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I ASSUME that the title of the ADE Seminar panel, Intellectual Identities: Perspectives on an Administrative Difficulty, refers to problems arising in the life of a department as a result of the often widely divergent theoretical or ideological positions of faculty members. The context of an ADE Seminar, as well as that marvelously understand subtitular phrase—“an Administrative Difficulty”—would seem to place this problem squarely in the lap, or perhaps it would be better to say on the back, of the chair. Certainly this problem is one of the most difficult I have faced as chair.
Difficult and stressful as I have found it, may attempt to respond in various positive ways to this atmosphere of conflict has also been one of the most interesting aspects of my job. I have found it interesting partly because I am (of course) a participant in these debates, or wrangles; that is to say, I have opinions of may own on these contentious matters. Chairs—like other members of the department—have intellectual identities. We are not “outside the text,” no value-free. We are ourselves exercised by these matters; we are engaged by the content of the debate.
Another interesting part of the problem, though, is what we do with our intellectual identities, what it is practical or ethically defensible to do with those identities, in our capacity as chairs. (I am assuming here that chairs have power of some kind or other.) Is it then an abuse of power, or a legitimate exercise of power, to attempt to steer, guide, cajole, or maneuver the department in certain directions of our own liking? Answers will vary in part according to the way we and our institutions view the role of the chair—whether as facilitator or head, or something in between.
I would suggest that an analogue of some interest can be found in the classroom: the relation of the person standing at the front of the class to those who are sitting down. It was once widely believed that professors should be objective, keeping a tightly closed lid on their feminism (for example) when addressing a class or engaging in debate with students. Some people still believe that; others (and I am one of these others) regard such concealment as impossible or undesirable. Similarly, I consider it both impossible and undesirable to stifle my intellectual identity in my role as chair.
I have been tempted to use this inflammatory and (at best) only partially apt analogy—chair is to colleagues as professor is to students—because I have a rather egalitarian view of what should transpire in the classroom. I do not think, for example, that it is appropriate to reward students for agreeing with me or to penalize them for dissenting. (Of course, none of us would say that we consider this appropriate, but too many of us do it.) Nor would I consider it appropriate to reward or penalize my colleagues—to the extent that I have it in my power to do either—on the basis of their theoretical positions. As with my students, I try to consider how thoughtfully they conceive and how well they carry out the projects they choose.
It is a legitimate exercise of our power as chairs to use our brains, to develop ideas, and to attempt—as any student or any colleague may—to convince others of the merit of our ideas. But it is almost always an abuse of power to impose these ideas on others. And it is clearly an abuse of power—unethical and also stupid, impractical—to steamroller colleagues whose views differ from ours. Ideas, including the chair's ideas, should rise or fall on their merits, as tested by informed debate. Of course university English departments should seek consensus on certain issues, and clearly we need to discover pieces of common ground—but one piece of particularly precious ground (it seems to me) is the conviction that it is a good idea for us to disagree.
I genuinely believe that disagreement is a good thing. It keeps lateral thinking alive; it helps us grow and change. I would hate to chair a department in which each faculty member was like every other. That would obviously be a terrible thing for students, who need to hear conflicting points of view if they are to think for themselves. And it would be terrible for faculty members: even knives (all knives, whatever their site of manufacture) need something to rub up against if they are to become sharp. This metaphor brings us to the precipice, however. What happens when the erstwhile whetstone becomes the victim of a colleague's knife or starts inserting knives of his or her own into various hearts and backs? What happens is that the common ground collapses, bodies fall—and you as chair have “an administrative difficulty.”
Annabel Patterson, of Duke University, recently gave a keynote address to Canadian professors of English at the Canadian Learned Societies' 1992 conference in Prince Edward Island. The title of her address was “Thelma and Louise Think Twice,” and the gist of it was that we should all think at least twice before hauling out our guns and knives, before calling one another Fascists (for example). I won't take issue here with her interpretation of the film, because the talk was not about Thelma and Louise —and because (though I find it tempting in the extreme) that flight would take me down a road that is too remote from the chair's office, in which a certain administrative difficulty is shaping up. So I'll just say that I like the film, and Annabel doesn't. But I don't like Annabel any less because we disagree about the film. I've already had too good a time (spent too many wine-drenched hours) quarreling with my friends about Thelma and Louise.
