical heresy,” which he defines as “the belief that the man possessed of truth will ipso facto be able to communicate the truth others” (409). “Saint Augustine and the Debate about a Christian Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 46, no. 4 (1960): 409.

8 (K)No(wing) confidence A feminist epistemological consideration of suspicion, credibility, and reflexivity in progressive movements for political change Wynne Walker Moskop1 and Penny Weiss We focus on the epistemic to ask a distinctive set of questions about Saint Louis University’s (SLU) no-confidence movement and about campus movements for social change. These questions arise from problematic tensions we observed in our no-confidence movement, tensions which are not novel in social movements. More radical social critiques often lose to shorter-term concrete goals. While social movements can be de-radicalized by specific strategies they explicitly adopt, overt decisions and visible actions that shape the movements in very literal ways, scholarship in feminist epistemology shows that movements can also be shaped and reshaped by factors that are much less visible to participants. To get at these less obvious forces as they operated in the alliance, we ask, what people, issues, authorities, and practices, consciously or unintentionally, were and were not deemed credible (reliable, objective, important, trustworthy, etc.)? How close did the credible come to the cultural norms that work against lasting transformation of undemocratic institutions and practices the alliance so strongly criticized? What questions were and were not being asked and addressed as we challenged aspects of the status quo? How great a role was played by undigested epistemic tensions within the movement and between the movement and its opponents in our concerns over issues of niceness, leadership, and agenda setting? To consider these questions, we focus on persistent puzzling dynamics that existed in the no-confidence movement – practices in both the alliance and in the larger movement community, which included many faculty, staff, and students, as well as the Faculty Senate and its Executive Committee (EC).2 The means we successfully employed to depose administrators seemed to most democratic and inclusive, but our goals required that we intentionally and continually look beyond a surface of consensus and into the cracks, to see what perspectives and voices are missing or muted, overlooked or underestimated. That we did not do. We did not adequately address how the means silenced certain voices and positions, or how they narrowed the ends we would pursue. This chapter is a product of hindsight. Unlike the others in this volume, which rightly focus primarily on our unlikely and hard-won successes, this looks at certain factors that tend to limit long-term progress even while allowing significant shorter-term victories. To put it another way, our concern is whether we failed

(K)No(wing) confidence 127 to think of these short-term goals as intermediate goals – as means to long-term social justice ends. We think the movement could have gone even farther than it did if we had kept long-term ends in mind, and we rue the fact that it may be harder to continue aspects of the push for change now that certain battles have been won – or at least that we in the no-confidence movement missed an opportunity to build a broader coalition on an even more inclusive basis. Our successes notwithstanding, the dynamics that puzzled us then and, in retrospect, limited the movement’s progressive impetus, revealed the challenge that social movements often confront: how do we, collectively, acquire the common knowledge necessary to act together, without succumbing to epistemological and political limits that should be contested because they silence some and undermine long-term transformative ends? The common knowledge that provided a foundation for collective action by the alliance was limited to a short-term goal: the president and academic vice president had to go because certain of their actions were threatening the university and undermining our mission. But we needed to better understand the processes, practices, and policies that enabled those officeholders to act regularly in destructive and disrespectful ways. Doing that would lead beyond the character of the people in charge to awareness of where else those processes came into play, places less visible and less recognized but equally problematic and crucial to understanding what was wrong with the status quo. We needed to broaden our store of common knowledge beyond the short-term goal to consider how it could serve long-term social justice ends. For the two of us, this interest in the long-term consequences of focusing on short-term goals justified on relatively narrow grounds grows out of long commitments to social justice, mostly though not exclusively over the broad range of issues encompassed by feminism. Too, as longtime faculty members, as past administrators of relatively “uncelebrated” programs (Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies, respectively), and as PhDs in Political Science, our knowledge of how the university is run is likely somewhat deeper and decidedly more negative than those with fewer official needs to confront SLU’s administrative practices, those with academic expertise in areas other than institutional practices and political change, or those whose histories of involvement in collective social movements is relatively novel. Indeed, the problems we considered in our no-confidence movement are not uncommon in social movements, although our analysis of them here is distinct in being built on recent developments in feminist epistemology. In our discussions with each other – inside and outside of meetings – three dynamics in particular increasingly troubled us: (1) a persistent demand from multiple quarters that faculty critics of the administration be “nice” and “moderate”; (2) insufficient attention to leadership practices within the alliance, particularly how to diversify our spokespersons, organizers, and conveners; and (3) difficulties including on the alliance agenda a broader range of social justice issues. The alliance did pay some attention to each of these, but without having a systematic or sustained discussion of or approach to any one of them. It (and we) did not look hard enough for the macroscopic perspective that might have led to a vindication

128 Wynne Walker Moskop and Penny Weiss of the issues and smoothed the path to continued consideration of them. In what follows, we use tools provided by feminist epistemology to re-read certain dynamics of the movement and show how they led to the marginalization of certain groups and concerns, to the detriment of our ultimate social justice goals. While these problematic dynamics were relatively clear to us, explanations for them were not. What we will show more fully is that there was a good deal of difference of opinion over certain matters that was only infrequently discussed, and that those differences were informed by more fundamental epistemic differences that were even more rarely the topic of conversation. In coming to terms with these dynamics, then, we explore certain epistemic norms and practices within the alliance and between the alliance and both its allies and foes. These norms and practices focus on questions generally understood as part of epistemology, or theories of knowledge: who is knowledgeable about what (in this case, the university, social justice, etc.), who is or should be deemed knowledgeable (administrators? experts? everyone?), how do we become knowledgeable (lived experience? positions? advanced degrees?), and what is the meaning of certain common terms (such as shared governance or Jesuit values)? We suggest that dominant knowledge paradigms operated as wires of a cage that welcomed some answers and explanations and rejected others. To see this, we need the intervention of feminist epistemologies. We look at how the dynamics that puzzled us are linked together in ways that are not immediately apparent. Indeed, our own initial difficulty seeing the links between them, our perception of them as separate and distinct problems rather than as mutually reinforcing components of a larger pattern of institutional practices, reminds us of Marilyn Frye’s metaphor of the birdcage. Frye introduces the birdcage metaphor as a way for readers to grasp the nature of oppression as a system of interlocking practices and institutional structures: Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.3

(K)No(wing) confidence 129 The tensions we describe in this chapter first appeared to us as isolated phenomena – in Frye’s terms, as single wires. They came as repeated curiosities that occasionally nagged at us. It was not until afterwards that we were able to recognize their connections and analyze them together. As we considered what people, issues, authorities, and practices were deemed credible, and what questions were and were not being asked, it became increasingly clear that we were limited by an epistemic cage. The wires constituted a system of knowledge that conformed more closely than we understood to cultural norms; these taken-for-granted “comfort norms” worked against lasting transformation of undemocratic institutions and practices the alliance so strongly criticized. Like Frye’s bird, we were “surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers … which, by their relations to each other,” confined the reach of our movement.

Feminist epistemologies Feminist standpoint theory serves as a bridge between the visible and much debated de-radicalization of earlier social movements (such as the expedient appeals of the U.S. women’s movement to white racism and nativism and Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta compromise), and the less visible de-radicalization that concerns us in SLU’s no-confidence movement. As Nancy Hartsock explains, similar to workers and owners in Marx’s theory, due to inequality, women and men are situated differently in social institutions. As a result of this material inequality, the marginalized potentially have access to knowledge of patriarchal structures that the more privileged do not have or do not have from direct experience.4 But knowledge available from a feminist standpoint is not always recognized even by women whose experiences could inform it, much less is it deemed credible from the standpoint of those who control and are served by dominant forms of knowledge. Dominant groups are blissfully ignorant that other knowledges exist besides their own hegemonic perspectives (or at least hope that they do not). The marginalized, on the other hand, might internalize the perspective of dominant knowledge paradigms to the extent that their own experience does not speak to them in a loud voice. Most problematically, what can be known by marginalized groups in the university because of their particular vantage points is not necessarily acknowledged or deemed credible by those who control the dominant knowledge paradigms. That dominant and marginalized groups “know” different things, about, for example, the university at which they work, supports the view that social movements can be shaped not only by deliberate decisions and actions but also by knowledge that participants have internalized, to an extent they may not see, and by the consequent relations between bodies of knowledge. In this way, an invisible set of internalized assumptions about how the world works and what should or should not happen in a social movement can function as a kind of boundary or, as Marilyn Frye describes it, as a cage that inhibits what persons who are differently situated can see and know and do. In addition to feminist standpoint theory, we draw on two other ideas in feminist epistemology: the politics of credibility and the epistemology of ignorance.

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The politics of credibility explores how members of more socially advantaged groups experience what philosopher Miranda Fricker calls “excess credibility” in everyday discourse, while members of more marginalized groups suffer from a “credibility deficit.”5 It documents the means by which we unjustly, if often unwittingly, discount certain people as givers and receivers of knowledge based on what Fricker calls identity-based prejudice. As Lorraine Code puts it, the politics of credibility contests the myth “that everyone has equal and equivalent access to the discursive spaces where knowledge is claimed, corroborated, and contested.”6 Further, incredulity “works, unevenly across the social order, to invalidate some processes of would-be truth production, and to disqualify certain speakers, individually or collectively, from full membership in companies of truth-tellers.”7 Credibility, like honor, involves recognition from others; it is only partly in the control of the individual being evaluated. Finally, based on the work of philosophers like Charles Mills8 and Nancy Tuana,9 feminist epistemology explores how inequality leads to epistemic distortions (what Mills calls an epistemology of ignorance) that misrepresent certain people and social practices in order to maintain the unequal status quo. The epistemology of ignorance explains such phenomena as active resistance to evidence, the “inability to perceive evidence contrary to one’s beliefs,”10 and immunization to criticism (being “right” is not what is really at issue).11 It even addresses “the practices that account for not knowing, that is, for our lack of knowledge.”12 Among the alliance, the larger no-confidence movement community, and the administration, a variety of perspectives and experiences were represented. Nevertheless, we argue that there was a dominant set of what we are calling cultural comfort norms that functioned as a cage from which it was difficult to escape because our group failed to question them sufficiently, thereby predictably giving greater credibility to some voices and tending to discount others. Groups such as the no-confidence movement necessarily coalesce around certain common goals and actions. And in our case, that undoubtedly produced a number of successes. Momentum grew steadily; unlikely relationships and coalitions emerged across disciplines, schools, and the usual political divides; conversations within our socalled “rebel alliance” were consistently civil; and academics, who earn their living based precisely on what they know, were remarkably willing to learn from each other and publicly to change positions. Members of the rebel alliance built a community of trust that energized the group and led to sustained and often quite intense participation. Many came newly to see themselves as effective advocates and activists, interested in knowing more about what goes on, more prepared to act on it and, if necessary, to garner support. Some administrators learned that they can and will be challenged, and that they have a professional obligation to support such discussion and actions aimed at holding them accountable. Since some of our group’s criticisms of the administration involved their failure to share information and their seeming aversion to transparency, it took steps to try to keep the growing number of curious and potentially active people informed and involved.

(K)No(wing) confidence 131 The group boldly confronted administrators for making overly broad and unsupported claims about faculty members (“There is no collaboration among disciplines or schools;” “There is too much dead wood among our faculty”) intended to justify the draconian policies they proposed. From the start, the alliance tried to base its arguments on carefully gathered and collectively vetted facts. For example, a slide show of well-documented arguments against the status quo was presented at multiple forums, sent to the board of trustees, and amended as needed in response to continued feedback. While the results of these actions were, predictably, mixed, we conversed about and learned from our efforts about how to keep a movement going and growing. We were often able to make excellent use of the different experiences and knowledge people brought to the table, too, whether that was computer expertise, journalistic skills, writing proficiency, or previous involvement in political movements. People uncomfortable with certain actions or positions just chose other ones for themselves rather than bringing things to some divisive climax. It was a pretty heady, invigorating, exciting time. Neither the cage metaphor nor the shortcomings of our movement we explore are intended to downplay the movement’s many accomplishments or the efforts of those who accepted leadership responsibilities when others did not come forward. Indeed, the movement’s accomplishments were worthy, difficult, uncommon feats. And several who were our most visible organizers, convenors, and spokespersons carried out difficult, time-consuming, and professionally risky actions on our behalf with admirable character and competence. Nonetheless, our ultimate concern is with what we as a group might have done differently to increase the credibility of those most easily ignored or denigrated and to bring greater attention to certain social justice issues – especially those regarding class, sex, and race. To understand what hampered our progress toward larger social justice goals, we analyze how composition of the alliance and particular comfort norms shaped our strategy, leadership practice, and agenda.

