Ohio State's Terrible Mistake

When the New York Times reported that Ohio State had just signed a new football coach, paying him $4 million yearly plus bonuses, putting a private jet at his disposal, throwing in a country club membership and the other accouterments of an opulent (many would say decadent) lifestyle – a seven-year package valued at nearly $40 million – the venom in the reader responses practically dripped off my computer screen:

” The nation's false values could not be more graphically displayed by this action…”

“What a terrible waste of money.”

“This is unacceptable and perverted.”

“I am appalled at this contract. I hear from my daughter that [Ohio State] academic programs go without funding and needed supplies.”

And on and on and on…..

The Times readers have it right. By brazenly capitulating to the grotesque arms race in college sports, Ohio State has tossed its academic values into the trash bin. It has betrayed its faculty and cheapened the degree of its three hundred thousand alumni. Forget education. Forget research. Forget public service. At Ohio State the name of the game is football.

Am I taking this personally? You bet I am, and here’s why. I was a professor and administrator at Ohio State for twenty-six years. As a department chair and dean I worked my butt off trying to raise academic standards, recruiting talented faculty, raising money to strengthen programs, writing research proposals, and singing the praises of my department and college to anyone who would listen. For twenty-six years I sat through endless numbers of meetings, wrote thousands of memos, agonized over budgets, did my best to make smart decisions – and I did all this because I wanted to do my part to make the university – my university – better. My son was born in the Ohio State hospitals, my wife and ex-wife are Ohio State alums. Our family bleeds scarlet and gray.

So how do I feel about Ohio State’s decision? I feel like the university has turned its back on what I spent most of my career trying to accomplish.

Here’s how Ohio State President Gordon Gee rationalized this move: “I’m about having the best physics faculty, the best medical school faculty and the best football coach.”

Well, Gordon, you’re my friend and former colleague, and I don’t want to get personal, but you know and I know that’s pure baloney. That spin may play in some quarters, but it sure doesn’t with your thousands of current and former faculty members. Where we expected you to stand up for the academic heart of the institution, you cheapened it. Instead of using this opportunity to restore balance, you embraced the madness. Instead of acting courageously, you capitulated to the corrupt sports materialism in college athletics that is anathema to the university’s core academic values.

Sure, you’ll find thousands, maybe millions, of Ohioans who applaud your decision. For them it’s all about winning games. But for me, and for the young Ohio State economics professor laboring over a journal article, or the senior chemistry professor fighting to renew an NSF grant, or the debt-burdened medical student, or the tens of thousands of Ohio families struggling to put their kid through Ohio State – to us, this issue isn’t about football. It’s about the priorities of the institution. It’s about what Ohio State University really stands for. And now we know.

Symbolism matters in academia. In some ways, it’s more important than anything else, and understanding that is what we expect from our academic leaders. Ohio State has had more than its share of sports scandals, and these are deeply embarrassing to many Buckeyes, including me. At a time when there is public outrage about the culture of impunity in major collegiate programs, at a time when Americans are fed up with the excesses, the greed, the win-at-all-cost mentality, the hype and the hypocrisy of college sports, it’s high time for college presidents to speak out.

Now it’s time for them to say “that’s enough” and to reject the corrosive influence of out-of-control sports on American higher education. Now it’s time to rein in the excesses and restore some sanity to campuses. To stand up and defend the academic heart of the university. To put one’s money where one’s mouth is. At Ohio State, that’s a lesson yet to be learned and that fact makes me sick at heart.

The Future of Rock and Roll

It is hard to get faculty members to agree on much of anything these days, but I bet one common bond would be a dislike of the mind-numbing sounds that blare out of college dorm room windows and leak out of iPod headsets. If you live on a college campus, as I did for a decade, there’s simply no escaping the vulgar lyrics, headache-inducing drumbeats, and repetitive synthesized squeals that sound like a car with worn brake pads scooting over railroad tracks. How could the great rock and roll sound of our college years have morphed into such an unattractive – okay, I’ll say it – such a repulsive genre?

