Faculty Leadership

As we embark upon a new academic year with the promises of personal, professional and academic rewards to come, I thought about a character trait that is sorely lacking in many faculty members at many universities: leadership.

Too often, we choose our faculty for tenure track positions solely on the basis of their accomplishments within our discipline and we fail to look at them empirically. By this I mean the individuals are talented within their respective field but we should look at what else can they bring to the university and community.

This lack of leadership leads to failure by some tenure track faculty in the form of being denied tenure. Where am I going with this one may ask? Another Oshkosh blogger is decrying the denial of tenure, at other universities no less; of two rather well known academics/pseudo-political philosophers. The crux of the posting on the denial of tenure is that their political and social beliefs/positions are not in the mainstream and therefore these universities are effectively censoring them, and their beliefs, by denying them tenure. To quote an oft used trite phrase “the man is keeping them down”.

I really don’t think so. The universities I’ve been at are virtually the same for tenure track requirements: scholarship plus university and community involvement. We have freedom to teach, within reason, many different view points. I do not know the two individuals involved but, I’ve seen this type of faculty member before. Big “new” ideas (often poorly researched, too) and a lack of involvement in campus activities in favor of a preaching the “new” doctrine. Often times these individuals feel that their “message” is more important to get out than the actual business of learning students. I’ve seen these types of folks hold themselves up as too globally important to teach 101 courses, hold regular office hours or participate on campus committees.

Being a leader means looking forward and charting a course not only for ones self but for students and the university. We know in tenure track positions what we need to do in order to get tenure; please don’t whine when you so obviously miss the mark.