UT administrators have had a lot of difficulties lately discerning the private sphere from the public sphere, and carrying themselves accordingly. Since the fallout of Crystal Dixon's controversial article regarding homosexuality in the April 18 edition of The Toledo Free Press, including her suspension and later termination, Lloyd Jacobs has pursued a campaign to better identify when a UT administrator is "on" and not within the private sphere. What a strange twist of fate then when, not two months later, Jacobs and Main Campus Provost Rosemary Haggett find themselves subject to the same criticism that he so persistently and publicly leveled against Dixon.
The release of the April 28 e-mail exchange between Jacobs and Haggett, where they so cavalierly discuss the political sacrifice of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Yueh-Ting Lee and characterize the members of the Arts and Science Council as troublesome rabble-rousers, has caused tremors across academia and has undoubtedly caused both the top-administrators to reconsider their e-mail habits. The desire to move toward a more discrete form of expression, less given to candor, is not an unwise one, and the prompting regret and shame is not unjustified.
While it may be attractive to chalk the choice to exchange the controversial communiqués up to confusion regarding what can be regarded as private, the previously enforced standard for Ms. Dixon must be kept in mind. Oh, and then there is the frank admission by Haggett that the request for the e-mails is totally legitimate as the e-mails are public record. So Haggett and Jacobs wittingly acted unprofessionally, embarrassing an already embattled fellow administrator in Lee and insulting faculty members, and just hoped no one would be watching, or what?
Haggett has since admitted that the "bad behavior" characterization of faculty members was a badly-termed phrase not meant to be derogatory and has described the suggestion of "throwing the dean under the bus" as a colloquial phrase not meant to indicate a lack of confidence in the dean. One might wonder, though, how an administrator can be both supported, as Haggett and the Jacobs claim they do of Lee (or at least his office of "deanship"), while at the same time contemplate his sacrifice - how thin of a devotion that could be and on what abstract level it must exist.
But of even greater concern than their regard for the dean is Haggett's and Jacob's obvious disdain for faculty members and the value of shared governance. Their collective concern over not appearing weak in front of the university, at the expense of doing what's arguably best for it in at least transitioning an ineffective dean to another campus position, is downright galling. Under these conditions, Haggett's stated goal of establishing a dialogue with faculty members and students becomes something of impossibility when administrators won't frankly discuss the situation.
True and effective dialogue needs full disclosure and an eye to what is truly best not for an administration or its "agenda," but for a university as a whole. The democratic ideals of shared governance, no matter the utility of the agenda, must be satisfied in order to truly have what is best for every student, faculty member and administrator.
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