Yesterday I came across a Washington Post opinion piece by Daniel de Vise lamenting the closing of Wesleyan’s WESU, the nation’s second-oldest college radio station. His blog took me back a few years to when Oxford Ohio’s WOXY, one of America’s great independent alternative rock stations, shut its doors. (I’m sure you know WOXY’s slogan: “97X BAM! The Future of Rock and Roll,” because you heard Dustin Hoffman repeat it over and over and over in Rain Man. Yes, it’s that WOXY.)

WOXY’s demise caused heartbreak among the Miami University student body. A colleague’s sophomore daughter broke down when she learned the station was pulling the big switch forever. Another listener posted on a bulletin board, “There are a lot of us who grew up listening to this station and it has provided the soundtrack to virtually our entire lives. Somebody DO something!! Seriously, I'm going to cry.”

The listener is correct. College students not only experience an extraordinary personal bond with their radio stations but, more fundamentally, the stations really do provide a soundtrack for their lives. Rock and roll comes to us when we first become aware of the universal problems of life and yet are least able to understand them. When we are in this fragile state and for a decade or two thereafter, rock and roll has the power to put us in touch with our humanity:


It is late on a bleak Sunday night in January 1972 and I am finally headed home from Ohio State’s Smith Laboratory. I’m listening to Melanie on “92X” in Columbus, Ohio. My experiment is a mess, none of the data is reproducible, and throughout the long day I could practically hear my tenure clock ticking.
Now Melanie starts another song:

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye…

In my depleted state, the lyrics seem profound. I picture my three year old daughter asleep at home and resolve to spend more time with her, to be a better father. Something makes me turn up the volume and roll down the car window, releasing the music into the frigid air…


Rock and roll has always commingled the celebration of life with a challenge to the establishment. Whether it was Elvis gyrating his hips on The Ed Sullivan Show, John Lennon paying tribute to illicit drugs in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, or merely the bone-jarring drumbeat from a car passing through a residential neighborhood, the music has always expressed the universal angst-ridden lament of adolescence: “I am me. I am not like you. You need to respect me for who I am and take me seriously.”

But rock and roll is much more than about seeking independence during a time of self-discovery. Hard as it is for some of us of a certain age to admit, it is also about art. The best rock and roll is creative and meaningful. But that doesn’t mean we can all appreciate it.

I have a theory, unsupported by data or deep reflection, that like ducklings people are imprinted on with the music of their youth. Each generation grows up believing that its own music is natural and attractive, and that that which follows is unpalatable and discordant.

To me, rock and roll will forever be about taking it easy in Winslow, Arizona, about meeting Memphis barroom queens, and about being busted flat in Baton Rouge. For my wife, Carole, rock and roll will forever be about asking Alice when she’s ten feet tall, and about hiding her heart because Eli’s coming.

If my theory is true, then Neil Young had it right: rock and roll is here to stay. Rock and roll is an exuberant musical reflection of the human spirit, and one way or another, that spirit will find a way to express itself, just as it did during the Cold War when pirate radio ships floated like lily pads in the coastal waters off totalitarian states.

And so, “the future of rock and roll” is still bright. The genre will continue to morph into other forms and find other venues, just as it has since the days of Bill Haley and the Comets. About all I can predict is that whatever the next form takes, I won’t like it and I won’t understand it. But that’s just fine, because the music is no longer meant for me.

And so, while our students' radio stations may be dwindling, the spirit that created their music is alive and well. One day our students will be us, carping about the young and the foolish, but still truckin’ down the road on that long strange trip, listening to the doodah man in their memories.

So How About Those Faculty Lounges?

If you haven’t already done so, take a look at Dan Berrett’s Inside Higher Ed interview with Naomi Shaeffer Riley, author of The Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the Education You Paid For. Ms. Riley, a Wall Street Journal editor and the daughter of two academics, writes with the flair of a skilled provocateur, and in her new book she takes aim at an easy target, the institution of tenure – sacrosanct to those who have it, but which to non-academic hoi polloi conjures up images of lazy, grass-mowing professors.

