[Englecturers] RE: Voting for Chair

[englecturers at lists.ucr.edu]

Hmmm, I guess the only correct address for Parama is proy at ucr.edu.  

 

  _____  

From: John Briggs [mailto:jcbriggs at ucr.edu] 
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 5:01 PM
To: Christine Deviny; Steven.Axelrod at ucr.edu; DrBredbeck at aol.com;
Gregory.Bredbeck at ucr.edu; John.Briggs at ucr.edu; joseph.childers at ucr.edu;
andrea.denny-brown at ucr.edu; kimberly.devlin at ucr.edu; jennifer.doyle at ucr.edu;
Emory.Elliott at ucr.edu; cfabs at mindspring.com; carole.fabricant at ucr.edu;
John.Ganim at ucr.edu; George.Haggerty at ucr.edu; GEHaggerty at aol.com;
Katherine.Kinney at ucr.edu; josh.kun at ucr.edu; joshkun at aol.com;
Tiffany.Lopez at ucr.edu; Toby.Miller at ucr.edu; Vorris.Nunley at ucr.edu;
Michelle.Raheja at ucr.edu; proy at ucr.edu@webmail.ucr.edu;
Stanley.Stewart at ucr.edu; James.Tobias at ucr.edu; Caroleanne.tyler at ucr.edu;
Deborah.Willis at ucr.edu; Traise.Yamamoto at ucr.edu; Susan.Zieger at ucr.edu;
englecturers at lists.ucr.edu
Subject: Re: Voting for Chair

 

Colleagues:


     Since I will be at a meeting at UCSB on Monday, I'm taking this
opportunity to register an opinion about the proposal to elect the
departmental chair.  I'm against the motion, not only because I think it is
a reaction to a personality (the interim dean's) rather than a response to a
systemic problem, but also because it would introduce a series of new
problems without giving us greater benefits than the system of consultation,
rotation, and appointment that has served us for more than a generation.

     I agree with those who believe that the chairmanship should not become
a prize that subtly transforms well-meaning faculty members into competing
candidates and their colleagues into supporters and rivals.  There are
higher though unglamorous principles at stake in the selection of the chair,
and they are at their heart democratic.  There is especially the unglamorous
notion that there is a fairly regular rotation of the most senior members of
the department (at least those who are most available and who have not
disqualified themselves) into and out of the job, and the tempering notion
-- served by the principle of rotation -- that the work is necessary rather
than desirable, something to take on rather than to aspire toward.   I don't
believe a chair has served two regular terms in the entire history of the
Department.  The only associate to serve in the last thirty years has been
Milton Miller, who was at that time approaching retirement.

     In my twenty-five years on campus and my experience with the selection
of seven chairs, I have been impressed with how the choices have always
reflected a tacit consensus within the Department.  There has never been a
sense that a selection has set us on a particular road -- on a path that an
election, with its inevitable roster of winners and losers, had forced the
Department to choose instead of another.  

     Our current interim dean has committed a terrible error in holding us
in limbo, perhaps not even understanding that he was doing so.  But now he
has finally appointed an interim chair, and will, if he knows anything at
all about his job, appoint one for a longer term beginning in July.  I think
it would be wrong to indirectly institutionalize his grave administrative
mistake with an election process that would introduce new and unnecessary
uncertainties into our departmental life and our relations with the college
office. 

John Briggs


  


    




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