Who are we? The rebel alliance was a fairly heterogeneous crew, made up of individuals of every rank across academic disciplines, mostly (but not entirely) from the College of Arts and Sciences. It was a collection of people inspired by at least overlapping ideals of university communities in general and SLU’s mission in particular. We publicly and convincingly used the fact of our breadth as a proxy for the breadth of opposition to the administration and board. All of us met new people from areas of the university we knew little about or with whom we had little experience. We were clearly excited and enriched by these new relationships and, politically, were aware of the range of resources and connections our diversity gave us, and the opportunity it presented for us to reach out widely as we tried to converse, persuade, and recruit all over campus. While “motley,” the alliance was not an incomprehensible mass. A division into three groupings is useful for investigating how our various identities and standpoints affect those niggling questions raised earlier. In the no-confidence

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movement were, first, politically progressive people with involvement in liberatory social movements. In the academy, their primary concerns and knowledge are connected with issues of justice, democracy, and challenging damaging power relations and structures, both visible and masked, institutional and embedded in everyday practice. Inside and outside of the classroom, they tend to speak about regular and broad representation, interdisciplinarity, community, equity, respect for diverse voices, and participation. Many, but clearly not all of these, have some affiliation with Women’s and Gender Studies, Political Science, and Sociology. Their knowledge of social change and resistance was critical. A second group is well represented by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a chapter of which emerged as part of the no-confidence movement, and which became both a resource and a source of legitimacy. The local group, like the national organization, was motivated largely by principles of “academic freedom and tenure and agreement upon procedures to ensure them in colleges and universities.”13 In particular, the AAUP has always “emphasiz[ed] the importance of faculty involvement in personnel decisions, selection of administrators, preparation of the budget, and determination of educational policies.”14 While issues of “diversity” and “gender” appear on their website, the entries are short and general. This group was most outraged by and vocal about the threat to tenure found in the Vice President for Academic Affair’s (VPAA) proposals, most knowledgeable about what shared governance means, and most certain about the rightful place of faculty in all decision-making, based on their unique knowledge of what supports excellent teaching and research. Finally, the third major group included what we might call the Jesuit and SLU faithfuls. This group included not only priests but also many faculty drawn to SLU because of its specific religious identity and mission. This group was most vocal about and concerned with the moral leadership of the institution, those principles of social justice that form part of SLU’s mission, the university’s Catholic identity, the value of a liberal arts education, and the Ignatian model of education. They were knowledgeable about these matters from their religious commitments and involvement, their familiarity with certain debates about what is moral, and/ or their work on social justice with students and beyond. Overlaps among these three groups and their bodies of knowledge are immediately obvious: all touch on, for example, some issues of social justice and shared governance. Many individuals in the alliance would readily and rightly place themselves in more than one of the groups. Nonetheless, we use the word “overlap” to make clear that there are areas of difference, too. Even when the three constituencies used the same words, we believe, the ideas and practices advocated were sometimes, importantly, defined and enacted differently. They embodied different standpoints. Most importantly for our purposes, the three groups did not have equal voice or credibility in the SLU community. Unsurprisingly, at a Catholic, Jesuit University, those appealing to how the administration betrayed its religious identity have the most sway, while certain issues associated with sexual equality quickly become difficult to discuss, no less rectify. Such factors,

(K)No(wing) confidence 133 we suggest, reflect “comfort norms” at SLU that affect who knows what and hears whom.

Comfort norms Assessments of credibility and incredulity stem from “comfort norms” prevalent in our university’s culture, as well as the culture of many other institutions of higher education. We examine how two such norms are, in various ways, embedded in the university’s status quo. In the silence of too much confidence, when ideas and values are free from critical scrutiny, a comfort norm can take over, even as its meaning can vary. First among the comfort norms at SLU were Jesuit values. “Jesuit values” include a general commitment to social justice and “a spirit of collaboration,” sometimes interpreted as “an attitude and readiness to cooperate, to listen and to learn from others.”15 There is a push in Jesuit values to “shift from negative or destructive to positive or constructive conflict interaction,” and an emphasis on “dialogue.”16 The university is looked at as a place of and for reasoned discourse – even in, or especially in, the context of controversy. We show how a dominant interpretation of Jesuit values operated as an epistemological comfort norm that heavily influenced the meaning of niceness we were moved to enact. Second, and less explicit than our deference to Jesuit values, was a deference to fairly narrowly defined professional norms that dictated where faculty were and were not considered expert. Implicit in both widely shared assumptions and workload distributions in the university is the idea that faculty academic expertise should be directed toward teaching students and conducting research, while administrators should address management issues. This division of professional roles supports a hierarchical notion of leadership as managerial and univocal. It diminishes the role of faculty in shared governance, downplays the benefits to the university of plural kinds of academic expertise, and casts voices that do not fit the norm as speaking out of turn, which hits especially hard those who are demanding a more progressive agenda. We suggest that the no-confidence movement in general, and to a lesser extent our alliance, reflected insufficient awareness of this norm and its effects, insufficient to combat the administration’s strong advocacy of and adherence to professional roles that bolstered the power of management. These broad comfort norms in SLU’s cultures have epistemological dimensions that concern who has authoritative knowledge and how they can convey it. The norms often interact, usually reinforcing one another, as do wires of a cage. In the end, they influenced alliance resistance to administrative practices, both shaping and limiting it. They gradually turned frustrations felt by the two of us – frustrations related to niceness, leadership, and agenda setting – into a vision of an epistemic cage in need of deeper structural analysis. We examine in some depth the different ways these comfort norms are used by the administration and the movement community. Our argument is that the epistemological comfort norms that the no-confidence movement relied on help to explain the dynamics that puzzled us. These norms bestowed credibility on some and denied it to others in a

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way that reproduced the hegemonic standpoint: limiting acceptable discord and discourse, and deradicalizing our social justice agenda.

How Jesuit values support the demand for niceness Being nice was the most multifaceted and widely accepted demand in the noconfidence movement and, for some, the most frustrating. In this section, we look at how the comfort norm of Jesuit values supports the call for niceness, though with varying definitions of the term; how the politically progressive are deeply skeptical of it under certain conditions; and how the administration felt no obligation to submit to its demands, even as they slyly criticized others for failing to do so, turning the call for a kind of decorum into a political weapon. What can “being nice” possibly look like in a movement dedicated to ousting certain people from power? We were, somehow, to disagree without being too disagreeable. As a result, despite a long list of serious grievances against the administration, there was persistent worry in the alliance with how various audiences we wanted to persuade rather than offend – Biondi loyalists, trustees, present and potential donors, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, other faculty, staff, and students – would see and respond to the alliance’s concerns and actions. Thus, being nice meant that we should conform to what we supposed were certain expectations of our audiences, even as we led the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council toward votes of no-confidence in the academic vice president and, later, in the president. Because niceness varied with the audience, it could take multiple forms. Interestingly, “being nice” arose at the very first meeting of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Faculty Council at which President Lawrence Biondi’s possible removal was discussed. Consistent with the emphasis in Jesuit values on “positive or constructive conflict interaction,” some immediately urged that we not be disrespectful of Biondi personally and that we allow him to serve out the year. He should be honored for his years of service to the university, and we should not talk badly about him, by saying, for example, that he lies or is a bully. Moreover, we should clearly acknowledge that he deeply loves the university and truly wants what is best for it. All of this places powerful if “nice” limits on what can be said and learned. While several faculty did not agree that the president should be allowed to serve until the end of the year, no one immediately pushed back against the ideas that we should honor Biondi’s contributions to the university and avoid “personal” charges such as bullying and lying. The emphasis in Jesuit values on remaining positive in the midst of conflict seemed central to being nice to a long-serving Jesuit president who was assumed to personify those values to some audiences. It seemed that he, above all, was entitled to niceness insofar as respect for his achievements and his dedication to SLU must always be mentioned and, for some faculty, especially in the beginning stages of the movement, must outweigh the need to examine openly and respond adequately to the ways in which his administration harmed the university. But how much did complimenting the president reinforce the privileged status of his

(K)No(wing) confidence 135 knowledge, inspire confidence among those who believed that he knew best what was good for SLU, affirm his presence as the symbol of the university’s allegiance to Jesuit values, and undermine the credibility of our criticisms? In retrospect, we should have considered more than we did our motivations for being so positive publicly that we did not express the full extent of our concerns or how heartfelt they were, for acting so nicely did not serve our interests or enhance our ability to build knowledge together. In the early stages of the no-confidence movement, many in the alliance seemed convinced of the importance of responding to every real and potential criticism, and doing so in largely positive, “agreeable” terms they believed would convey our unflagging goodwill in the struggle to our audience. Both of us recollect discussions in which the alliance considered how the language of press releases, op-eds, or letters to administrators should be changed so that more of the space spoke to what was right, and to our commitment only to fixing what was broadly understood as broken. It seems to us that participants in these discussions often were torn between criticizing the administration, on one hand, and, on the other, wanting to convey how much we cared for the institution, how we were aware of all that our president had accomplished, and how much we appreciated the efforts many were making to resolve the dispute. The alliance sometimes struggled internally with the sense that we should be positive even as we elaborated criticisms. One lengthy email discussion developed out of a concern that too much negativity on the part of the alliance would adversely affect new student applications and retention of current students and faculty – echoing the administration’s concerns. Ultimately, the group arrived at a consensus that we should emphasize the positive potential of our own movement for improving the university, and that we should say nothing that would mitigate our earlier criticisms of the administration.17 The matter was not definitively raised once and resolved; instead, it arose in different forms in various bodies at distinct if recurring junctures. The tension between positives and negatives sometimes surfaced in public statements, as well private exchanges. For example, the Senate president’s October 31 letter to trustees paid homage to the president even while justifying the no-confidence vote in him. Some of the language in the Senate president’s letter was based on a document drafted by the alliance: It gives us no pleasure to take such a grave step. Fr. Biondi’s success in transforming the campus and in building facilities worthy of a first-rate research university has been remarkable. Yet the almost universally high regard in which he is held for those accomplishments makes it all the more important that the Board of Trustees attend to the faculty’s vote of no confidence, since it is a sign of the depth and seriousness of academic problems that have been mounting at the University over the last half decade and more.18 Similarly, Stacey Harris, president of SLU’s AAUP chapter, published an entry in the AAUP’s Academe Blog that began this way: “Father Lawrence Biondi, president of Saint Louis University, is widely recognized, off and on campus, as

136 Wynne Walker Moskop and Penny Weiss having constructed, over the past quarter century, a unified and beautiful campus out of what had long been a motley collection of disparate buildings. In addition, he presided over the elevation of the university into the ranks of nationally recognized research institutions.”19 Preceding our criticisms of Biondi’s autocratic rule with commendation of the campus he built not only undercut those criticisms but also buried criticisms that he built SLU’s suburban-type campus by replacing nearby buildings with empty space and parking lots, undermining midtown development and running roughshod over some African-American neighborhoods.20 All parties in opposition to the administration, then, felt compelled to be nice in some ways or to some degree, while the administration, interestingly and increasingly, did not, as it engaged in a good deal of name-calling, overgeneralizing, and bullying. It is likely true that over time, most members of the alliance grew more suspicious of the administration and less susceptible to distraction by considerations of “positives.” Still, the sheer number of examples shows how the comfort norms led us in the direction of paying compliments and avoiding certain difficult questions. Keeping in mind larger social justice goals related to race, class, and sex, we suggest that the strategic emphasis on remaining positive meant that aspects of the status quo less readily seen as in need of repair, or not easily seen as connected to what was understood as immediately problematic, took a back seat or disappeared. This vanishing act is a common feature in the politics of incredulity: “truths” of the most compelling kind can simply fail to compel assent when the available rhetorical spaces are either closed against them, or so constrained in the possibilities they offer that what is “really” being said is slotted automatically into categories, ready-made places, where the fit is at best crude, at worst distorting and damaging.21 The possibility of telling truths about social injustices related to sex, race, and class under Biondi’s administration did not fit well with the need to recognize his good intent and achievements, and were rarely connected to the central issues of maintaining tenure and shared governance. The epistemic cage resisted this truth telling. As we describe below, the alliance turned primarily to claims that fit within categories introduced by the president, such as the university’s ranking, claims that could be documented with certain “objective” data, and did not challenge a positive assessment of Biondi’s motives and character. The group did attempt to document a “culture of fear” that many faculty and staff experienced, and we even used “no confidence, no fear” as a protest slogan; nonetheless, the “culture of fear” remained a contested concept outside the no-confidence movement community, excused by some faculty and some in the press, as well as by Biondi himself, as a misrepresentation and “miscommunication” of the president’s dedicated and energetic attempts to improve the university.22 The largest issue is whether the alliance’s worry about being nice assisted a politics of incredulity by reducing space for discussion and critique. Conciliatory steps were certainly not all misguided. But they did often have undesirable

(K)No(wing) confidence 137 repercussions. Every hour spent anticipating what audience would react in what way, and how we should thus present ourselves, took away from how much time we could spend independently analyzing social justice concerns or envisioning what we could become and achieve. When exercising good will and giving the benefit of the doubt are seen as inherently laudable strategies, we fail to ask tough and necessary questions about who the recipients of such benefits of the doubt are, who is left out of such beneficence or even sacrificed for it, and how these extra steps of trying, for example, to negotiate with people who have proved themselves unwilling to collaborate, slow down the process and, we suggest, hamper longterm possibilities for change. Jesuit values pushed members of the broad no-confidence movement to respond positively – nicely – to persistent calls for improved dialogue and cooperation. Evidence of the pervasiveness of these pleas are found in public statements of administrators, trustees, and the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, while the alliance had to justify its resistance to these calls to dialogue. For example, in a September 26, 2012, letter to Biondi, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee explained that the Senate had voted no confidence in the vice president for academic affairs for “not engaging in true collaboration with faculty in major issues affecting faculty activity, including the graduate school reorganization, reducing funding to the libraries and developing goals for faculty performance;” for “disregarding faculty input and efforts in a number of initiatives (e.g., faculty evaluations) and committees, the outcomes of which were ignored despite considerable efforts by faculty;” and for “developing a Strategic Plan with little input from the faculty even though the faculty would play the greatest role in implementing any plan.” The Senate Executive Committee’s critical laser shines and stays on problems of communication, on the betrayed goods of dialogue, consideration, and consultation. Essentially heeding the administration’s calls for dialogue, in accord with Jesuit comfort norms, they helped to silence the voices and ignore the lessons of more radical strains in the social movement. Despite the no-confidence community’s apparent reliance on shared Jesuit norms of dialogue and collaboration, problems appeared that gradually revealed the different interpretations of those norms that we failed to discuss. First, the president and VPAA defined these same norms narrowly and authoritatively. They claimed that faculty had in fact been adequately consulted about post-tenure review and faculty evaluation proposals, that faculty had overlooked or forgotten about this, and that the Senate EC was the party at fault for not communicating well with faculty.23 While such factual claims were easily contested, the norms of consultation and communication were not. Alliance opponents attacked faculty for violating those norms, denigrating faculty criticisms, which the VPAA even labeled “hysteria.”24 The president claimed that the alliance’s teach-ins “presented a distorted view of the University in an attempt to divide our SLU community, which has led to signficant [sic] disagreements among the faculty ranks.” He also contended that “the information presented during the so-called teach-ins and on social media has done nothing but harm our University.”25 The VPAA reduced our substantive concerns to