What I find most interesting – and dismaying – are the dozens of reader comments following the interview. Evidently the world of higher education hates Ms. Riley and everything she stands for. One reader finds her views "threaten the fabric of our nation..", while another says "I question her integrity," going on to suggest that she is yet another one of those "political hacks who misrepresent and cherry pick to score cheap points."
And on and on:

-"What utter balderdash"

-"Why has Inside Higher Ed made this incoherent drivel its leading article?"

- "...she wants to get rid of those that don't agree with her politically."

-" …laughable mistakes and wild, unsupported generalizations"

- "Wow, someone from Wall street has the temerity to question the business practices in the academy."

-"[Her] blather is simply disgraceful!"

- "What's next, Paris Hilton's book on how to be an ethical researcher?"

Of course, this being academia, there are a few weak countercurrents:

-"In my experience Ms. Riley is much, much less wrong than almost all the academics posting here claim."

-"The truth was out there and it was found. Get used to it."

Despite the vitriolic reader comments, Ms. Riley strikes me as having thought quite deeply about tenure and the meaning of academic freedom. She may not be a pedigreed scholar, a fact that offends many of her critics, but she’s smart and thoughtful and knowledgeable. Do I agree with her recommendations and conclusions? No I don’t, in many instances. But some of them ring true and all of them are thought-provoking.

For example, she asserts that tenure reduces job mobility by locking its recipients into one place of employment. If tenure were replaced by e.g., five year contracts, would senior faculty members have more opportunity to change jobs? That’s an interesting conjecture, arguable perhaps, but certainly worthy of discussion.

And what about the oft-heard complaints that tenure provides a haven for the lazy, the incompetent, the unproductive, the disruptive, the anti-social, and the unstable? Such concerns are a serious worry to the public, but are usually brushed aside by us insiders. “Sure,” we say, “ but every barrel has a few rotten apples. Look at every big corporation and you’ll find such people. Big deal.” Is that really an adequate response to such a widely held viewpoint? Based on my own observations, I think we’re probably talking about ten percent of tenured professors.

Or how about Stanley Fish’s opinion that academic freedom, the main justification for tenure, should not extend beyond the classroom? Academic freedom, he believes, doesn’t mean professors can mouth off without consequence on any topic they happen to feel strongly about. So what about that idea? I recently read a blog by an assistant professor of education who took great offense at her chancellor’s efforts to stabilize the school’s finances. Never mind that the young professor had zero administrative experience, had no conception of the complexities of the chancellor’s job, not to mention the schools’ finances, and was unwilling even to acknowledge that her chancellor’s decades of experience counted for anything. Do tenure and academic freedom obviate the need for humility, and if so doesn’t this fact undermine the very foundation of a liberal education? (See How I Almost Became an Academic Superstar.)

One problem with tenure is that any criticism of the practice provokes black-white responses. Those who have it seemingly cannot brook any mention of its shortcomings, and those without it are seemingly hard-pressed to acknowledge any benefits.

Cary Nelson, AAUP’s current president, is one of those who can’t see any shortcomings. Actually, that’s not quite true. The one big problem with tenure, Professor Nelson evidently believes, is that universities should be more generous in granting it, even to contingent instructors. Never mind that the main reason schools hire contingent instructors in the first place is that they can’t afford to hire tenured professors. Turning a blind eye to critics, refusing to acknowledge or ameliorate problems, to consider alternatives, or to understand other viewpoints is not going to save tenure. On the contrary that’s the surest way to wreck it.

Academics are supposed to be good at on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand reasoning. So let’s get serious about fixing the shortcomings of tenure. Surely there must be ways to stop protecting the incompetent, to clamp down on unwarranted classroom politicization, to moderate the costs, to put teeth into faculty self-policing, to deal responsibly with unproductive older professors. Surely there must be ways to protect academic freedom while also providing reasonable job security for professors. Unless the professoriate stops shrugging off these kinds of concerns, soon there won’t be enough of us left to worry about. I suppose that’s one way to solve the problem.

