Presentation Delivered January 26, 2017Johns Hopkins University School of Education. his presentation will help to build a broader understanding of governance issues and models within academe and provide an overview of challenges to shared governance derived principally from a university model of faculty senate. Professor Backer has served as a member of Penn State’s University Faculty Senate in the capacities of Senate Chair, Parliamentarian, Representative for the Law School, and Chair, Co-Chair and Member of various senate committees. He maintains a website devoted to faculty voice entitled Monitoring University Governance with the mission of “promoting transparency and engagement in shared governance in universities and colleges.”

1. Issues in Shared Governance
Larry Catá Backer
W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar & Professor of Law
& International Affairs
Pennsylvania State University
Delivered January 26, 2017
Johns Hopkins University School of Education
2800 North Charles Street Suite 230
Baltimore, MD 21218

2. Background
• Shared governance an essential part of the traditional organization of the
university
• Grounded in a professionalized faculty with the monopoly of expertise on courses and
degrees
• Reinforced by tenure and its protections
• Underlined by an administrator class (on the provost side) drawn largely from seasoned
academics well socialized in academic cultures
• Education had a civic and economic objective
• Governance sharing focused on an autonomous institutional organization of faculty with
plenary authority over courses, shared authority over programs and consultative authority
over all other matters affecting the university
• Things are changing
• Corporatization has increasingly changed administrative organization and shifted power away
from academic side of the house
• Administrators are increasingly socialized within their own autonomous administrative
cultures and more detached form faculty
• Faculty has been stratified among tenure, fixed term and adjunct with differing protections
• These changes have affected the administrative structures of shared governance

3. Objectives
• University administrators have a host of
techniques that can be deployed to
undermine shared governance that are
now reshaping the relationship between
administration and formal faculty
organizational structures
• This presentation will help to build a
broader understanding of governance
issues and models within academe and
provide an overview of challenges to
shared governance derived principally
from a university model of faculty senate.
• Will speak through issues of shared
governance through my top 10ish list of
the emerging techniques that undermine
shared governance
• "You Don't Have the Authority": Counting
Down the Top Ten Techniques that
Undermine University Shared Governance
• "We Abhor Retaliation But Expect Loyalty to
Our Decisions" -- Techniques that
Undermine University Shared Governance,
the Honorable Mentions and the Deeper
Issues they Reveal”

4. Top Ten Techniques to Undermine Shared
Governance
• 1. "You don't have the authority."
• 2. "We can't share that information."
• 3. "Let's form a task force"
• 4. "This is a technical issue that requires
administrative expertise"
• 5. "You have a conflict of interest"
• 6. "Let us define the premises for you"
• 7. "We consulted faculty; we reached out to
specific faculty directly who we thought had
expertise"
• 8. "We consulted. . . we showed you the final draft
shortly before roll out and asked your
opinion"
• 9. "You take too long. . . we need to do this now."
• 10. "An outside agency is making us do this.”

5. "You don't have the authority"
• Today this method has been
transformed in line with the
bureaucratization of university
administration. It is deployed in two
very interesting ways.
• The first is to undermine the internal
operation of representative faculty
organizations.
• I have heard of instances, from various
places in the United States, where middle
level senior administrators have sought
to challenge senate officer decisions
about the conduct of the internal
operations of the faculty organization.
• The second is to undermine the
authority of such faculty organizations
within the institution. This is the more
traditional approach, but is now used
in a new way: usually that involves
disaggregating decision-making and
asserting that with respect to certain
elements of a once unified decision or
problem, the faculty organization has
no authority.
• A good example involves curricular issues
where administrators might take the
position that assessment (including
assessment of content and pedagogy) is
an administrative prerogative and falls
outside the preview of the faculty
organization.