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problems of communication, a “nice” and “professional” value all could endorse: “The administration has acted reasonably and collaboratively in responding to the faculty’s concerns,” and “continuing dialogue and collaboration is the best action to resolve any concerns that remain.”26 The president and the chair of the board of trustees, in a similarly tone-deaf response to the votes of no confidence in the VPAA, proposed a Blue Ribbon Committee that would promote better communication and collaboration.27 Amazingly, the committee included the discredited vice president,28 among other administrators, and provided for only three faculty representatives. These examples illustrate that the administrators appealed to supposedly shared Jesuit values not so much to seek common ground and further conversation, but to narrowly define acceptable dialogue, to depoliticize the demands of the faculty, to question their credibility, and to charge them with divisiveness. The insistence by some on cooperation with the administration effectively invalidated the rebellion. Despite all the votes of no confidence, as well as additional momentum garnered by discussions in every department and governing body, the pressure on faculty critics to talk, negotiate, and compromise grew, mostly based on predictions of how we would otherwise be portrayed – as obstinate, ill-willed, negative, hostile, and mean-spirited. Initially, not many were suspicious of administrative calls to converse, which seemed harmless at worst and positively constructive at best. But we needed intentionally to expand both what conversation entails (it includes listening, for example, and bringing out the voices of the silenced) and who the participants in it should be. A January 2013 letter to the University News from three of the alliance faculty recognized that SLU had failed to realize “the Jesuit university as a place of reasoned discourse,” because some members of the SLU community have been afraid to speak out, or because they perceived that speaking out would accomplish little. As a result of complacency, and by tolerating behaviors that have fostered a culture of fear, we have all failed to give “voice to the voiceless” at SLU.29 Too, a long roster of Jesuit faculty organized Novena of Grace prayer and reflection services to encourage open dialogue about challenges facing SLU. We could have used these opportunities to consider who the voiceless were and what changes in university culture and processes were needed to make space for marginalized groups to speak (and also to prepare them to speak), importantly broadening the approach to Jesuit values. We suspect, however, that weaponized calls for niceness aimed at individual behavior limited our inclination and capacity to explore these questions of institutional process. Looking to the other groups that composed the alliance, the AAUP group was in an awkward position when it came to rejecting certain calls to converse, as niceness supposedly forbids, because faculty consultation is a foundational issue for them. The politically progressive group was the most suspicious of the emphasis on congeniality. For while silencing that resulted from a culture of fear was readily understood

(K)No(wing) confidence 139 as inconsistent with shared governance in particular and dialogue in general, the progressive group was most likely to take those espousing niceness to task for their inability or unwillingness to link it with the muted and muffled voices that expressed concerns of staff, whose positions are insecure, feminists, who occupy a difficult space on Catholic campuses, or faculty of color, who often find the environment unwelcoming and leave at higher rates than do white faculty. But this group, as we have discussed, had the least credibility and authority. Taking a broader approach to demands that we communicate and collaborate more definitively opens the door to change. It is more consistent with a long-term social justice agenda than admonishing ourselves to trust those who deny us credibility. Our argument here is not that the alliance failed to recognize the different motives and interests of different players. The problem the alliance confronted is that, as a group, we did not fully recognize and grapple with the different knowledge foundations various players brought to the table, with, for example, different understandings of whether trust and willingness to talk are always virtues or whether they are pragmatic responses to circumstances that may or may not be virtuous. As Penny Weiss elaborated at the teach-ins, calls to sit down together must be resisted when issued by someone who has reduced all problems with institutional structures and policies to some supposedly neutral failure to communicate. The request must be rejected when it comes from parties who have revealed themselves as averse to conversations they cannot control, or as disrespectful of the other parties. Calls to sit down together, whether arising from the Jesuit principle of positive cooperation or anywhere else, must be understood as having a politics: as being affected by both historical inequalities and inequalities at the negotiating table; as arising at particular moments for specific reasons one should rightfully consider; and as undertaken by people who may have vastly different experiences and even opposing priorities and values. In the end, the administration’s narrow understanding of dialogue and collaboration was wielded as a weapon, and seeing it as such is more consistent with a long-term social justice agenda than is admonishing ourselves to trust and sit with those who deny us credibility. Revealingly, no matter the civility of the alliance, the demand for agreeable disagreement grew, unreasonably but predictably. Some of the president’s supporters gave Jesuit values additional meaning beyond dialogue and collaboration. Trustee Joe Adorjan suggested in the Post-Dispatch that faculty protesters were being unjust to Biondi, that we owed him “much more respect” for his “years of visionary leadership,” and that the no-confidence movement had an “unforgiving, militant attitude,” with “no room for redemption or forgiveness,” as he thought we should have.30 On the same day, SLU’s University News published a commentary by a Jesuit Student Government Association chaplain and past campus minister lamenting the unforgiving attitude of a particular activist faculty member. When some of the president’s supporters called for faculty to forgive him and move on,31 most in the alliance recognized the demand as a misguided application of Jesuit values. Moments when we were pressed to forgive and trust, moments that revealed different interpretations of Jesuit values, could have been used to

140 Wynne Walker Moskop and Penny Weiss push things further – to think, for example, about how reminiscent such calls for civility are of patriarchal demands that women smile and be nice, not be “strident,” understand that change has to be gradual, and be, foremost, sensitive to the needs and feelings of others, including those with power over us who are exercising it arbitrarily. Yet, the comfort norm of Jesuit values regarding niceness and dialogue remained relatively untouched, and even worked against us.

How narrow professional roles support hierarchies of leadership and knowledge A second puzzling dynamic centers around insufficient attention to leadership processes and practices within the alliance, and the comfort norm of narrow professional roles that supported our inattention to them. Here we focus on two issues: (1) the defining of the faculty’s professional role in a way that mistakes administrative management for leadership, fails to recognize the importance of epistemological diversity in university governance, and subordinates faculty to administration; and (2) the creeping of leadership hierarchy from the administration into operations of the Faculty Senate and even into the alliance, where it translated into a hierarchy of credibility that affected who got heard, what strategies were used, and what got done. Professional roles. Our mode of protest drew heavily on skills that form the core of our academic training – research, report writing, and presentations. We did a great deal of collaborative research and writing, and we did it better and more thoroughly than did the president’s supporters, demonstrating visually and conclusively, for example, that SLU was doing the opposite of what would be needed to improve its position in the rankings, an improvement much desired by the administration. While our presentations and reports were persuasive to some audiences, they were not persuasive to Biondi’s many supporters, especially among the trustees; for this audience, our facts worked no better than our attempts to appeal to certain Jesuit values to justify our rebellion. To understand our lack of credibility in their eyes, we explore different comfort norms regarding professional roles. The president’s public criticism of the presentations and reports of the faculty – labeling them “distorted” and “dishonest” – automatically had credibility with trustees and other backers (accustomed as they were through long practice to rubber-stamping Biondi’s will), even though he never directly refuted the specific claims we made.32 Our professional arguments did not convince loyal trustees, who did not seem to recognize or respect this application of our professional expertise. Why not? By sticking to items on their agenda, we reinforced rather than challenged both their understanding of the distribution of roles in a university and their priorities. The alliance chose to present a slideshow at some gatherings that spoke in the language of competitive markets, which we believed administrators and trustees would receive well. We were puzzled that these audiences still did not take our work seriously. They did not consider any of our protest activities as normal or appropriate. As with Jesuit values, our understanding of the

(K)No(wing) confidence 141 requirements of professional norms did not match theirs. Our superior account of facts had no resonance in the management terrain that administrators considered theirs. To the administration, such faculty activism claimed an exaggerated role for faculty in shared governance of university affairs. It was as if faculty were recklessly and necessarily abandoning their proper role as teachers and researchers, infringing instead on administrator’s professional terrain – especially budgeting and strategic planning – and damaging the university’s reputation with public criticism of administrators along the way. The president and others repeatedly accused us of ignoring our responsibilities to students and being professionally unaccountable. He wrote in a commentary for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The past year’s turmoil from these complainers has been self-inflicted, self-absorbed and self-serving, and not in the best interest of our students’ hopes and dreams,” students who do not come to SLU “to be subjected to these dissenters’ selfabsorbed motivation to be independent of professional accountability.”33 When the president announced that he would retire, board chair Joe Adorjan “called for civility and said he hoped constituencies can go back to their proper roles, where the board handles fiduciary oversight, the administration makes operational decisions and the faculty represents its interests with a focus on education and research” (emphasis added).34 When Adorjan appeared at the May Faculty Senate meeting, faculty who attended reported that he described the board of trustees’ job as “governance” and the faculty’s job as “education and research.” Their mindset was clear. This understanding of a sharp division of labor between faculty and administrator roles supports the politics of ignorance that allowed the president’s loyalists to be blind to evidence provided by faculty and maintain their own status as leaders of the university. Those who defined management as leadership and governance of the university and understood that as a role exclusively for the administration, cast administrators at the top of a hierarchy over faculty. They contested both the faculty’s capacity and right to participate in setting goals for the university. Faculty were to teach courses and publish, period (despite the fact that most tenured and tenure-track faculty are supposed to dedicate 20 percent of their time to service). Excluding faculty from participation in leading the university not only hurts faculty, but damages administrators by reducing the information available to them to “manage” an academic institution. Too, to describe faculty interest in the running of the university as “self-absorption” is a gross misconception that silences faculty on issues that are in fact of broad concern and impact, silencing already documented by faculty descriptions of a culture of fear. The collective academic functions of SLU faculty – supervision of the curriculum and degree programs – normally are participatory and necessarily plural. By contrast, administrators’ management functions, particularly regarding budgetary matters, have been hierarchical and very dependent on leadership at the top. This casts the university as a business corporation that should speak with a single voice rather than an institution whose role in society is built on its capacity to contribute

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plural kinds of knowledge. The crisis that sparked the no-confidence movement came when centralized administrative decisions extended into academic terrain. In every university, maintaining space for plural voices is essential to recognizing academic expertise; its importance cannot be overstated. The different kinds of expert knowledge in physics, literature, political science, medicine, law, and social work involve different methods of teaching and research, and they benefit from different kinds of support from the university. They cannot be reduced to one product or one voice. Centralized decision-making practices that presume to represent all succeed only in privileging some kinds of knowledge and marginalizing other kinds. A hierarchical understanding of professional roles crept into the Faculty Senate. Starting in 2007, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee (FSEC) adopted an increasingly managerial role, reducing its ability to offer resistance to administrative autocracy. It modified Senate committee structures and practices to “ensure that the Senate speaks with one voice” – as a practical matter, the voice of the executive committee.35 The FSEC appointed its own members as chairs of all standing committees,36 appointed and removed members of standing committees at will, and promulgated rules that require all committees to report to the executive committee rather than to the full Senate. The FSEC “represented” faculty without collecting faculty input. Most faculty, including the two of us, did not pay enough attention to notice until the no-confidence movement, when the Senate FSEC became reluctant to recognize plural views from our alliance or the local chapter of the AAUP. The EC seemed to have succumbed willfully to a politics of ignorance – as if our knowledge did not count and they, our representatives, were not obligated to include it. Some on the FSEC occasionally encouraged our dissenting voices; as a group, however, they stuck publicly to the position that they were authorized to represent all faculty in secret negotiations with administrators and trustees. When we allow the Senate FSEC to represent faculty as managers would, without the benefits of plural faculty perspectives, we participate in the reduction of our role as academics; we accept that management is leadership. It is no wonder that administrators and trustees who regard themselves as the true managers are not persuaded by alliance arguments; we are amateurs intruding on their terrain. Ultimately, the comfort norm of narrow and distinct professional roles for administrators and faculty functions as a management-oriented cage, a corporate model that excludes and denies credibility to the diverse forms of faculty expertise that distinguish the educational role of the university in society. University and Senate leadership practices, and faculty acquiescence to them, contribute to a shortage of faculty prepared to analyze the institution at which they work or to speak critically about it in public forums. As faculty limit participation, they limit their knowledge, too. This leads to a lack of understanding of the academic consequences of centralized top-down leadership and greater comfort and familiarity with it than with the more democratic leadership practices of truly shared governance, no less with a grassroots movement or participatory community. As a result, many faculty, maybe even most, do not acquire the political experience and

(K)No(wing) confidence 143 knowledge required for the work of shared governance, and few existing structures provide opportunities to gain that experience. As a faculty, we have set ourselves up to tolerate centralized intervention of management in academic matters and contributed to the credibility deficit of our own voices in shared governance. Internal leadership issues in the alliance. Some hierarchy crept into leadership practices of the alliance, too, even though our practices do not seem hierarchical by comparison to those of administrators and the FSEC. We refer, it is important to note, not to individual leaders but to group processes that shape how leadership is practiced.37 Within the alliance, the ways in which the group was organized, convened, and represented in public reinforced familiar hierarchical practices, and the group could have benefitted from reflecting more on them. The alliance talked about rotating leadership but never made it happen. The group talked about identifying and putting forward more spokespersons for the press who were not white males, but did not work hard enough to create the conditions that would support a broader public face. The main problem was that some of what the alliance accepted as knowledge came mostly from established sources who were served by the comfort norms and dominant discourses that accompanied them, even though, as a group, we had access to many more radical sources of knowledge gleaned from different marginalized standpoints. These were the wires of our cage. Our hierarchy did not come from autocratic leaders or management-oriented processes that reduced all voices to one. Instead, it came from hierarchies of knowledge in our group culture and dominant, unexamined understandings of leadership. First, we gave a lot of space to those who had more privileged access to insider information, who appeared more confident in their knowledge, who showed up repeatedly as our representatives in the press. Second, we leaned toward the prominent Jesuit understanding of leadership as traits of able individuals equipped to lead38 and divorced it from a more social view of leadership, as conditioned by structural processes through which groups identify problems, pursue shared goals, and recognize spokespersons and organizers. The AAUP emphasis on faculty participation in shared governance offered some resistance to these top-down leadership tendencies, insofar as shared governance is necessary for the limited goal of protecting tenure and academic freedom. But only the standpoint that prioritized broad participation, equity, interdisciplinarity, and social justice offered a clear epistemological foundation for resistance. And that, we believe, was the perspective least heard. Spreading leadership is necessary to strengthening faculty capacity for the adaptive work of shared governance. More specifically, it is essential to making room for marginalized standpoints that are more critical of the status quo and can alert activists to how comfort norms operate as a drag on progress toward long-term social justice goals. Spreading leadership spreads credibility and resists hierarchy. We did not look hard enough at the self-defeating patterns of belief and action inside as well as outside our movement, as reflexivity requires, and we did not question the way ready reliance on insider information caters to power, and tends to silence or reduce the credibility of more radical voices. As a group, we did not make these priorities. Able, highly respected faculty were asked to take