Full Moon Setting

John Fogerty’s classic 1969 song, “Bad Moon Rising,” is a tempting metaphor for the current state of American higher education:

I hear hurricanes ablowing

I know the end is coming near

I fear rivers over flowing

I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

But in 1969 when I embarked on my academic career who could have known that there was a bad moon lying unseen below the horizon? The golden age of the American academy was just beginning. As a freshly minted PhD, my future then held the glowing promises of lifetime tenure, sabbatical leaves, conferences in exotic places, NSF research grants, bright and alert students, and the noble and unfettered pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Today, only in their wildest dreams could the vast majority of aspiring young academics entertain such fantasies.

Who in 1969 could know that in the next century America’s preeminent universities and colleges would no longer reign supreme in the world, that many regional state universities would deteriorate into grim places filled with dingy concrete block buildings, ill-prepared and unmotivated students, crowded classrooms, and legions of overworked and underpaid contingent instructors? Could anyone then have imagined that America’s serene academic communities of scholars and students would devolve into environments that spawned grievances, accusations, and angry words, that trust and goodwill between faculty and administrations would deteriorate into negotiation across a bargaining table, and that collegiality would succumb to a corporate mindset that emphasizes bottom-line efficiency over academic values? Here is the dismal end game of the rising bad moon:

Hope you got your things together.

Hope you are quite prepared to die.

Looks like we’re in for nasty weather,

One eye is taken for an eye.

The bad moon rising, with its bleak message of hopelessness and inevitability, is an ugly, ugly metaphor for American higher education. It is a message of despair that sees only a ruinous future. And worse, it blinds us to new opportunities by encouraging us to look backwards, to stave off as long as possible our inescapable doom by fruitlessly trying to reclaim past glories.

So here is a better metaphor, courtesy of Dr. Wu, my wife’s former T'ai Chi instructor. Dr. Wu believed that the problem with Americans is that they want to be full moons throughout their lives. But being a full moon forever is not the natural order of things. The history of civilizations and of all social and biological organisms shows that they rise, some achieve dominance, and then they all inevitably decline. Learning to decline gracefully and intelligently, to accept reality without railing pointlessly against the inevitable, and to not waste one’s precious energy lamenting for a past that will not return, in Dr. Wu’s opinion, is the mark of maturity.

The full moon of American higher education is setting and there is nothing any of us can do to stop it. The golden age is not coming back because it can no longer be afforded. Each passing year the irresistible forces of global competition, pressing social needs, and widening economic inequality grow stronger, and in the coming decades there is virtually no possibility that they will weaken.

A setting moon means that our future will be different in many ways and that the adjustment will be difficult. But just as an aging star quarterback can go on to find fulfillment in other arenas, so can we. The key is to accept the reality of those opportunities that have been closed off and to go on to exploit the new ones the future holds out.

The setting moon of American higher education will be dominated by economics. Declining revenues from state and federal governments, combined with intense pressure to rein in tuition increases mean most colleges and universities will get along with less money. For public universities especially, tenure track appointments will continue to dwindle. Class sizes will grow and more students will require remedial education. Research opportunities for professors will contract, and there will be even greater emphasis on controlling costs and becoming more efficient and productive.

This all sounds pretty grim, so what about the opportunities? Like any period of transition, the era of the setting moon will spawn winners and losers because the future is not preordained. The winners will be those schools that learn to compete and be self-sufficient. The winners will reassess their core mission by focusing on their strengths and ridding themselves of weak and inessential programs. They will deliver their services more efficiently than others while learning to accommodate the needs of a changing student body. They will do away with costly peripheral ventures, eliminate wasteful administrative practices, and find an acceptable balance between the oppositional forces of administrative efficiency and shared governance.

Responding to the challenges of this daunting future will require sacrifice and enlightened leadership. But the full moon is setting, as it always does and always has. What is is, and it behooves all of us, therefore, to put aside our differences, to stop yearning for what is no longer possible and to face the future realistically and imaginatively.

Shared Governance: Sacred Value or Sacred Cow?

Today’s Quiz: What do the Culinary Institute of America, Oral Roberts University, Harvard University, and Gallaudet University have in common? Answer: In the past five years, their presidents have each received faculty “no confidence” votes.

Membership in the “No Confidence” club is hardly exclusive. Oakland U., Idaho State, Sonoma State, Kutztown U., Kean U., Urbana U., New Mexico State, Plattsburgh State, Northeastern Illinois U., St. Louis U., South Carolina State, and Texas A&M are recent members, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (Googling “university no-confidence vote” yields nearly two million hits.)