6. “We can't share that information"
• Some universities, especially those that
advertise their transparency tend to keep two
sets of data--those that they will share with
stakeholders and those that they will not.
• Because there is no transparent policy
respecting what may be deemed secret,
administrations are free not merely to include
as secret anything they like, and to make
secret and then release information in an
arbitrary manner.
• Other university may forbid faculties and others
from generating or harvesting data on their
own.
• This permits senior administrators to control not
merely the "ownership" of data but also control
who may generate what sort of data.
• New Wrinkle—when senate administrators lock
senators out of their own archives (here)
• Transparency has always been viewed as
threatening to the "good order" and stability
of institutions, especially as they have come
to be reorganized more vertically in terms of
the organization of administrative power.
• And not just senior administrators. Middle level
managers--deans and campus leaders--are
equally troubled by the notion that the
information on which they base their decisions
and policy choices might be available to those
with a desire to assess their choices.
• With good reason, the ability to assess is deeply
related to the power to hold
accountable. Where such power might be
asserted by "subordinate" stakeholders--faculty
and staff--that would upend the "natural social
order of hierarchy at the university, at least as far
as administrators might be concerned.”

7. "Let's form a Task Force"
• This ploy can be useful in two
principal circumstances.
• In the first, it is an excellent tool for
end running university faculty
leadership that is annoying or
which senior administrators wish to
marginalize.
• The result is to ignore the standing
committees that usually undertake
review
• A variation is where such standing
committees get a short time to
review and comment on the work of
the task force
• In the second, it can shift control
from the senate leadership to the
administration. This can be
accomplished either:
• where the task force diverts
consideration of an issue from a
faculty governance organization
standing committee to a committee
either managed by, or heavily
populated with, selected
administrators and what I have called
pet faculty
• Alternatively, diversion occurs where
an administrative task force, usually
in the form of some sort of ad hoc
aggregation of administrators and
"others" take on for themselves a role
otherwise traditionally shared
because of some sort of articulated
need.

8. "This is a technical issue that requires
administrative expertise"
• As university administration
become more complex, its
bureaucracies have become more
specialized.
• Produces silo effect and contests for
"turf" among administrators
• Also specialized knowledge centers
that
• (1) tend to treat specialized knowledge
as currency to be accumulated and
”negotiated” for personal and unit
advantage, and
• (2) not to be shared.
• Consequence: it is increasingly
common to hear objections to
faculty institutional involvement in
policy determinations on the basis
of the "fact" that faculty do not
have "expertise".
• Exception--in those technical
instances in which faculty do have
expertise.
• But in that case, the institutional
faculty organization is marginalized
and administration reaches out
directly to the technically useful
faculty for direct input into their
administrative decision and policy-
making processes.

9. "You have a conflict of interest"
• Notion that individuals with an
interest in a decision ought not to
be able to participate in its
determination.
• At its limit, that suggests that faculty,
with an interest in the terms and
conditions of its employment, ought
to be considered to have an
inescapable conflict of interest
respecting practically every policy
choice made by the university,
including the choice and content of
courses.
• Exception when faculty have
necessary expertise (e.g., benefits)

10. "Let us define the premises for you"
• Passivity in governance is a virtue among
one’s partners
• Idea is that administrators control the
framing discussion and faculty senates
participate in implementation
• (e.g., “we have decided that your leg must
be amputated, you can chose the method)
• Few people, however, are trained to
engage with premises, and many times,
premises presented tend to be accepted
without much discussion.
• When administrators are challenged,
however, they tend to push back strongly-
-precisely because it is in the premises
that the control of engagement lies.
• An excellent example touches on current
engagement with benefits.
• Administration, with very little discussion,
have managed, in many institutions, to
frame the issue of benefits as one of cost
containment. They have controlled the
approaches to analysis and the scope of
objectives of benefit policies.