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on leadership roles, and they did. When some of them or others in the alliance invited more participation in visible roles as conveners or spokespersons, there were few takers. Why we did not spread leadership roles and credibility goes to the heart of our concern with the ways in which epistemological “comfort norms” operate as wires of a cage that limited our movement’s capacity to pursue a more progressive social justice agenda. Spreading convener and spokesperson roles more widely would have modeled the democratic leadership process needed to effectively represent the plural knowledge bases that distinguish the university as an institution. It also would have included voices that express marginalized standpoints, offer more penetrating criticisms of the status quo, and have greater potential to expand our agenda to diverse social justice concerns. Several members of the alliance would bring to the group information they had gained from private conversations and email exchanges with a few, usually unnamed, members of the board of trustees. We all listened hard to the passedon scraps of “knowledge,” and the knowledgeable interpretations given by the “connected” among us. The group mostly privileged these bits of information as glimpses inside the trustees’ secret deliberations, and granted them a great deal of epistemic credibility. And, unconsciously, we did some of the same with those few (mostly white males) who obtained the “inside information” to which the majority of us had no access. The ready reliance on information gained this way caters to power. It bolsters the status quo, and tends to silence or reduce the credibility of the more radical voices. The epistemology of ignorance led us to put too much trust in established, elite sources of knowledge, and too little in those that most challenged them, even when they were sitting at the same table. Not even all of us in the alliance had a vision of collaborative shared governance that made room for multiple voices. By most standards, alliance practices were democratic; we made decisions by consensus, after discussion. We did not, however, provide space for plural, diverse perspectives, on the front lines, voices that could (1) help expand our agenda to social justice issues related to class, race, and sex and to treatment of staff and adjunct faculty; and (2) explicitly model participatory forms of leadership. This was not a failing of those who did volunteer for leadership tasks but of the group as a whole to nurture opportunities for marginalized voices with more radical potential. Our practice reinforced hierarchical assumptions about leadership. Our failure to make room for more diverse voices up front suggests that most among us did not recognize that the consensus we built was based on a more limited range of voices than it had available. Everyone “knew” and resisted the hierarchical leadership practices involved in the president’s autocratic rule and in the Faculty Senate’s procedures. But we missed the hierarchy of knowledges and credibility, the cage-like influences of structures of power that crept into our resistance. As a consequence, our most inclusive arguments – such as charging the president with disregard for the understaffed office of diversity and affirmative action, or with being unresponsive to the fact that our institution had full-time employees on food stamps – never gained traction.

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How comfort norms limit the agenda The third worrisome dynamic was why it was difficult to expand our agenda to social justice issues such as the salaries and job security of staff and adjunct faculty, the number of white women and people of color on faculty, the dramatically understaffed affirmative action office, and the lack of institutional support for precisely those interdisciplinary and social science programs that investigate social inequalities. We have suggested how our movement’s acquiescence to niceness and hierarchical leadership practices limited our progress toward long-term social justice ends. To fully understand this puzzling dynamic, we need to remember Virginia Woolf’s insight that universities are not separate from the larger culture.39 Our university is part of the larger neoliberal culture that rests on an economic philosophy of market relations between presumably autonomous contractors that casts competition, deregulation, and privatization as the best means to prosperity. Neoliberalism attributes all human behavior to “logical, individualistic, and selfish goals,” minimizing the roles of public decisions, community goods, and structural constraints.40 The demand for productivity and profit steers neoliberal analysis and action, even down to individual departments at not-for-profit educational institutions. Neoliberalism clearly affected the VPAA’s proposals, as they operationalized and monetized people, practices, and structures that had been understood more contextually, by their non-monetary contributions, for example, to departments and colleges, themselves necessarily diverse and thus incapable of reduction to one common formula. It was also evident in the credibility given to hierarchical professional roles that equate leadership with management and tacitly prioritize the university’s place in the market over plural voices of faculty. Finally, neoliberal assumptions about individual agency without regard for social processes and power relations are consistent with an understanding of Jesuit values that emphasizes individual good will and character traits such as “niceness.” Even as the no-confidence community advocated shared governance, the primary tools we used – facts and figures that focused on the decline in university rankings relative to competitor universities – also limited the issues we could address and on what grounds. Our use of these tools limited our agenda by focusing more on poor management by administrators than on the procedures, policies, and practices of an administration truly uncommitted to shared governance. For the most part, we did not raise issues of democratic leadership and shared governance or social justice issues, such as how slowly SLU’s student body or faculty was diversifying, how underrepresented women faculty were at higher ranks, how our adjunct faculty and staff were struggling with low wages, and so on. The comfort norms we describe could have been challenged, even from within. Broader interpretations of Jesuit values are available. The Jesuits are known for their engagement with the world and involvement in social justice struggles in liberation theology in Latin America, for example, and Jesuits themselves have recognized their complicity in the oppression of women.41 The first female president

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of a Jesuit college identifies “the Jesuit tradition” with “braving new worlds and challenging the norm.” The Jesuit order,” she continues, “is known as much for its commitment to innovation and change as it is for rigor and tradition.”42 If we had explicitly probed the different meanings of Jesuit values – different bodies of knowledge and diverse epistemological standpoints – and the limitations of narrow professional roles and leadership practices, we might have broadened our agenda to include social justice issues related to race, class, and sex, and done a better job of integrating staff and student concerns. We might have laid a clearer path for future progressive change. A broader agenda could have bent some wires of the cage by fostering conversation and action within. Collaboration inside the cage is the surest means of exit.

Concluding thoughts: looking forward Like feminists, the Jesuits value a spirit of collaboration, listening to and learning from others, an orientation toward both/and rather than either/or, a shift from negative to positive conflict interaction, and an emphasis on dialogue. However, the comfort norms at SLU (but not unique to SLU) unnecessarily but persistently put feminist and Jesuit values at odds. That is truly a loss, because, as this chapter shows, feminism can make visible and realizable the progressive promise in Jesuit commitments – combatting the unjust and injurious marginalization of certain perspectives, priorities, and populations. Feminist analyses can illuminate the gap between processes that serve these shared values and processes that are autocratic, deaf to the voices and perspectives of others, vindictive, and monologic. In supporting such perspectives, we breach the barrier of the cage, encouraging the birds confined within to take flight. Comfort norms made it difficult to expand our agenda to long-term, progressive social justice issues, and to connect the urgent business of removing destructive administrators with such issues as treatment of staff, women’s and racial minorities’ underrepresentation in numerous arenas, and support for the interdisciplinary and social science academic programs that investigate social inequalities. More radical voices are often confronted by the following questions: If many in the alliance see our social justice concerns as peripheral, or do not recognize them as social justice concerns, how do we work together in the numbers needed to have an impact? When time and persons available to get things done are constrained, how do we set things up so that we converse and evolve rather than defaulting to comfort norms that limit our agenda? These questions are crucial to identifying how the wires of an epistemic cage can be bent to make room for an expanded agenda. Here we outline some recommendations for dealing with some of the vexing issues we encountered. First, resist the rush to reconcile. By the time matters get to something like noconfidence votes, substantive issues clearly abound. A variety of injured parties need to be heard, issues need to be researched and well understood, trust needs to develop, strategies need to be developed and then updated, etc. Premature reconciliation practically guarantees that important issues will go unaddressed. In particular,

(K)No(wing) confidence 147 the rush to reconcile often means that those issues more visible and familiar to those on the margins, problems raising the deepest questions about standard operating procedures, go most unaddressed, including issues of race, class, and sex. Comfort with unpleasant things such as discomfort, uncertainty, and conflict is required. Sometimes a focus on the negative and destructive is necessary in order to inform people and ultimately bring them into the movement. A “negative” focus is also critical if problems are to be traced to their roots rather than treated superficially and ineffectively. Demands that you have a clear and unchanging agenda can be overwhelming, but are for the convenience of others. Parts of your agenda can be static without precluding development as you continue to learn about both the undesirable status quo and the preferable possible. Negotiate on your schedule. Second, be suspicious of comfort norms. Identify and examine assumptions that are familiar and taken for granted. They can be double-edged swords, allowing the possibility of joint action but leaving critical questions unasked. Clues to comfort norms can be found through attention to who is included or excluded in discussions; who do and do not emerge as “leaders,” and who they claim to represent; what concerns are raised but are not pursued; and which persons or groups do not feel heard. Reflect on processes and practices internal to the movement. Third, listen to one another within the movement. Accommodating outside audiences sometimes gets more attention than listening well to each other within a social movement. Be aware of the politics of credulity, and listen even harder to those with unfairly deflated credibility. Do not prematurely close the agenda once the most obvious issues (and/or your issues) are on it. Similarly, consider making a variety of arguments for wanted changes to include more people’s experiences and perspectives. Build rather than assuming common ground. Consider every form of expertise a potential contribution. Such respect makes people feel valuable, is efficient, and allows folks to learn from one another. SLU’s no-confidence movement generally did well on this front, though we did not always recognize some less traditional forms of knowing politically (from how to organize certain events to what feminist and race-conscious perspectives add). Too, we could have diversified our agenda and our public face by reaching out to existing groups – organizations of international faculty, facilities workers (some of them unionized), and the feminist and Black student groups. In addition to celebrating where the alliance won, we need to answer questions about where we fell short, in order to translate our experiences and hindsight into recommendations useful for future (campus) movements for social change. Feminist epistemology provides accessible tools that teach us to see in the cracks, to hear from the margins, and to move from that which limits to that which liberates.

Notes 1 We thank both coeditors of this volume for their careful reading and comments on multiple drafts of this chapter, and our colleagues in the alliance for many insightful, stimulating conversations and collaborative initiatives during the no-confidence movement.

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2 Participants in a social movement community share some general goals without being connected in a formal organization. Instead they are connected through “informal networks of politicized individuals with fluid boundaries, flexible leadership structures, and malleable divisions of labor.” Steven Buechler, Women’s Movements in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 42). 3 Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1983), 4–5. 4 Nancy Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Grounds for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,” in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Methodology, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 283–310. 5 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 6 Lorraine Code, “Incredulity, Experientialism, and the Politics of Knowledge,” in Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader, ed. Alison M. Jaggar (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers), 295. 7 Code, “Incredulity,” 290. 8 Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 9 Nancy Tuana, “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance,” Hypatia 19, 1 (Winter 2004): 194–232. 10 Mary Hawkesworth, Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 118–119. 11 Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Managing Ignorance,” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, ed. Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007), 119. 12 Tuana, “Coming to Understand,” 195. 13 AAUP, “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” https://ww w.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure (accessed February 17, 2020). 14 AAUP, “Shared Governance,” http://www.aaup.org/issues/governance-colleges-uni versities (accessed February 17, 2020). 15 Ran Kuttner, “Jesuit Values and Alternative Dispute Resolution,” Journal of Religion & Society 13 (2011): 13. 16 Ibid., 7, 11. 17 A November 25, 2019, email from Wynne Moskop summarized the consensus that emerged from an alliance discussion that drew eight participants over two days. 18 Mark Knuepfer, Letter from the Faculty Senate President to the Saint Louis University Trustees, October 31, 2013, https://docs.google.com/a/slu.edu/viewer?a=v&pid=sites &srcid=c2x1LmVkdXxhYXVwLXNsdS1pbnRlcmltfGd4OjdkMDJhM2E5Zjk0Mz hkYzU (accessed March 3, 2020). 19 Steve (Stacey) Harris, “Saint Louis University Faculty and Students in Struggle with President and Vice President,” Academe Blog, November 8, 2012, https://academeblog. org/2012/11/08/saint-louis-university-faculty-and-students-in-struggle-with-president -and-vice-president/ (accessed February 25, 2020). 20 Steve Patterson, “Readers Agree: Biondi Destroyed The Formerly Urban Midtown Area Around Saint Louis University,” Urban Review Saint Louis, March 7, 2012, https://www.urbanreviewstl.com/?s=readers+agree%3A+Biondi+destroyed (accessed February 25, 2020). 21 Code, “Incredulity,” 291–292. 22 See Bill McClellan, “Father Biondi Takes SLU Controversy in Stride,” Saint Louis Post Dispatch, December 21, 2012, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill -mcclellan/father-biondi-takes-slu-controversy-in-stride/article_e538c3eb-7259-5dbd -be28-b8ae0939d6ab.html (accessed December 2016). Also see Editorial, “The Fall of Fr. Biondi,” The St. Louis American, May 9, 2013, http://www.stlamerican.com/news/