So what are faculty members so upset about? There is a smorgasbord of complaints – lavish presidential spending, favoritism in hiring, too many administrative appointments, excessive construction (on sports facilities, mostly), and inappropriate relationships with subordinates. If true, such allegations reflect either poor presidential judgment or an abuse of the office, and as such merit careful scrutiny by trustees.

However, the complaint running through most no-confidence votes is that the targeted administrator is unwilling to share power. Often, this allegation is a response to a president’s or provost’s efforts to reorganize an academic unit, phase out a department, eliminate a lightly enrolled degree program, or push back against a faculty union. Such actions typically draw hostile criticism from faculty legislative bodies, as in this charge by a Texas A& M faculty senator: “Our president missed that part in kindergarten where they talked about sharing.”

Typically, those at the receiving end of no-confidence votes are described as authoritarian, arrogant, and contemptuous of shared governance. Their alleged aloof, high-handed, disrespectful and undemocratic behavior is seen as an ingrained “management style” that harms the institution by marginalizing its faculty. From the sheer number of such complaints, it seems that American universities and colleges must surely be headed by ruthless and uncaring despots.

And yet outside the campus gates one hears a very different voice. Colleges, say legislators and taxpayers, are too often headed by weak-kneed, buck-passing marshmallows who cannot rein in campus spending, curtail tuition increases, and respond to changing circumstances.

So which is it, marshmallow or despot? One way to resolve the paradox is to consider what faculty no-confidence votes do not allege. Here is a no-confidence petition I guarantee trustees will never see:

Be it resolved: We the undersigned members of the Faculty Senate no longer have confidence in the president’s ability to lead the university. Specifically, we find that the president:

1. has not acted forcefully against incompetent teachers and scholars.
2. has not merged or eliminated weak academic programs and departments.
3. has failed to raise promotion and tenure standards.
4. has appointed too many large committees and commissions.
5. has not increased efficiency, sped up decision-making, and lowered costs.

My message is that shared governance doesn’t always work to make an institution better. John Lombardi, president of the Louisiana State University system has warned of the pitfalls awaiting leaders who seek broad consensus before acting. Only rarely, he says, will universities “make the considerable and often unpopular effort required to increase their standards to match those of excellent universities.”

The innate resistance to change is the Achilles heel of shared governance, and during hard times this weakness can morph into a ruinous paralysis. Shared governance ensures that many voices are heard but does not ensure closure, and to those whose ox stands to be gored, there is never enough consultation, never enough dialogue, never enough exploring of options.

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe in shared governance, and in most respects – particularly at the department level – it generally works well. The University of Michigan Faculty Handbook sums up the strengths:


Faculty participation in governance promotes and encourages diversity of ideas, a sense of shared responsibility, collaboration, collegiality and institutional excellence, and is essential to the well-being of the university.

But there is another side to the coin, mostly talked about behind closed doors in administrators’ offices (and which appears in no faculty handbook):

Faculty participation in governance promotes the rule of mediocrity, perpetuates the status quo, and leads to a wasteful use of time and resources that is detrimental to the well-being of the university.

Thus, like any form of government, shared governance has its pluses and minuses. As is often said about democracy, it may be superior only in comparison to the alternatives. But to the extent shared governance has become a sacred cow, immune from criticism, and a weapon wielded by those who oppose change, it can do great harm to an institution.

America’s colleges and universities are under unprecedented stress, with no easy solutions in sight. To survive this century’s harsh realities, they must find a balance point between administrative efficiency and the protection of core academic values. Doing so will require honest and open conversations about a governance mode that is increasingly dysfunctional.

A Silver Lining in Budget Cuts to Penn State

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed a 50% cut in appropriations to the four "state-related" institutions that include Penn State, as well as to the other 14 "state-owned" Pennsylvania campuses. Because of years of declining state support, this cut would reduce campus total operating revenues by only about four percent.