11. "We consulted faculty; we reached out to specific
faculty directly who we thought had expertise"
• End running suggests
• Administrative ignorance of the
difference among individual faculty
• Institutional organization of faculty
• Or expression of temptation to use one
to end run the other.
• This technique is usually combined
with others
• Example from a university where
benefits issues have been quite
contentious for a number of years:
• University administrations have used a
combination of specialized task forces
and routine leveraging of pet faculty or
faculty with technical expertise.
• These efforts are then routinely
characterized as faculty consultation
sufficient to meet more than the
minimum requirements of shared
governance.
• But administrators do not get called on
this, nor are there particularly damaging
consequences to this potentially
unethical behavior

12. "We consulted. . .we showed you the final draft
shortly before roll out and asked your opinion"
• Universities did not invent this ploy. It
was well practiced within the
European Communities in the 1970’s
and 1980’s.
• Administrators may keep a new policy
completely in house through the
completion of its final product.
• At that point, and immediately before
finalization, the university may transmit
the policy as a "draft" to the appropriate
faculty governance unit for their opinion
or for consultation.
• Usually the time for such review is very
short. Immediately after receiving the
consultation, the policy, rules or other
object of the matter sent for consultation
is promulgated
• Alternative:
• Use of consultation, not to seek input
about the premises and approaches to
policy or rule developed, but to seek any
input that might expose error or
administrative difficulties that might
otherwise have been overlooked.
• In either case, the role of the faculty
governance organization is reduced
either to farce or technical assistance

13. "You take too long. . we need to do this now."
• Administrators tend to be used
to efficient decision-making,
even within interlocking
networks of decision
participants.
• They tend to have little taste and
less tolerance, for the tedium of
democratic governance in a
representative organization.
• But sometimes they might use
this to their advantage.
• Strategic use:
• Delaying process to outlast the
term of a disfavored faculty leader
• Withhold consideration of
important matters--benefits,
general education, program
shutdowns, engaged scholarship
and the like, until the term of the
disliked leader is up.
• Justifies governance through ad
hoc groups

14. "An outside agency is making us do this."
• Accrediting agency timelines and
the complexities of compliance
with legal or regulatory
requirements have been useful
in shifting authority to
managers and away form faculty.

15. And the Rest. . . . .Administrative Discretion
and Retaliation
"We abhor cultures of retaliation but
we expect fidelity to decisions taken by
administrators."
• Key principal characteristic—the exercise
of administrative discretion against an
individual motivated in whole or in part by
personal animus rather than by
institutional considerations, but hidden
behind formal conformity to rules.
• Soft retaliation is fostered by an increasing gulf
between university faculty and administrators
about what retaliation means (see, e.g., here).
• Most universities now have fairly broad
policies against retaliation.
• whistle blowing (broadly understood including
sometimes harassment, discrimination and sexual
misconduct claims or reporting) (e.g., Ohio State,
Indiana, Maryland, Rutgers, Chicago (here and here),
criticized here, here and here).
• Sometimes they are bound up in codes of conduct (see,
e.g., here).
• Soft retaliation gives rise to a number
of techniques that may not arise to
formal breaches of faculty rights, but
which effectively penalize faculty who
do not conform.
• The application of the techniques may
be subtle, but can touch on
• The move toward civility (see
here, and here versus here)
• The management of social
media discussion by faculty (see,
e.g., here and here).
• The techniques do not undermine
shared governance directly, but they
do serve to chill faculty in the exercise
of shared governance.

16. The Specter of Soft Retaliation
• common forms of this soft
retaliation:
• 1. Administrators use a version of
the "by the book" tactic at times
used by public sector unions to
pressure employers into
workplace concessions (e g., here).
In the administrative version
deans may set an unrealistic
"general rule" and then announce
that waivers can be given upon
application in individual cases.
• 2. Related to the "by the book"
forms of soft retaliation are the
use of discretion to deny
permission.
• 3. Scheduling has been a classic tactic
for soft retaliation. In some units it
becomes an open secret that
Professor X is being punished by
senior unit officials because she
always winds up with an odd schedule
of classes.
• 4. The most important form of soft
retaliation involves the perversion of
the assessment process.
• 5. An important sub set of the
assessment process--what I call
socialization through soft rules. Let
me give an example: a dean notes that
attendance at weekly lunch time
workshops is entirely optional, and
then either negatively assesses those
who don't attend or rewards those
who do.