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editorials/the-fall-of-father-biondi/article_992e2cb2-b83a-11e2-98db-0019bb2963f4.h tml (accessed December 2016). Lawrence Biondi, Letter to Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, October 2, 2012, https://docs.google.com/a/slu.edu/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=c2x1LmVkd XxhYXVwLXNsdS1pbnRlcmltfGd4OjM4ZmQyOTI0ODI3ODMwMTM (accessed February 25, 2020); Manoj Patankar, letter to SLU faculty, October 16, 2012. David Hunn, “SLU Official Defends Withdrawn Plans,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, September 27, 2012. Lawrence Biondi, Letter to SLU Trustees, Faculty, Staff and Students, October 30, 2012, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com/online/media/letter-from -biondi-to-the-slu-community/pdf_3bec9e81-81d8-5884-968c-4e067afe6126.html (accessed June 2016). Quoted by Elizabethe Holland, “St. Louis University Faculty Panel Recommends Firing of Vice President,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 26, 2012, http://www.stltoday. com/news/local/education/st-louis-university-faculty-panel-recommends-firing-of-vicepresident/article_bbc0730d-6f48-5463-99bf-68328c4478e5.html (accessed June 2016). Thomas Brouster, letter to SLU faculty, staff, students, September 24, 2012; Lawrence Biondi, letter to Faculty Senate Executive Committee, October 2, 2012. Email from member of Faculty Senate Executive Committee to Jason Fritts, President, Arts and Sciences Faculty Council, October 29, 2012. Greg Beabout, Kenneth Parker, and Bonnie Wilson, “Faculty Looking Forward to Springtime at SLU,” The University News, January 18, 2013, https://www.unewsonline .com/2013/01/18/faculty-looking-forward-to-springtime-at-slu/, (accessed February 25, 2020). J. Joe Adorjan, “Biondi Keeps SLU’s Best Interest at Heart,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/biondi-keeps-slu-s-b est-interests-at-heart/article_dc512057-64b1-5a48-878d-4a4b5a36aa50.html (accessed January 2020). Ibid.; James Veltrie, S.J., “Father Veltrie responds to Dr. Parker,” University News, April 11, 2013, http://www.unewsonline.com/2013/04/11/fr-veltrie-responds-to-dr-p arker/(accessed June 2016). Lawrence Biondi, letter, October 30, 2012; Saint Louis University Faculty Evidence and Communication Committees, “Report to the Board of Trustees on the State of Saint Louis University, December 10, 2012, https://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/aaup-slu-i nterim/home/current-issues (accessed February 20, 2020); “University Response to the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council Report,” December 13, 2012; Wynne Moskop, email message to trustees, February 7, 2013. Lawrence Biondi, “Biondi: Criticism of SLU Raises Didn’t Tell the Whole Story,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 8, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/col umns/biondi-criticism-of-slu-raises-didn-t-tell-the-whole/article_b879fc80-c49d537e-9104-d879a0197d71.html (accessed July 2016). Nancy Cambria, “New SLU Board Chair Admits Mistakes, Promises to Find Great President,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 8, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/ education/new-slu-board-chair-admits-mistakes-promises-to-find-great/article_917 83616-d68f-5be4-a070-f4a0b71bd308.html (accessed July 2019). Saint Louis University Faculty Senate, “Faculty Senate Standing Committee, Ad Hoc Committee, and Task Force Procedures,” a set of procedures promulgated by the Senate executive committee in 2007 and revised by them in 2009 (according to the document itself), http://www.slu.edu/organizations/fs/committees/sop.pdf (accessed June 2016). This practice changed in fall 2016, when Senate standing committees began to elect their own chair. This approach is not unusual in leadership studies, although it does not fit the popular association of leadership with traits of individual leaders. The social and cultural

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approach we take here is consistent with Ronald Heifetz’s understanding of effective leadership as adaptive, as “the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive”; adaptive leadership shapes a group’s culture by “fostering processes that will generate new norms that enable the organization to meet the ongoing stream of adaptive challenges posed by a world ever ready to offer new realities, opportunities, and pressures.” Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 5. Also see Doris Schedlitzki and Gareth Edwards, eds., Studying Leadership: Traditional and Critical Approaches (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2014); and Sonja Hunt, “The Role of Leadership in the Construction of Reality,” in Leadership: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Barbara Kellerman (New York: Pearson, 1984), 157–178. See Chris Lowney, Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World (Chicago, IL: Loyola Press, 2003), 5, 9, 43, 116. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harvest Books, 1963), ch. 3. Candace Smith, “A Brief Examination of Neoliberalism and Its Effects,” https://ww w.sociologylens.net/topics/political-economic-sociology/neoliberalism-consequences /10869 (accessed February 25, 2020). “Jesuits and the Situation of Women in Church and Civil Society,” General Congregation 34, Decree 14, 1995, para. 369, http://www.sjweb.info/documents/sjs/docs/Dr%2014 _ENG.pdf (accessed June 2016). Linda LeMura, “The Jesuit Mission in Higher Education: My Perspective,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, 46 (September 2014): 38.

9

Contentious faculty Theory and practice Ellen Carnaghan

In Dynamics of Contention, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly define contentious politics as “Episodic, public, collective interaction among makers of claims and their objects when (a) at least one government is a claimant, an object of claims, or a party to the claims and (b) the claims would, if realized, affect the interests of at least one of the claimants.”1 Although Dynamics of Contention aims to uncover similar processes across a wide range of types of contention, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly explicitly exclude contention within wellbounded organizations from their investigations. In this conclusion, I push the margins of their analysis to examine faculty protest as a small and bounded form of contention. I show that the mechanisms that help us understand larger-scale episodes of contention also illuminate smaller-scale protest like faculty activism. In this process, I draw on the preceding chapters to show how the authors’ various findings add to our understanding of the contours of faculty activism. The more intimate dimensions of faculty activism make it possible to examine the dynamic interaction of these processes in a way not always available to analysts of largerscale movements. Surely, faculty protest falls far short of being a social movement or a revolution. The scope is too narrow, and the focus of claims is the university administration, not a government. Beyond those obvious differences, however, faculty protest has much in common with other forms of contentious action. Faculty protest is episodic. It is bigger, rarer, and more organized than the objections and complaints that characterize usual faculty disagreements with administrators. Faculty protest is public. Given the power imbalance between faculty and administrators, faculty have incentives to engage social media or local news outlets to bring their concerns to a wider public and to put pressure on those with the power to make crucial decisions. Faculty protest is transgressive. While manifestations of protest may emerge at regularly scheduled meeting of faculty governance bodies, activists engage in a variety of activities that their bosses do not sanction. Like other forms of contentious politics, faculty protest is an irregular, unusual, collective interaction between people making claims and representatives of institutional structures that are the targets of the claims. In this conclusion and following McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, I focus first on mobilization, aiming to explain the shift from faculty passivity to action. I then

152 Ellen Carnaghan look at actor and identity constitution, concentrating on the institutional structures that help faculty become activists. Finally, I explore trajectories of contention, hoping to better understand what sustains contention in a university, how contention draws to a close, and the bounded nature of success. Throughout, I draw on the work of previous chapters to illuminate faculty protest as case of political contention within a bounded institution. This analysis shows both how general theories of contentious politics explain the case of faculty protest and how focus on a contained case of faculty protest provides insight into processes that can otherwise be hard to study. Three main conclusions stand out. One, the mechanism of brokerage that McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly often highlight provides considerable leverage in explaining faculty contention. Two, identity constitution, another of McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly’s key processes, has distinctive features in the faculty context: faculty share a readily-accessed identity, making initial mobilization easier than in the general public, but they may face considerable challenges drawing hard boundaries between themselves and their opponents. Three, unlike governments, university administrations are able to keep their inner workings almost wholly secret. While researchers can have unique access into the processes that shape the faculty side of faculty contention, they have much less evidence about what is going on within university administrations or boards of trustees.

Mobilizing faculty protest A central question for students of contentious politics is how and why a formerly quiescent population becomes active and establishes the organizational structures that permit collective action. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly describe this process of mobilization as a set of interacting mechanisms, ranging from environmental changes, attribution of opportunity and threat, social appropriation, framing the dispute, and establishing innovative forms of collective action.2 Broad social changes and actions by members of the regime and challengers lead to altered perceptions of the costs of action and the likelihood of success. Challengers form new organizations or appropriate and transform existing ones. Brokers connect various groups together, enlarging the size of the challenging force. The process of mobilization is interactive, iterative, and dynamic. These same mobilization mechanisms also help us understand how faculty protest starts. The event that kicked off Saint Louis University’s (SLU) no-confidence movement was a distribution of a set of draft policy proposals to change standards and processes of faculty evaluation and make tenure “renewable” instead of permanent. The Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA) charged the all-university Faculty Senate with organizing a response, and the Senate executive committee asked every academic department to send in comments. The result, in short order, was a series of meetings that were explicitly organized to engage most faculty members at the university in systematic criticism of the new policies and, perhaps less intentionally, of the administrators who had put them forward. In this way, the mobilization of previously unorganized faculty occurred quickly, and preexisting organizations – departments, department chair meetings, faculty

Contentious faculty 153 governance bodies – were appropriated for new purposes and increasingly critical discussions. A faculty often divided by disciplinary boundaries and divergent interests suddenly focused its grievances on a single target. Although the impulse to mobilize at SLU was what Edward Walsh and Rex Warland refer to as a “suddenly imposed grievance,”3 the offending policies might not have had the same effect in different circumstances. The policies were released in a context of broader environmental mechanisms that were changing relations between faculty and administrators. The nature of these environmental changes can be summed up as a move toward a more “corporate” organization of university decision-making, a global trend in higher education. The corporate model includes shifting decision-making power away from faculty toward administration, greater focus on considerations of productivity and cost-effectiveness rather than academic quality, and increased reliance on quantitative metrics to measure that productivity.4 All of those features were present in the proposed faculty evaluation policies, which stipulated a uniform set of metrics to measure faculty output, provided mechanisms to remove tenured faculty who did not meet centrally-set standards of productivity, and greatly reduced the discretion of department chairs – the people previously in charge of the process of faculty evaluation. These elements of corporate decision-making did not just appear out of the blue, as the chapters in the first part of this book showed. David Rapach and Bonnie Wilson analyzed the effect of institutional structures dominated by the president and showed how decision-making became even more concentrated over time. Robert Cropf and Kathryn Kuhn explained how decision-makers can hide behind seeming objective metrics and technical rationality to avoid considering the human costs of their decisions. Even prior to releasing the faculty evaluation proposals, the administration increased their reliance on quantitative metrics to make decisions, most notably in a controversial effort to close two departments less than a year earlier. Annette Clark described the culture of fear that can surround decision-makers whose power is effectively unchecked. At SLU, the result was an environment characterized by significant mistrust between faculty and administration and considerable frustration, as faculty members felt themselves to be at the mercy of arbitrary and capricious administrative decisions, from which there was no recourse. This set the stage for the faculty’s reception of the proposed evaluation policies. Annette Clark’s public resignation of her law school deanship, described in her chapter, also colored perceptions, exposing what some saw as cracks in an otherwise unyielding administrative edifice. The combination of growing frustration with broader administrative practices, the immediate grievance of the faculty evaluation polities, and the hints of regime weakness that resulted from Clark’s resignation changed how faculty assessed opportunities for protest. As I show in my chapter in this volume, “The Power of the Powerless Faculty Member,” some faculty – at first probably a small minority – saw potential for widespread mobilization in the faculty’s near unanimous rejection of the evaluation policies. For others, the costs of inaction were suddenly unacceptably high, as the very

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nature of the university seemed to hang in the balance. There was considerable uncertainty about how the administration would respond to the newly active faculty. As is turned out, the administration withdrew the evaluation policies less than a month after they were issued, increasing the impression of cracks in the regime. A concession that the administration may have believed would end the period of contention instead pushed activists to more ambitious goals. The first no-confidence vote in the Vice President for Academic Affairs – the head of the office responsible for the faculty evaluation policies – occurred days after the draft policies were withdrawn. In short, the same mechanisms that McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly have identified in more extensive forms of contention were present in faculty mobilization at SLU. Long-term environmental changes and short-term actions of the university administration helped challengers see opportunities for broader contention. Challengers appropriated existing institutions for new purposes. The Faculty Senate performed an important brokerage role, linking faculty across the university. One thing that distinguishes contention within a bounded institution from other types of contention is the scope and speed of mobilization. On the one hand, nearly all SLU faculty members were mobilized to some extent, a scope of involvement that would be unusual in a larger community. Because of the preexisting institutions of the Faculty Senate and academic departments, this mobilization could occur quite quickly. But on the other hand, for the vast majority of faculty members the level of action remained quite low. Many faculty members supported their representatives as various faculty governance bodies took votes of no confidence, they quickly and honestly answered surveys conducted to gauge faculty opinion, but they did not show up at public demonstrations, and they did not engage with the day to day work of running a resistance movement. When a show of strength may have mattered, faculty numbers were small. To better understand the differential levels of action among faculty members and its consequences, I turn to the process of actor constitution.