Here is the fact that shouldn't be overlooked: Governor Corbett's budget reflects the 21st century economic reality facing public higher education. States can no longer provide the money needed to support adequately their public universities. Nor will they be able to do so in the future, and no amount of hand-wringing and threatening doomsday scenarios by school leaders will change that fact.

The public believes, with much justification, that public universities have grown bloated, inefficient,and unresponsive to societal needs. Elected officials look at their state campuses and see huge costly bureaucracies, protracted and often pointless faculty debate over minor issues, unnecessary layers of management, and a campus culture that discourages flexibility and rewards laissez-faire administrators who focus on peace-keeping, lobbying, and image management. In other words, public universities have become like other large public agencies dependent on government appropriations. Why should anybody be surprised?

The incentives implicit in the (now-dysfunctional) appropriation-based economic model of public higher education point in the wrong direction. Here are a few problems:

1. Government subsidies to campuses are not contingent on institutional performance. They carry no financial incentive for schools to prune weak programs, enhance efficiency, stay focused on mission, and be responsive to student needs.

2. Subsidies use taxpayer funds inefficiently because they benefit wealthy, middle-income, and poor students equally. Blanket appropriations to campuses indirectly subsidize students who can afford to pay their own way.

3. Government appropriations are generally based on business cycles, legislative negotiations, and lobbying rather than a considered response to actual campus needs.

4. Government subsidies drive up costs. Universities immediately swallow additional subsidy revenue into their permanent cost base, thus increasing expenditures without having to make internal reallocations.

5. Government appropriations inevitably lead to government controls which, history shows, have been counterproductive, resulting in a regulatory burden that has raised costs, expanded bureaucracies, stifled creativity, and handicapped initiatives by individual schools to excel and distinguish themselves academically.

My point in all this is to suggest that the failure of the appropriation business model for public universities is not entirely bad news. As difficult as it may be for campus leaders to cope with disappearing state funding (to me, a cut from 8% to 4% of operating revenue does not seem catastrophic), it is more important that they focus on negotiatng a restructured financial plan with their governors -- one that does not simply perpetuate all the negative incentives of the former plan.

To start, campuses must insist on more regulatory freedom. To survive in this new era, they must have the flexibility to set tuition rates, establish admission criteria, determine faculty and staff compensation schedules, and create new academic programs-- not to mention freedom from the hundreds of mandated, unnecessary, and costly state requirements pertaining to construction, investments, contract approvals, purchasing, litigation, and on and on.

Second, campuses must get serious about reducing the inefficiencies that have accumulated over their decades of public support. Here are a few suggestions: (1) Reduce bloated committees that are frequently appointed to send a message about democratic inclusiveness rather than a need to get a job done. (2) Streamline search procedures. There is no rational justification for spending a year and a hundred thousand dollars to recruit a dean. (3) Start publicizing the real costs of governance activities. Perhaps campus legislative bodies would curtail unproductive debate if they knew that each meeting hour cost tens of thousands of dollars. (4) Rein in excessive executive compensation.There is no evidence that this practice, encouraged by search firms and facilitated by business-sector trustees, results in more competent leadership and, aside from enraging the faculty and elected officials, may attract individuals who lack appropriate academic values. (5) Create performance benchmarks for faculty and staff that reward individuals and departments that do a good job.(6) Start phasing out non-academic pursuits - conference centers, community rehabilitation programs, bloated stadium renovations, real estate ventures, peripheral business pursuits, and stay focused on academic mission.

And finally, public universities must become stronger advocates for students of modest means who cannot afford to attend private colleges. But effective advocacy does not mean begging for more subsidy (see (2), above), but lobbying for more state aid to needy students and their families.

The new economic realities are forcing major changes on public higher education. Those schools that survive and prosper in this new age are those that will respond proactively to the changing environment. Lamenting the loss of state funding and yearning for a return to a past which is not coming back is the sure road to decay.

Part II - When Protests Get Out of Hand: Advice for University Administrators

(This is the second of a two-part series on handling protest demonstrations, intended for university presidents and administrators. The essay may be downloaded as a .pdf file by clicking HERE.)