17. "Neutral assessment is the touchstone of
our academic cultures"
• The topic of assessment, like retaliation, is
much broader than shared governance, but
there are a number of techniques that might
be understood as assessment-based but with
an effect on shared governance.
• A. Procrastination: "If I control authorization I
control you". This technique can be used by
administrators who want to use their power
indirectly to affect faculty productivity by
affecting the timing and availability of unit
support for faculty work.
• B. Taking back privileges and benefits: This
technique is related to procrastination but
involves the taking back of what was once given.
• C. Applying the Rules Evenly: Every faculty
member has heard stories of the administrator
who manages his or her unit through adoption of
a policy of favoritism in the application of
discretionary decisions.
At the 2015 AAUP Annual Conference: Remarks,
"Undermining Academic Freedom from the Inside:
On the Adverse Effects of Administrative
Techniques and Neutral Principles" and PowerPoint
of Presentation "Developing Social Media Policies
for Universities: Best Practices and Pitfalls"

18. "I benchmark my policy choices."
• The logic of the herd runs deep in
academia.
• academic institutions as prestige
factories
• Group oriented conduct (the nail that stands
out will be hammered down)
• Risk averse.
• So what one has, increasingly in this
industry, is the adoption of the language
of entrepreneurship and innovation
within an organizational culture that
fears innovation except as a lock step
project conceived in committee and
dedicated to the proposition that all
academic institutions resemble each
other (within their prestige caste).
• Organizations like CIC and AAU have become,
over the course of these last several
generations, as the stakeholder community of
administrators who, among their own kind
and privileging their own shared values as
administrative officials,
• Supplants internal stakeholders as the most
important sources of accountability and shared
values among American universities
• Faculty no longer the most authoritative source
of academic issues (de-rofessionalization and
undermines main premise of 1915 AAUP
Statement)
• How does this undermine shared
governance?
• Because they tend to serve, like trade
associations, as an alternative basis for policy
and engagement, for industry discipline and
norms, beyond the ability of any institution-
bound stakeholder (faculty) to influence.
• Shared governance, in effect, is now shared
among similar classes of university
administrators, than among the various
internal stakeholders of any single university.

19. Killing Shared Governance From the Bottom
Up
• Denigrating Service
• "As you know, it was only because of my kindness and indulgence that I
allowed you to accept a grant that afforded you a buy out of your
courses last year. I should tell you that this really put me out; I had to go
to the trouble of finding substitutes for you just so that you could do this
research funded by the grant rather than teach. Reluctantly I also lost
you because of your duties as an elected member of the University
Faculty Governance Organization. There is nothing I can so about that.
But I will insist that those duties are in addition to, and should be
undertaken only after, you have complied with all of the service and
committee work that I need to impose on you. That is your primary job.
So you figure out how to fit in your University service; I have a unit to run.
I still need you to fulfill your service responsibilities to this unit first, which
includes advising students, serving as a peer observer of teaching for
faculty, and serving on unit committees as I assign you. And be sure to
remember that your year-end evaluation for me will be weighted heavily
in favor of your unit service.”
• Middle level and unit administrators making effective university service
difficult

20. Conclusion
• In changing administrative landscape, it
comes as no surprise that shared governance
is under stress
• Much of that stress is institutional and a
reflection of the changes in academic
organization and mission
• But shared governance can also be
undermined by choices administrators make
and faculty fail to resist
• Even successful resistance leaves the main
issue—if shared governance is to survive, the
institutions of faculty governance must
change to meet the challenges of the new
realities of the structures within which
knowledge is produced and disseminated in
the university