Actor and identity constitution In the course of mobilization, new actors form and people take on identities they did not have before. Contention pushes people to make choices about what they will or will not do, and with whom they will or will not stand. These people change the organizations within which they act throughout the episode of contention. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly stress, “Actors, in our view, are not neatly bounded, self-propelling entities with fixed attributes, but are socially embedded and constituted beings who interact incessantly with other beings and undergo modifications of their boundaries and attributes as they interact.”5 These new actors engage in a variety of activities – a repertoire of protest – partly familiar and partly innovative. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly describe four overarching mechanisms that inform the process of actor and identity constitution: brokerage, category formation, object shift, and certification.6 Brokerage, which was also part of the process

Contentious faculty 155 of mobilization, involves the linking of previously unconnected social sites by another actor. Category formation entails the creation of sites that share a boundary distinguishing them from other sites. Object shift alters relations between claimants and objects of claims. Certification is the validation of actors, their performances, and their claims by external authorities. One reason it may be relatively easy to mobilize faculty – at least to low levels of activity – is that they start out with a shared identity. Although many issues may divide them, it is not surprising if faculty members respond similarly to fundamental changes in their basic work conditions. To become an activist, though, requires a realignment of priorities and the adoption of new forms of action. For SLU faculty, it meant saying publicly what had previously only been whispered behind closed doors, sending op-ed pieces to the local newspaper, talking to reporters, lobbying trustees, marching around campus carrying signs. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly might say that the “identity” of a faculty member was clear enough at the start of contention but the “category” of faculty as a group clearly distinguished from and with different interests than the administration was not. Indeed, it is one of the distinctive features of faculty contention that the boundary between claimants and the targets of their claims is initially quite porous. After all, many members of the upper administration came from the faculty and continue to hold faculty status. The principle of shared governance rests on the notion that faculty, administration, and trustees are fundamentally on the same side, working together for a shared purpose. And of course it is useful – even if it is not strictly true – for university administrators to present themselves as helpful colleagues, not opponents, of the faculty. In their chapter in this volume, Wynne Moskop and Penny Weiss described profound tensions in this process of category construction. Persistent calls for faculty to “be nice,” both from the administration and from some members of the faculty, complicated the construction of a category of faculty with interests clearly opposed to the administration. Moskop and Weiss argued that dominant “comfort norms” in the university functioned as wires of an epistemic cage that limited vision and action. These comfort norms included “a spirit of collaboration” and a set of assumptions about where the faculty was and was not considered expert. If faculty members were to be agreeable and stick to teaching and research, then the category of activist faculty would be hard to build. Paul Lynch provided an alternative view, showing how faculty ultimately came to a clearer sense of themselves as contenders through staking a claim to an authoritative role in defining “Jesuit mission,” rather than conceding that role to the administration or the Jesuits. Kathryn Kuhn and Mark Ruff’s analysis shows how the frames that SLU’s administrators employed in an effort to dismiss contention – as the work of faculty malcontents intent on harming the university – may have backfired, helping faculty draw a harder conceptual line between themselves and the administration. The creation of the category of “faculty,” in opposition to administration, was advanced by the mechanism of certification, “the validation of actors, their performances, and their claims by external authorities.”7 In an apparent effort to coopt

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and contain faculty activism, the administration certified the executive committee of the all-university Faculty Senate as the one responsible voice of the faculty. This certification occurred both when the VPAA asked them to provide comments on the policies and again before the policies were withdrawn, when members of the executive committee were asked to meet with top administrators. Later, the university trustees performed a similar certifying role when they picked some members of the Senate executive committee to explain faculty grievances. In a context where faculty voices were often ignored, a trusted role as the faculty’s legitimate voice was a coveted one, not to be endangered by behavior that would displease the administration. Perhaps as a result of this ongoing certification, the Senate executive committee remained a moderate force, rarely moving first to push contention further, often encouraging the faculty to sit quietly while the executive committee solved their problems. The more radical role fell to the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Council, which held the first no-confidence vote in the Vice President for Academic Affairs and, later, in the president himself and which maintained a more confrontational stance throughout the period of contention. Under routine conditions, the Faculty Council is a governance body that approves courses and other curricular changes. Unlike the Senate, it is also a highly deliberative and not especially hierarchical institution in which faculty, department chairs, and deans work through the problems of the day. Early in the no-confidence movement, the Council created three ad hoc committees – the strategy, evidence, and communication committees. These committees made up the activist core of the faculty and were the sites where many ideas and projects later taken up by established faculty governance bodies first took shape. Before long, the ad hoc committee members started to refer to themselves as the “rebel alliance.” My chapter shows how, for many of the more active members of this alliance, their choice to participate was influenced by others in their personal networks, and these networks were often built in part on the basis of previous Faculty Council participation. That is to say, the role of the Faculty Council was critical not only during the no-confidence movement. It was vital that a body like the Council had existed and helped faculty develop relationships of trust prior to the movement. SLU’s administration made almost no effort to communicate directly with the Faculty Council or its ad hoc committees, despite the Council’s increasing tendency to pass resolutions criticizing the administration. Kathryn Kuhn and Mark Ruff describe how the president framed activists as a small band of malcontents. That rhetorical strategy can be seen as an attempt to decertify members of the alliance and, through them, the Faculty Council.8 But the committees’ broad links to various governance bodies, to students, and increasingly to faculty outside of the College of Arts and Sciences prevented the president’s dismissive frame from sticking, even as it continued to agitate less active members of the College of Arts and Sciences. Other campus groups – here particularly SLU’s Jesuit faculty – provided an alternative form of certification. The no-confidence movement at SLU – a Catholic, Jesuit university – pitted a mostly non-Jesuit faculty against a Jesuit president, but Jesuits served as

Contentious faculty 157 “influential allies” for the faculty and seemed again to signal the existence of “divided elites.”9 After the Arts and Sciences no-confidence vote in the university’s president, Jesuit faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences wrote a public letter to college faculty expressing their “deep appreciation” for the faculty’s service to the university and dedication to its mission as well as their shared concern for the good of the university. In a speech to college faculty and staff, the college’s Jesuit dean praised activist faculty for their “bravery, for the clarity of their thought and their wisdom, for their ability to see what we might have overlooked, to advocate for a value that we had forgotten about, and to lift us at those moments when we were prone to lose hope.”10 Paul Lynch describes how this support from Jesuits, particularly approval of the ways faculty were articulating the Jesuit mission of the university, legitimized the faculty’s arguments and their identity as a group capable of defining the mission and specifying strategies that would emanate from that mission. In addition, that the Faculty Senate and student government followed the College of Arts and Sciences’ lead in taking votes of no confidence in the president also provided a form of certification. While the university administration tried to moderate faculty protest by certifying – and providing privileged access – to one source of faculty representation and decertifying more radical voices, the more radical voices persisted and found competing elites ready to certify them. This process contributed to the formation of a category of faculty sharply opposed to the administration, at least in the College of Arts and Sciences. Members of the alliance also served as brokers, connecting groups not previously in contact with each other, including the Faculty Senate, SLU’s newly reconstituted branch of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), interested students, and faculty who were not yet involved in the movement. The student-organized Facebook page – SLU Students for No Confidence11 – similarly served a brokerage role, connecting students with faculty, staff, concerned alumni, and members of the community. Once the focus of no confidence shifted from the VPAA to the president, the faculty’s claims were directed at the trustees, the people capable of removing the president from office. This represented what McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly call “object shift,” a change in relations between claimants and targets of claims.12 In principle, trustees are at the top of the institutional hierarchy and are responsible for reviewing the work of the president, guiding the organization’s mission, and monitoring its performance.13 As David Rapach and Bonnie Wilson describe in their chapter, SLU’s trustees seemed to give the president a fairly free hand, and that is hardly an unusual situation in higher education. Many university trustees serve in a voluntary and part-time capacity and often lack deep expertise in higher education. As a result, it is easy for governing boards to get into the habit of approving whatever the administration puts before them.14 Like corporate boards, university boards can become “captured” by the administration, especially when university administrators have considerable power over how trustees are selected or if trustees remain in office for long periods,15 conditions that seemed present at SLU.

158 Ellen Carnaghan Shifting the object of claims to the trustees changed the game for the faculty. According to university policy, faculty members were supposed to communicate with trustees only through the administration. In practice, contact information for the trustees was secret, at least until it was leaked on the SLU Students for No Confidence Facebook page. The alliance consequently developed a strategy of communicating with the trustees through the local press, along with clandestine conversations with any trustees willing to lend an ear. Kathryn Kuhn and Mark Ruff describe how SLU’s faculty moved from an original frame highlighting the principle of academic freedom and the role of tenure in defending it to one that pitted mistreated faculty against a university president not always popular in the local community, in part because that story made more sense to people outside the university and cast the faculty in a sympathetic light. What started as mobilization against a set of policies transformed in little more than a month into a David and Goliath story of the faculty versus the president. One advantage of exploring a relatively small and contained case of contention is that it is possible to retrace the processes through which identities, categories, and framing narratives were constructed, as a number of chapters in the second half of this book do. This intimate view of contention highlights the iterative and exploratory nature of identity construction, as people try first one thing, then another. Wynne Moskop and Penny Weiss also show the frustrations in this process, as frames and strategies preferred by some are pushed to the side. In the interviews I conducted for my chapter in this volume, one of the members of the strategy committee described the series of choices involved in the construction of an activist identity: “It’s a gradual process that you find yourself being kind of led into. You start talking when you go to an academic council or what have you and gradually you find yourself more and more involved in it. So there isn’t a kind of sit down, ‘Shall I get involved? Shall I not get involved?’ I think there’s a sort of series of slopes that you find yourself traversing” (Interview 10). He described a process that likely fit with many participants’ experiences. The first step might be to volunteer to collect information for the evidence committee, but after some time a call might arise for signatories to a public document. Faculty who agreed to speak in a faculty assembly or at a teach-in were sometimes surprised to find the VPAA in attendance, taking notes, or their words the next day in the local newspaper. Each step along the way might seem small, but the end result was a transformation from obedient faculty member to visible and identifiable critic of the university administration.

Trajectories of contention Between the College of Arts and Science vote of no confidence in the president of the university and the president’s last day in office, more than ten months elapsed. In that time, events could have gone very differently. The increasing radicalization of the College of Arts and Sciences might have pushed uncommitted faculty toward the Senate’s moderate position and diminished the impulse for change, what McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly call a “radical flank effect.”16

Contentious faculty 159 Instead, many faculty moved toward clear opposition to the administration, and the Faculty Senate president and president-elect shifted closer to the Arts and Sciences position. Support for the president among trustees and higherlevel administrators might have strengthened instead of, ultimately, splintering. The whole university might have simply gone back to business as usual, as administrators repeatedly suggested they should. What processes kept the noconfidence momentum alive and ultimately culminated in the president’s abrupt resignation? Traditional social movement theory emphasizes the importance of organization and resources.17 The rebel alliance effectively functioned as a Social Movement Organization, mobilizing supporters, facilitating communication within the faculty and between faculty and others, devising common strategies, and reacting quickly to the administration’s counter steps. Faculty members brought a wealth of skills – a knack for writing compelling editorials, technical ability to analyze data or to produce all-faculty email lists, legal expertise, and extensive knowledge of various episodes of contentious politics, ranging from an earlier threatened no-confidence vote at SLU to the French Revolution, and almost everything in between. The faculty had broad contacts in the wider society, including at local newspapers and among members of the board of trustees. Money – to buy poster board, orange no-confidence tee-shirts, and megaphones – was quickly raised when needed. Tenure also was a resource, insulating those who had it from the most negative consequences of their actions. In this telling of the story, the upper administration or trustees simply could not match the accumulated resources of the faculty, as long as the faculty remained committed to the task at hand. Of course, the faculty’s continued commitment was not a given, since time is always in short supply in the academic calendar, and time devoted to activism is time subtracted from career advancement. And the rebel alliance’s success depended on more than just tallying up its resources and support. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly’s dynamic model better captures the repeated interactions and adjustments of strategy that kept the no-confidence movement alive for close to a year. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly would focus again on brokerage, that process that has run through every part of the narrative in this chapter, and also on identity shifts and convergence. In their analysis, the rebel alliance continued to connect various groups that did not all share identical goals. As Wynne Moskop and Penny Weiss demonstrated in their chapter, participants in the no-confidence movement disagreed about many things – though they could agree it was time for the president to leave office. As Paul Lynch’s chapter also shows, at the start faculty did not even have a common language or set of shared values. But the near constant interaction of members of the rebel alliance built enough shared strategy and common rhetorical constructs to keep the movement on target, even if the target was narrower than some would have liked. As the months passed, the alliance continued to connect various groups, including particularly the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council, the all-university Senate, and the local chapter of the AAUP. They added new members from across the university, including faculty members newly awarded tenure during the spring.

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These connections between groups enabled some actions that might otherwise have been difficult. In the spring, for instance, the trustees announced that a survey would be conducted to assess the climate at the university. Worried that the results of this survey would never be released if they turned out to be unfavorable to the president, the strategy committee developed an alternative survey. This was, in effect, equivalent to the “alternative vote count” that has been a feature of recent electoral revolutions.18 However, since neither the committee nor the Faculty Council had standing to field a university-wide survey, and the Faculty Senate was cooperating with trustees on the official survey, the alternative survey went out under the auspices of the SLU AAUP chapter. The survey was important because it showed that 73 percent of those who responded thought it was time for Saint Louis University to choose a new president and less than 8 percent disagreed.19 Results of the official climate survey were made public and showed similar levels of dissatisfaction.20 In addition to linking together groups across campus, the rebel alliance also connected individual faculty members together in webs of responsibility that decreased the likelihood of defection. The collective action problem that Mancur Olson describes arises from the unwillingness of individuals to devote resources to the acquisition of public goods that will be shared by both those who work for them and those who do not.21 As my earlier chapter showed, the repeated interactions within the rebel alliance changed that calculation, at least for some members. Whereas Annette Clark describes strong feelings of isolation after her very public resignation, the no-confidence movement that followed produced a strong community. In choosing their actions, members of the alliance weighed friendship and responsibility to close colleagues who had also taken risks. By providing a supportive community, the alliance facilitated identity shifts for its members and for faculty looking to become more visible activists. The alliance’s continual criticism of the administration and various public actions also fostered identity shifts in non-members and convergence across the university around the idea that it was time for the president to go. For instance, the College of Arts and Sciences department chairs passed a motion to stop any unnecessary administrative work and began mobilizing chairs from other units in the university. Leaders of the Faculty Senate started to criticize the president with less restraint.22 In converging around the position that the president’s time was up, the community focused on one issue at the expense of many others. As Wynne Moskop and Penny Weiss pointed out, the community as a whole did not push for needed structural changes in faculty governance or broader justice goals connected to gender and racial equity or the treatment of contingent faculty. The David vs. Goliath frame of an embattled faculty standing up to a tyrant worked well to mobilize support, both within SLU and outside it, but it also restricted the field of battle. Moskop and Weiss blame alliance leadership practices for these limitations; they argue that efforts to cultivate a wider variety of voices would have produced support for broader goals. As it was, wider mobilization or deeper radicalization of faculty proved difficult. Consensus fell apart, for instance, at suggestions

Contentious faculty 161 of faculty strikes or unionization. The most active faculty members were almost all centered in the College of Arts and Sciences, and that base expanded only glacially. The movement never fully engaged the faculty on SLU’s medical campus, for instance; though the campus was not far from the College of Arts and Sciences, it was organizationally and substantively foreign to it.23 Mobilizing staff or faculty without tenure was out of the question since it would have put them at too much risk. Kathryn Kuhn and Mark Ruff described in their chapter how the latter stages of SLU’s no-confidence movement were fought in part in the local and occasionally national press, with each side making its case to the trustees and the wider community through op-ed pieces, comments to journalists, and events designed to attract the media. The alliance’s “poke the bear” strategy – relentlessly calling attention to every misstep made by the administration – ultimately forced some of those missteps to be made very publicly, until finally the president “resigned.” Those missteps – more fully described in Kuhn and Ruff’s chapter – included a threat to sue the local AAUP chapter over its survey, the removal of faculty members from a student government meeting where the president was speaking, personal attacks on faculty members in the local newspaper, and, finally, systematic reductions in the merit raises of activist faculty. The “poke the bear” strategy worked in part because the administration responded as it did, but also because the alliance was organized to capitalize quickly on every fumble. In this regard, the tighter organization that Moskop and Weiss criticized was an advantage. In sum, the trajectory of SLU’s no-confidence movement highlights the importance of brokerage, identity shifts, and convergence, as McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly predict – and also straightforward organization. The rebel alliance played a key role in all these processes. The roots of the rebel alliance in past and present experience with the College of Arts and Science Faculty Council helped produce a connected group of people capable of acting as one. Those roots also limited the alliance’s reach both in terms of the extent of faculty mobilization and the range of issues addressed. As David Rapach and Bonnie Wilson point out, although the movement succeeded insofar as the university got a new president, that change in personnel did not produce a transformation of the institutions that had been the original source of discontent.