In any protest movement, there is a continuum of participants, ranging from the marginally interested who support the cause but remain in the background, to the envelope stuffers, poster makers, and other minor participants, to a small number of leaders who organize and coordinate the protest activities, draw up lists of demands, negotiate with university officials and serve as media spokespersons. When a protest becomes confrontational and crosses the line into prohibited activities, it does so at the direction of this last group.

In my experience, the leaders of disruptive and confrontational protests pose a particular challenge to university administrators, because is is difficult to have a reasoned discussion with them and because they are unlikely to ameliorate their stance in light of new knowledge. Many university presidents have observed that, at the edges, protest movements can attract zealots and ideologues for whom the ends justify the means. Thus, in my own career, I have seen protest leaders fake hate crimes in order to stir up campus racial discord, block thoroughfares that were the only route for community ambulances and fire vehicles, and make inflammatory and untrue allegations about university administrators.

Such persons are difficult to reason with because they can be so caught up in their immediate agenda that they lose a balanced picture of reality. At the extreme, their world can become an emotional, anger-driven place of un-nuanced arguments, where it is acceptable to ignore facts or take them out of context, and to reject summarily options, tradeoffs, and compromises. Hence these words from a recent UC-Davis protest website: “The administration lies. The police lie. We are done negotiating with the administration, we’re doing things on our terms now: direct action, occupation, reclaiming public space.”

Once rhetoric reaches this stage, attempting further negotiation with protest leaders is clearly unproductive. Acquiescing to protester demands in this situation is unwise, because doing so merely raises the stakes and results in more demands. The last thing such groups want is to fade from public awareness and be negotiated out of existence. For the leaders, the sense of camaraderie, excitement, anarchistic freedom, and the sheer exhilaration of their “movement” can become ends in themselves, supplanting their original goals.

A few suggestions for campus administrators, faced with protests that have grown out of hand:

1. University officials should be very cautious about having off-the-record conversations with protest leaders. I have been burned more than once by having my words distorted and quoted out of context. One should not assume that protest leaders will honor confidences and present opposing viewpoints fairly.

2. Protest leaders often demand to meet directly with the campus president or chancellor. Such meetings should generally not be granted for two reasons: first, doing so symbolically enhances the stature and power of the protest leaders and gives credibility to their actions. And second, doing so marginalizes the dean of students, or campus judicial authorities, or whoever would be the established conduit for complaints. Circumventing the chain of command undermines morale in the administration and facilitates the protesters’ desire to personalize their complaints by making it appear as if their grievance is with the president rather than the university. To the extent presidents allow themselves to be drawn into the protest negotiations, they create long-term problems for themselves by fostering resentment among other administrative officers, and by setting an undesirable precedent that facilitates future confrontations.

3. Presidents should always keep in mind that a primary goal of protests is to attract media attention, which is why protests and demonstrations are held in public places. But drawing media attention to themselves does not mean that protest leaders necessarily seek broad public approval. Instead, their strategy is generally aimed at recruiting from a limited pool of like-minded individuals. In the 1960s, for example, campus anti-war activists deliberately angered much of the public by burning American flags, disrupting graduation ceremonies, and violating social norms of dress and personal appearance. Provoking division in a community can serve the interests of extreme protest movements, because it forces members of the public to choose sides, thus hardening attitudes and widening the protesters’ potential base of support.

By contrast, university presidents must always try to reduce community polarization and division. Thus, they should remember that the public-at-large does not speak with one voice. On any issue there will be those who see the protests as completely appropriate and desirable, as well as those who believe the protesters should be vigorously prosecuted. When making public statements, therefore, university presidents must always be temperate and even-handed. They should never assume they are speaking only to their supporters. Former president Bush made this elementary error when he failed to realize how language that would resonate positively with his political base could be seen as offensive to those of a different persuasion.

4. Once a campus protest becomes confrontational, its leaders require adversaries to push against. Typically, this entails demonizing the campus chancellor or president in order to make it appear as if the university opposition to their activities is the personal action of an autocratic, insensitive, or greedy leader. Often, protesters try to exacerbate socioeconomic and class divisions by portraying the campus leadership as rich, power-hungry fat cats who are determined to hang onto their power and wealth by subjugating the proletariat. An anti-establishment revolutionary streak often runs through confrontational protest movements.