Besides, Thelma and Louise was used primarily to supply a catchy title for Annabel Patterson's entirely serious talk. She's afraid—and I am too—that we are moving toward that precipice you may remember from the end of the film. The collapse of English studies may not be imminent, but our disagreements with one another are clearly getting out of hand. Somehow or other, we must regain the ground that says we are allowed to disagree.
This is not to suggest that rapists—like the man in the parking lot who assaults Thelma and who is shot by Louise—have a respectable point of view or that sweet reason can induce the true terrorist to lay down arms. It is to say that we have got to stop abusing one another. Many of the opinions on which partisans from both sides of the great theoretical divide have lately been heaping contempt are not really so contemptible as their opponents think. Nor are the people who hold these opinions. I fear (and should in fairness acknowledge) that may own intellectual identity makes it unusually easy for me to say this. I'm not easy to place in the theory wars; I hear compelling, intriguing, and what seem to me foolish things being said on all sides and have therefore had to make do with my own eclectic mix. That mix, of course, changes in certain respects as I change—thanks, in part, to my colleagues.
I should acknowledge that I am oversimplifying: there isn't just one great divide, and a lot of us are seeking our own mix. I acknowledge too that my rhetoric is over-heated; we are not actually as rough on one another as this talk of guns and knives would seem to contend. But we are pretty rough, a lot of us. Too rough. And it seems to me that part of a chair's job is to respond to this situation, to try to change it. Bad odors are traveling down the corridors and getting penned up behind closed doors, and sometimes there are explosions. People are unhappy, and they're not working as well as they otherwise might; the system is not working as well as it might.
One thing might help is to remember that behind other people's intellectual identities are—in fact—identities, people who bleed when they are pricked too hard. That's one of the main ways that a chair can try to ease matters; he or she can try to remind people that they are talking about people. but I think it's time for a cautionary tale. Although the following vignette is entirely fictional and, as the disclaimer goes, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, my friction draws from anecdotes that chairs of many departments shared with me during may term as president of ADE's north-of-the-border counterpart, the Canadian Association of Chairs of English.
Let's call this story “The Ballad of Roger and Rose.” Rose is a distinguished scholar and prizewinning teacher; she's a feminist and theoretician in early middle age, who is working mainly on eighteenth-century texts. Roger, who has been in the department a lot longer, is a good teacher and a good critic, of a more old-fashioned kind; his field is American literature. Roger is also a stalwart worker, someone who really cares about the welfare of students and of the department. Both Rose and Roger work extraordinarily hard; both can be extremely generous and supportive of the work of colleagues; and both can be prickly. Roger feels that he is overdue for promotion to the rank of full professor, which Rose holds. He's quite open about such things; he's not at all sure that he merits promotion according to the criteria that are now in place, but he is sure that the situation hurts. It pains him to see younger people (like Rose) get ahead of him.
A few years ago, when a spate of new appointments began to tip the departmental balance toward theory, Roger (who is a truly voracious reader of literature) stepped up his reading of contemporary literature theory. He sought advice from colleagues like Rose on what to read, and he attended another colleague's PhD theory course—without missing a single session or skimping on the assigned readings. He did all that because he seeks community, and because he is interested in ideas. Some of what he learned (maybe much of what he learned) he didn't like or had serious reservations about, so he roamed the corridors looking for open doors; he wanted to talk about these things. That was okay. Colleagues sometimes complained that they didn't have time to talk to Roger or to listen to Roger, but the complaints were discreet and tinged with affection. Roger was made welcome, and he enjoyed the talk.
One day Roger went into Rose's office to suggest to her a possible candidate for a job being advertised at that time, a job in her period. He named the prospect, who was known to Rose. “God, Roger—no! The last thing we need in this department is another aging white male who is antitheory!” Roger, hearing himself described so succinctly, took this comment amiss. Whatever one may think of Rose's point, it seems evident that she put it badly. Rose could so easily have referred to the need to hire more women or to the impossibility of hiring anyone as senior as the person Roger had named. But she blew it. And Roger—now officially tagged de trop—has been fuming over this ever since.
Each then began to speak more and more harshly of the other, belittling the other's positions, denying the other's strengths. (Much of this happened behind closed doors, of course—with various colleagues taking sides, so that the polarization spread.) Because he is stubborn and loquacious, Roger tried intermittently to resume his debates on theory with Rose. He found her condescending, and she found him a pest. Whenever Roger spoke in department meetings, Rose's face was suffused with contempt—and he could see it; everyone could see it.