Contentious faculty One of the benefits of studying faculty activism is that faculty members are unusually articulate about what they were trying to do. Even after the fact, they are cooperative and talkative research participants, happy to share all kinds of insights about their process. Of course, when the researchers are also the research subjects, they have access to an unusual amount of information about the mechanisms of contention. This is a boon, even given the obvious impediments to impartiality, and many of the chapters in this book demonstrate the benefits. The fine-grained view of the mechanisms of contention that emerges from the study of faculty

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protest provides unusual insight into participant motivations, choices, and iterative decision-making. One of the challenges of studying faculty activism, by contrast, is that the internal dynamics of incumbent decision-making are unusually opaque. The fact that the object of claims in faculty protest is not a government greatly restricts the availability of information about how incumbents select strategies or even who the key decision-makers are. It is possible to see the results of choices, but we know strikingly little about how they were made or by whom. This lack of direct knowledge of decision-making is compounded by seemingly strategic misinformation. The trustees and the president at SLU, for instance, expressed their strong support for the Vice President of Academic Affairs all the way up to the point when he suddenly stepped down, immediately after a meeting of the board of trustees. Officially SLU’s president “resigned.” But he resigned so soon after a back and forth in the press on the subject of salary reductions in which his own op-ed piece seemed like an admission of culpability that it was hard for observers not to draw a connection. In short, faculty contention is not identical to contention on a broader scale. Initial mobilization is likely to be easier, boundary drawing harder, and information about incumbents scarcer. And of course, the insurgents’ demands fall far short of revolution: they only want to unseat, not take the places of, incumbents. But there is much in common between faculty contention and other forms of contentious politics, as the chapters of this book have shown. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly’s dynamic framework applies well in the more bounded case of faculty contention, helping us understand how and why faculty mobilize, the nature of identity shifts, and the ultimate shape and results of contention. In sum, there is much to be gained from expanding our understanding of contentious politics to encompass faculty protest.

Notes 1 Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 5. 2 Ibid., 28, 43–50, 91–123. 3 Edward J. Walsh and Rex H. Warland, “Social Movement Involvement in the Wake of a Nuclear Accident: Activists and Free Riders in the TMI Area,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 6 (December 1983): 772. 4 Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University (New York: The New Press, 2010), 4. See also Benjamin Ginsburg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1–12; Randy Martin, Under New Management: Universities, Administrative Labor, and the Professional Turn (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2011); David Schultz, “The Rise and Coming Demise of the Corporate University,” Academe 101, no. 5 (September–October 2015): 21–23. 5 McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 56. 6 Ibid., 157–158. 7 Ibid., 121. 8 Ibid., 204; Lawrence Biondi, S. J., Letter to SLU trustees, faculty, staff, and students, October 30, 2012, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/co

Contentious faculty 163 9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19

20 21 22

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ntent/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/be/3bec9e81-81d8-5884-968c-4e067afe6126/51b758 3a383dd.pdf.pdf (accessed March 7, 2020). Tarrow, Power in Movement, 166; Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978), 126; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 315–317. Michael Barber, S.J., Address to the Faculty Assembly of the College of Arts and Sciences, October 23, 2012. SLU Students for No Confidence, December 1, 2012, https://www.facebook.com/ NoConfidenceSLU?fref=pb&hc_location=profile_browser (accessed April 2, 2015). Dale Singer, “SLU Protests Move Beyond Biondi as Standoff Persists,” STL Beacon, December 4, 2012. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 144. AAUP, “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities,” https://www.aaup .org/report/statement-government-colleges-and-universities (accessed March 7, 2020). José Cabranes, “Myth and Realty of University Trusteeship in the Post-Enron Era,” Fordham Law Review 76, no. 2 (2007): 958–959. Cabranes thinks the real source of power in a university is the faculty. On co-opted corporate boards, see Charles M. Elson, “Director Compensation and the Management-Captured Board – The History of a Symptom and a Cure,” SMU Law Review 50, no. 1 (September–October 1996), 131–132; Sterling Huang, Chee Yeow Lim, Jeffrey Ng, “Not Clawing the Hand that Feeds You: The Case of Co-Opted Boards and Clawbacks,” European Accounting Review 28, no. 1 (2019): 101–127. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 185. John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 6 (May 1977): 1212–1241. Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, “Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes,” World Politics 62, no. 1 (January 2010): 74. At the main St. Louis campus, only nine respondents disagreed; at SLU’s Madrid campus, only four. There were 1,467 web-based surveys sent out to full-time faculty; 834 replies were received, for a response rate of 56.1 percent. The survey was conducted in April 2013. Saint Louis University AAUP, Current Issues, https://sites.google .com/a/slu.edu/aaup-slu-interim/home/current-issues (accessed January 23, 2020). Results were shared at a May Faculty Senate meeting from which the press was barred. Olson, Logic of Collective Action. Nick DeSantis, “Canceled Meeting with Embattled President Angers Saint Louis U. Faculty,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2013. https://www.chronicle.com /blogs/ticker/canceled-meeting-with-embattled-president-angers-saint-louis-u-faculty/ 59403?cid=pm&utm_medium=en&utm_source=pm (accessed February 4, 2020). I owe this insight to Kathryn Kuhn.

Coda The idea of a university Silvana R. Siddali

If I were asked to describe as briefly … as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or “School of Universal Learning.” This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot; – from all parts; else, how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? and in one spot; else, how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. … [A] University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country. (John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 18521) According to Cardinal John Henry Newman, universities are built on the widest and richest possible gathering of disciplines and persons in the common pursuit of truth. Suggested in his definition, and explicit elsewhere in his treatise, is the proposition that the dissemination of knowledge requires no other justification. In the fall of 2012, the Saint Louis University community came together to reaffirm its faith in and its commitment to the university’s mission: a reaffirmation that required building precisely the kind of “School of Universal Learning” Newman had in mind. Students, faculty, staff, and administrators found themselves at a turning point over the future of the university – its structure, leadership, and practices. One of the ways this moral conflict crystallized was in a no-confidence movement that began in August 2012 and lasted for nearly a year. The movement developed into a healthy, positive example of what should be at the heart of any university’s existence: an active, expressive, and spirited community of students, staff, faculty, and others who share a common mission. Early in the no-confidence movement, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael J. Barber, S.J., noted that in the midst of “stress and anxiety for all of us” the college had become “a community of people … morally responsible to and for each other.” Barber believed that however the crisis was resolved, SLU would still retain “this sense of moral community,” would still be “concerned about each other,” and that the community would never “lose the mutual respect

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for each other that has grown over these months.”2 The development of this community was, perhaps, even more important than the final outcome of the struggle. As SLU’s no-confidence movement gathered momentum, its members often disagreed privately with one another on goals and strategies. But they found ways to communicate, always keeping sight of the deep faith that through deliberation they could come to a civil and fair solution. Just as important, the participants relied on their diverse body of knowledge, expertise, and training to contribute their skills to a shared cause. Staff, faculty, students, and some administrators weighed in, and all volunteered their time. That was particularly evident in the case of faculty members, who deployed their scholarly expertise: mathematicians researched financial statements and annual reports, and performed much needed statistical analyses; social scientists studied university policy, the structure of the organization, and the ways in which power worked; scholars who had prior experience as newspaper reporters worked on cultivating media contacts and public relations and economists examined the administration’s fiscal decisions. In this way, the activists embodied Newman’s definition of a university. The process brought to life a vibrant community, nurtured through a mutual love for the university and one that (as most such movements do) coalesced through a profound concern that core principles and the welfare of their community were being threatened. At the heart of SLU’s crisis were a set of proposals to change the way faculty would be evaluated and, most important, essentially to eliminate tenure. These proposals removed the local supervision exercised by department chairs and violated that principle that people with disciplinary expertise should set the standards by which faculty are evaluated. Worse, because the proposals dismantled tenure, they endangered the very purpose for which they had been drafted in the first place: the safeguard of and motivation for faculty research productivity. Describing the relationship between tenure and research productivity, former president of the American Association of University Professors James E. Perley asked, “What would we lose if tenure were eliminated?” For him, the answer was “simple – the very best educational system in the world. … a system in which individuals have obligations not only to their chairs or administrators, but to their disciplines and their professions.”3 Tenure protects the intellectual freedom that is the foundation of good scholarship and of the university itself. According to former University of California President Clark Kerr, a university functions as “a church with a religion. It believes in the unfettered search for truth, in free expression of opinion without fear.”4 Scholars work with ideas in all aspects of their profession: researching, writing about them, teaching them to undergraduates and graduate students, presenting them to the wider scholarly community, and defending them when legitimate criticisms and evaluations challenge these ideas. Innovative, ground-breaking research, and by extension, inspirational teaching, cannot occur in an atmosphere of restriction.5 It follows that researchers must participate in all university policies that affect scholarship, teaching, and service. Without that full and free participation, no university can function as a creator and disseminator of knowledge. That participation – based on faculty

166 Silvana R. Siddali expertise and founded on the unfettered pursuit of truth, must play a core role in the university’s mission. Since the early 1940s, American universities have acknowledged that the faculty’s professional expertise must play a central role in academic administration.6 Democratic deliberation is certainly slower, more cumbersome, and often more fractious than unilateral actions by a senior administrator. Moreover, such conversations require the ability to concede the validity of divergent viewpoints. If we accept Cardinal Newman’s definition of a university, then it becomes clear that autocratic, arbitrary rule over a diverse body of scholars results in a fractured, fearful community, polarized from the administration and at odds with the administration’s goals. Yet democratic deliberation – so urgently necessary to build and maintain a university – requires far more than the mere exchange of views in the form of “talking points,” or a dogged effort to obtain one’s “exact recommendations.” Deliberation among equals first requires recognitions of such equality. It then takes hard work and a willingness to endure conflicts. Such conversations function as the core element of democratic citizenship. This is true of a nation or a corporation, and it is particularly true of a community with a strong ethos, such as a university. That commitment to citizenship entails protection of the free interchange of ideas at a university, especially among the teachers and scholars of many disciplines. It also requires a deep and careful inquiry into what is best for the community by all of its members.7 The movement left us all feeling stronger and more able to take on our own leadership roles in creating the university community. Educational policy researcher James DeBoy believes that faculty have a moral obligation to speak up when they perceive problems, because administrative staff and students are more vulnerable to retaliation. True, according to DeBoy, faculty “are not always right when we do speak up but we will always be wrong when we remain silent. Doing nothing when the university ship is off-course can be interpreted as tacit approval – an inaction that is tantamount to dereliction of duty.”8 When even one courageous individual takes a stand, change appears possible. The conversations that arise as a result, whether privately between individuals, or more publicly as resolutions by representative bodies, encourage others to share information and to dig more deeply into the underlying issues. Collaborative efforts remind the entire university community of our guiding principles. It would be difficult to claim that the individual participants in the struggle (on any side) refrained from expressing anger or hostility; indeed, there were multiple points of view, sharp divisions, and occasional flare-ups. In retrospect, it may appear that the university’s crisis played out on a battlefield, with two sides ranged on opposite camps. In reality, many members of the university community worked hard to keep the conversation civil and focused on foundational issues. Constant call to return to the university’s mission allowed the community to view the struggle as a positive one: as an effort to build a community that would work together to become in its essence, as Newman had expressed it, “a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.”9

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Notes 1 Cardinal John Henry Newman published this essay to support his proposal for a Catholic university in Ireland. The Idea of a University, Essays: English and American, Vol. XXVIII. The Harvard Classics (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–1914 and Bartleby, 2001), 1. 2 Dean Michael J. Barber, S.J., speech to the Faculty and Staff Assembly, October 23, 2012. 3 James E. Perley, “Problems in the Academy: Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Governance,” Academe 81, no. 1 (January–February 1995): 46–47. 4 Clark Kerr, “Governance and Functions,” Daedalus 116 (Winter 1970), quoted in Robert Birnbaum, “The End of Shared Governance: Looking Ahead or Looking Back,” New Directions for Higher Education (Fall 2004), n127. 5 James L. Turk, ed., Academic Freedom in Conflict: The Struggle over Free Speech Rights in the University (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, Ltd., 2014); for specific relevance to the university’s religious mission, see also Brandon G. Withrow, Consider No Evil: Two Faith Traditions and the Problem of Academic Freedom in Religious Higher Education (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014); for specific discussion of freedom of expression, see Richard De George, Academic Freedom and Tenure (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). 6 AAUP, “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” www.a aup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure, accessed February 17, 2020. 7 For the theory of performative deliberation, see Arabella Lyon, Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013). Christian Kock and Lisa S. Villadsen, eds., Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012) argue that participation and deliberation are actually constitutive of citizenship. 8 DeBoy, James L., “When the Corporate Storm Strikes the Academy: Faculty Response Required,” Contemporary Issues in Education Research 8, No.1 (2015): 17. 9 Newman, The Idea of a University, 6.