Again speaking from experience, the best way to defuse personal attacks is by not becoming rattled, avoiding responding in kind, and never failing to remain objective and even-handed. Presidents should also never, ever try to be funny. In the emotion-laden environment of a campus protest movement, an off-hand attempt at humor is guaranteed to backfire.

5. A common strategy during a building occupation is for protest leaders to disobey orders, say, to evacuate an office, in order to provoke the police into arresting them. This behavior is intended partly to garner sympathy from TV viewers who might be offended at the sight of young college students being dragged away in handcuffs. But mostly, it reflects an effort by the group’s leaders to mobilize their rank and file by portraying authorities as an enemy prepared to use Gestapo-like tactics to squelch the movement. Thus a scuffle with officers is often portrayed on protester websites and press releases as “police brutality,” or otherwise described by activists with breathless language implying that the group is under siege by ruthless oppressors: “Berkeley police turned off the campus wireless and sent in the SWAT team: the last transmission was the microblogger recording SWAT smashing the hinges off the doors.” (from Marc Bousquet)

To counter such statements, police should routinely videotape confrontations with protesters, so as to have a record of events. It is also helpful for university spokespersons or public officials to comment that accusations about police overreaction are standard protest rhetoric, and that campus police are professionals who have been specifically trained in crowd control methods, that they are well aware of the importance of showing restraint, and that their only goal is to enforce the law and protect individuals and public property. None of this is to say that police overeaction should be condoned, or that allegations of unnecessary police violence should go uninvestigated. Rather, it is to observe that allegations of police misconduct by protesters and their sympathizers are usually unwarranted and should not be accepted at face value

6. University leaders should make it clear at the outset of a confrontation that any negotiation over terms and issues will take place only after the inappropriate activity has ceased.

7. Universities should not agree to grant amnesty to protesters, because doing so establishes an unacceptable precedent and sends a message to protesters that staging illegal confrontations are a way to accomplish their aims and that there will be no consequences for their actions.

Thus administrators at the University of California at Davis recently made a error of judgment when, to end a building occupation, they agreed that “in the spirit of continuing dialogue, the university will not pursue student disciplinary actions,” and, further, that they would ask the local district attorney that he “strongly consider his option not to file charges.” It is understandable that administrators would want to defuse a potentially explosive situation, and also would want to appear conciliatory and moderate to the rest of the campus community. However, there is a price to paid by conceding to demands made under the implicit threat of protesters to elevate the disturbance. Dismissing charges, granting amnesty, or merely slapping the wrists of offenders may be appropriate in many circumstances, but that decision should be the outcome of due process and a disciplinary review. Universities should never agree to preempt the review itself.

The UC-Davis example illustrates the importance of setting policies during a time of calm. Such policies should state that the university will without exception hold accountable those who fail to comply with laws and university regulations. The university should explain clearly what types of activities (destroying property, occupying offices, etc.) are prohibited, and that it is standard practice to collect the names of lawbreakers. Students can get caught up in the passions of the moment and should be reminded that there is a line that they must not cross. The time to do this is before the need arises.

8. Responding appropriately to a confrontation with protesters calls for patience and firmness on the part of university officials. Presidents, especially, should focus on the group’s unacceptable behavior, but should avoid using loaded language and pejorative adjectives (e.g., “deplorable” actions, “preposterous” accusations). They should instead stress how the group’s actions impinge on the rights of others, and how they undermine the university’s commitment to thoughtful discourse and reasoned dialogue. Presidents should clearly and repeatedly explain how ends do not justify means, and that protesters cannot justify illegal actions by cloaking themselves in moral righteousness.

And, of course, presidents must always keep in mind that their statements are not primarily aimed at the protesters, who are most likely beyond reaching with words, but rather the larger community. Realistically, the university will not be destroyed if a building or two is occupied, or a few classes are disrupted. But the reputation of the university is on the line if such events undermine public confidence in the university’s fairness, integrity, objectivity and even-handedness. In this respect, the stakes are high, and the responsibility for protecting the institution rests squarely on the president’s shoulders.