The chair of the department (herself a distinguished theorist) did her best to make clear to Roger that he was valued, as indeed he was. She spent a lot of time talking about theory with him and talking about literature. The chair told Rose what her face was doing in department meetings and asked her to control it—and Rose tried to do so. The chair also reminded Roger and Rose of each other's merits, while acknowledging faults. With each, she made a strong plea concerning the welfare of the department. This approach sounds impossibly unctuous, but the chair acted in a sometimes humorous, and apparently tolerable, way. For a while, it seemed that things were improving.
Then one day Roger got into another discussion with Rose. He complained about how theory was crowding our literature…how graduate students didn't really seem interested in literature anymore…how his own reading had suffered while he tried to catch up on theory. She argued that it is an English professor's responsibility to know theory; otherwise students are shortchanged—and besides, it is impossible for anyone who is not theoretically “sophisticated” to get research grants. Roger bristled. He said he didn't care; he was certainly not going to let an inability to get grants determine his intellectual path. So Rose said, “Well, in that case, perhaps you don't belong in a university.”
O Rose, thou art sick! Alas, poor chair! (Alas, poor Roger too.) Twice now, Rose has told Roger in no uncertain terms that the department doesn't need him. I think that must feel a bit like having a gun aimed at your head, the head in which you and your intellectual identity are housed. The gun says plainly, It would be better if you were not here. Roger will never forgive Rose. Theory and Rose have now become inextricably mixed: theory is out to get him, to blow him away. His interest in theory (and he had an interest) has become a vigilant hostility. The effect of this confrontation on Rose is less dire, because her self-esteem (which was much more secure than Roger's in the first place) has not been assaulted the way his has. But it is possible to detect in her as well a hardening of position, a decreased tolerance for deviation from the ideas that are most important to her and for the people who indulge in such deviation. And again, the reason for this is defensive. I imagine Rose squirming, thinking, Perhaps I did go too far, but the really is impossible—can anyone blame me when his ideas are so appallingly retrograde?
Polarization—the intransigence of intellectual identities under threat—has a terrible effect on students. The excitement of conflicting views, which makes a space for students to develop their own positions, turns into fear. Increasingly often, we hear of graduate students trembling in their boots over taking the right position for this or that professor; and they worry, with some cause, over what will happen if their committees are polarized. They think, I can't possibly have X on the committee; he disagrees with Y absolutely on appropriation of voice—and so on. I am also concerned about a lack of tolerance among the students themselves, as they line up with this or that set of professors—and begin to sneer at both faculty members and students in the other camp. Students' intellectual identities are also at risk; they too become defensive. And apart from anything else, students (like faculty members) don't learn as much or think as well in that frame of mind as they otherwise would.
As chairs, we have some responsibility for managing how committees work, how curriculum is shaped, how resources are allocated, how colleagues are evaluated, and so on. The problem I have described obviously affects all these responsibilities. My solution—to the extent that I have one—is the same for each of these concerns: it is—at the system level, in the various constructions I attempt—to respect difference, to orchestrate difference, to leave hospitable room for difference. But administration is something more than this. A certain amount of “ministering unto” is (I believe) essential to the role of the chair. The “ministry” of the chair involves not the teaching of some transcendental truth but the modeling and fostering of good will, which is needed most urgently when differences are most extreme: good will that can coexist with a passionate attachment to ideas. I have great faith in the efficacy of good will, without which no system in the world is worth a damn.
The picture of discord I have given here is exaggerated. There are many staunch examplars and defenders of good will in the academy, on both sides of the debate. (Again, I must apologize for the oversimplification.) And there is intellectual excitement in the air, which I would not willingly exchange for any amount of peace in the family. But there is also the threat I have spoken of. I am pleased that more and more of our colleagues have seen its face; I'm glad too that we have decided to talk about it. Nobody votes for gun control—or for what would be better, the voluntary relinquishment of our most lethal weapons—who has not understood that guns can kill people.
Constance Rooke is a past President of the Canadian Association of Chairs of English and Chair of the English Department at the University of Guelph. This paper was presented at the 1992 ADE Midwestern Summer Seminar at the University of Waterloo.
© 1993 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
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