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Index

academic freedom 7, 58, 64, 111, 143; as motivation for protest 71, 132; relation to tenure 3–4, 45, 90–94, 165 access: to board of trustees 8–9, 27, 88, 94, 140–142, 156, 162; confidentiality 25, 27; to decision-making xi, 2–5, 28, 90, 111, 132, 141–142, 153, 162; to knowledge 129–130, 143–144; and media 87; to trustee bylaws 25–26 Acemoglu, Daron 22–23, 29–32; Why Nations Fail 5, 17–18, 22 actor constitution 154–158 Adams, Guy 7, 51–53 adjuncts see contingent faculty administration: characteristics of university 1–2; 4–7, 17–18, 27–33, 153–154; media use by 88, 91–95, 99–104; see also corporate model administrative conservatorship 56 administrative evil 7, 51–58 agenda setting 57, 133–134, 144–147; see also media: effect on framing allies 5–7, 11, 66, 86, 157 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 28, 79, 93–94; guidelines 132, 143; SLU chapter 95, 132, 135, 138, 142; response to SLU climate survey 72, 100–101 apathy 63, 76 Appleyard, J.A. 110–114, 117 Aristotle 109 Arrupe, Pedro 112, 116 Assembly of Notables 31 Association of Governing Boards 90 Atlanta compromise 129 autocracy 2, 17, 23–27; opposition in 63–68, 78; and university decisionmaking 33, 142–146, 166

Balfour, Danny 7, 51–53 Barker, Tim 92, 94, 101 Barth, Tom 57 Baumol, William 21 Benford, Robert D. 89 board capture 18, 25–26, 157 board of trustees 8–9, 57, 101–104, 114, 138, 156–161; and concentration of decision-making 5, 25–26; corporate frame 90–95; hierarchy of leadership 140–144; isolation of 18, 29, 114; secrecy 25–27, 98; support for president 29, 113, 162; see also board capture; Keefe, Thomas Booth, Wayne 109, 119 Bowen, William 21 brokerage 152–162 bullying 54, 56, 134, 136 Burke, Kenneth 113–114 capital: accumulation 19–24; diminishing returns 20–24 category formation 155, 157 Catholic Church 57, 89, 111 centralization see decision-making: concentrated; institutions: extractive certification 155–157 Chronicle of Higher Education 3, 87, 93–94, 100–102 civil rights movement 67 Clean Up This Mess rhetorical frame 97–98 climate survey 100, 160 Coase, Ronald 17 Code, Lorraine 130 College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) 7–9, 73; as center of no-confidence movement 79–80, 156–161; see also deans; Faculty Council; rebel alliance

188

Index

color campaign 8, 80, 102 comfort norms 11, 130–131, 155; Jesuit 133–140; leadership roles 142–144; limit agenda 145–147; professional roles 133, 140–142 communism 25, 63, 65, 67; see also Soviet Union community 81, 109, 114–116, 130, 160, 164–166 consultation: Jesuit norm of 137–139; and shared governance xii, 28, 65 contempt i, 71 contentious politics 2–4, 11, 151–162 contingent events 29 contingent faculty 3–5, 10, 73, 108, 144–145, 160 Cornelissen, Joep 86 corporatization 2–3, 5, 32, 64, 119, 153; master frame 90–93, 100; narrow professional roles 141–142; and overquantification 53–56 cost-benefit analysis see rational choice theory credibility: politics of 10, 126, 129–134, 136, 138–139, 145–147 critical juncture 5, 18, 27–32 culture of fear xiii–xiv, 6, 27, 41, 72–74, 153; as contested concept 136–141; as rhetorical frame 95–97, 104 cura personalis 110, 112 David vs. Goliath frame 10, 86, 103–104, 158, 160 deans: of SLU College of Arts and Sciences 9, 73, 79, 115, 157, 164–165; of SLU law school 6, 36–45, 57, 77, 87, 91–93, 109, 153; turnover of 37, 40 DeBoy, James 166 decision-making: concentration of 3–7, 11, 25, 38, 41, 142; information problems 31; see also corporatization deliberation 8, 32, 109, 114–121, 165–166 democracy 4–5, 11, 23, 39–32, 65–66, 126, 142–145, 166 de-radicalization 126, 129, 134 divided elites 6, 9, 157 Do You Speak Ignatian? (Traub) 110 Dubnick, Melvin 53 Dynamics of Contention (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly) 151 early-risers 66–68, 76–78 economic growth 19–24 efficiency 3, 7, 52–57, 93

electoral revolution 160 epistemology of ignorance 10–11, 129–130, 141–144 Faculty Council 7–9, 29, 79, 134, 159–161; ad hoc committees 8–9, 68, 80–82, 95, 156; see also no-confidence votes faculty evaluation policies 7, 28–29, 55, 64, 93–95, 137, 152–154, 165; responses to 71–72, 76, 82 Faculty Intent on Harming the University rhetorical frame 58, 95, 97–100, 137–138, 155 faculty manual 28–33 Faculty Senate 7–8, 10, 71, 135, 157–160; Assessment Task Force 26; executive committee 8, 137, 142, 156; relations with trustees 8, 25, 79, 90, 101, 114; review of evaluation policies 28, 152–154; see also no-confidence votes Failing Law Schools (Tamanaha) 39 Feldner, Sarah Bonewits 110 feminist: epistemologies 10–11, 126–131; standpoint theory 10–11, 129–131; see also credibility; epistemology of ignorance frame analysis 9–10, 86, 88, 103–104, 152, 155–158, 160; Academic master frame 90–91; contested frames 98–101; Corporatization master frame 90–93, 100; master frames 89; and mobilization 95–98; see also David vs. Goliath; Poke the Bear; Small Band of Malcontents frame confusion 96, 98–101 Freedom Summer 67 free-rider problem 8, 65, 160 Freire, Paulo 120 French Revolution 32, 75, 159 Fricker, Miranda 130 friendship 11, 67–68, 78, 81, 160 Frye, Marilyn 128–129 Gaudium et Spes 111–112 Ghere, Richard 52 Glorious Revolution 29–32 Goffman, Erving 86 governance: erosion of shared 3, 7, 18, 27–32; faculty 2–3, 103; and knowledge 140–144; limits of faculty 5–6, 40–43, 65; role of institutional structures in protest 8–9, 64, 67–71, 77–79; shared xii, 4–5, 57, 90, 132–133, 155; see also Faculty Council, Faculty Senate

Index Gray, Howard 110–114, 117 Great Britain 30–32 Great Council of Venice 26 grievances: faculty 2–3, 7, 11, 27, 57, 93, 152–153; see also faculty evaluation policies Hargrave, Timothy J. 86 Hartsock, Nancy 129 Havel, Vaclav 65; “Power of the Powerless” 63, 82 Heithaus, Claude 117 Heithaus Haven 116–117 Heydemann, Steven 67 identity 10, 67, 152–162; and Jesuit mission 108–121; and rhetorical topoi 109–110 Ignatian education 110, 132; see also Jesuit: education Inside Higher Ed 3 institutions: change in 18, 27–33; effect on economic growth 22–27; extractive 17–18, 22–33; inclusive 17–18, 21–23, 26–33; see also governance Jaco Report (Charles Jaco) 87, 98 Jesuit: education 110–112, 116, 119–120, 132; mission 10, 30, 96, 108–121, 132, 155; order 112–118, 146; support for faculty 9, 71, 73, 115, 118, 156–157; understanding of leadership 143; values 133–146 kairos 120–121 Keefe, Thomas 92, 100 Kerr, Clark 165 knowledge paradigms 11, 90, 127–133, 139–146 Kolvenbach, Peter Hans 112 Kreiser, B. Robert 79, 93–94, 100 Kuran, Timur 66 Land O’ Lakes Statement 111, 116 leadership practices 11, 30–33, 57–58, 127, 142–144; toxic 53 Leenders, Reinoud 67 Magna Carta 31 McAdam, Doug 2, 67, 151–162; Dynamics of Contention 151 McClellan, Bill 98–99, 103–104 McGovern, Kate 56 marginalized voices 10, 128–130, 138–146

189

market ideology 3, 56–58, 90, 140, 145 media: effect on framing 86–87, 91–104; faculty campaign 9–11, 57–58, 69, 88, 95–98, 151, 158, 161–162, 165; coverage of SLU conflict xiii, 28, 38, 87, 91–92; market in St. Louis 89; reader comments 92–94, 98, 103; use by administration 87, 91–104; see also SLU Students for No Confidence; social media “Men and Women for Others” 96, 112, 116 metrics xii, 7, 54–57, 93, 153 Mills, Charles 130 mission see Jesuit mission mobilization 1–3, 7–8, 64–80, 152–154, 160–162 moral inversion 52–53, 56 neoclassical growth theory 18–22 neoliberalism 145 networks 9, 11, 63–64, 67–68, 77–82, 156 new institutional economics 5, 18, 22–24 Newman, Cardinal John Henry 164–166 no-confidence votes: in higher education 1, 9, 22, 64, 79; at Saint Louis University 7–9, 21–22, 29, 43, 96–97, 115, 156–157 novena of grace 96, 116, 138 object shift 155, 157 Olson, Mancur 65, 160 opportunity see structure of opportunity organizational behavior 51–58 organizational leadership theory 86 Parliament, British 29–32 passive evil 54–55 Passy, Florence 67 Perley, James E. 165 persuasion 2, 9–10, 56, 90, 104, 109, 113–114, 140–142 pluralism 23–24, 27, 32 Poke The Bear strategy 10, 86, 98–104, 161 political opportunity see structure of opportunity political process model 66–67, 76–77, 82 Polletta, Francesca 10 power: arbitrary 38, 41, 52–58, 71, 140, 153, 166; concentration in nations 17–18, 23–24, 31–32; concentration at SLU 6–7, 11, 24–33, 58, 153; concentration in university settings 4–7, 71, 153; sharing 31 “Power of the Powerless” (Havel) 63, 82

190

Index

precipitating factors 21, 25, 27, 64, 71, 91–95, 109 press see media productivity 19, 21, 55, 57, 93, 145, 153, 165 professional roles see comfort norms: professional roles Professors Brainwash Students rhetorical frame 95–96 property rights 23, 28–31 protest by faculty: barriers to 1, 4–7, 39–41, 72–75; facilitating conditions 8, 11, 76–82, 152–158; limits of 10–11, 126–129, 133–147, 155, 160–161; strategies 9–10, 91–104, 109–110, 119–121, 157–162; see also governance; mobilization; networks public administration 3–4, 51–53 public relations 88, 94–98, 102, 165 quantitative indicators see metrics race 11, 113, 131, 136, 144–147 rational choice theory 8, 65–66, 72–75, 81–82 rationality: formal 54; technical 7, 52–57, 153 Readings, Bill 119–120 rebel alliance 9, 68–69, 80, 88, 95, 99–101, 130–132, 156, 159–161 recruitment 67–68, 77–80, 91, 95, 131 resistance see protest retaliation 27, 98–104, 166; through salary cuts 30, 75, 87, 102–103, 161 revolution 1–2, 18, 23–24, 29–33, 65, 77, 151 rhetoric 3, 10, 53, 86–104, 108–109, 113–121, 136, 156, 159 Riverfront Times 87 Robinson, James 22–23, 29–32; Why Nations Fail 5, 17–18, 22 Royal African Company 30 St. Louis Beacon 87, 92, 97, 100–102 St. Louis Business Journal 87 St. Louis Post-Dispatch 30, 87–88, 91–103 St. Louis Public Radio 87 SLU medical school 55, 73, 161 SLU Students for No Confidence 9, 96, 98, 104, 114, 157–158 Samier, Eugenie 54–55 Schroth, Raymond 111 Singer, Dale 92, 101

Small Band of Malcontents rhetorical frame 79, 86, 92–97, 100–104, 155–156 Smelser, Neil J. 91 Smith, Adam 5, 17–18 Snow, David A. 86, 89 social justice 11, 71, 126–128, 131–132, 136–139, 143–146; and Jesuit mission 110–112, 133–134 social media xiii, 97, 137, 151; see also SLU Students for No Confidence Social Movement Organization 9, 80, 95, 159; see also rebel alliance social science 77, 145–146 Soviet Union 24 Stigler, George 26 structure of opportunity 4–11, 27–28, 42, 66–68, 76–77, 82, 152–154; perceptions of 66–67, 76–77 student: activism 3–4; evaluations 55; government (SGA) xiii, 21–22, 29, 58, 101, 157, 161; harm by faculty protest 1, 6, 41, 103, 135, 141; support for faculty xiii, 9, 87–88, 96–98, 117, 156–158; see also SLU Students for No Confidence suddenly imposed grievance 153 Tamanaha, Brian: Failing Law Schools 39 Tarrow, Sidney 2, 5–6, 151–162; Dynamics of Contention 151 tenure: as an indicator of likelihood to protest 8, 42–43, 66, 73–75, 79, 81, 159; inadequacy as a mobilizing frame 94–95, 120, 158; role in American universities 3–5, 45, 90–91, 132, 143, 165–166; SLU proposals to eliminate xii, 7, 28, 64, 71, 82, 87, 93–95, 99, 109, 152 Tilly, Charles 2, 151–162; Dynamics of Contention 151 topoi 10, 109–110, 121 trajectories of contention 152, 158–161 Traub, Gary: Do You Speak Ignatian? 110 trustees see board of trustees Tuana, Nancy 130 Tucker, Joshua 66 Unforgiving Faculty rhetorical frame 95, 101, 139 unionization 3–4, 160–161 US News and World Report 113 University News 117, 138–139 Unmasking Administrative Evil 51

Index Van de Ven, Andrew H. 86 Vatican 89, 91, 111 Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA) xiv, 7–8, 28–29, 36–37, 64, 76, 93–96, 99, 132, 137–138, 152, 154–156, 162 Voegelin, Eric 52 Wall Street Journal 64, 87, 92 Walsh, Edward 153 Warland, Rex 153

We Want Our Mission Back rhetorical frame 96, 108 weak ties 67–68 Weber, Max 54 Werner, Mirjam 86 Why Nations Fail (Acemoglu and Robinson) 5, 17–18, 22 Wickham, Carrie 65 Williamson, Oliver 17 Woolf, Virginia 145

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