Fisher Report

Barbara E. Kurtz

Campus Communication Committee

Board of Trustees

December 7, 1998

Where do we as a campus community go from here with the Fisher report? I should ask us all to do the following:

1. Recognize that the report includes some positive, even exciting, suggestions for change: development of new models of excellence, increased selectivity in admissions, emphasis on quality in our graduate programs, among others. Yet the report must be used with caution. It also contains some demonstrable factual errors, some significant omissions (such as the role and needs of the Civil Service employees on campus), and some methodological problems (such as heavy reliance on unsubstantiated opinion) that will impair its usefulness until corrected. It offers a number of recommendations that will doubtless be highly controversial and even potentially divisive for our community, especially if accepted uncritically. The notion of the "public Ivy," for example, is causing pleased excitement in some quarters, unease in others. Detailed programmatic criticisms are inappropriate; and they have caused more consternation than productive dialogue. The resolution of any perceived problems is best left to relevant campus constituencies. The report is couched at times in negative, even inflammatory, terms that scarcely help to promote that "mutual confidence and trust" which the report rightly calls upon us all to develop over the coming months and years.
   
2. Recognize that, given this mixture of features--some positive, some negative, and some uncertain--it is incumbent upon our academic community to sort carefully through the report's recommendations. We need to set aside any erroneous statement or ill-founded generalization, disregard negative rhetoric, and reject facile scapegoating. We need to work together to identify the report's positive and feasible recommendations and to talk, in depth and at length, about how best to put those suggestions into practice.
   

I believe that the faculty as a whole, and I know that the CCC specifically, would hope that this necessary collaborative work begin with conversation during and after this meeting today and continue during the weeks and months ahead. I would suggest that this collaborative work would ideally take place in focus groups composed of appropriate stakeholders convened to address specific issues facing our community and to propose solutions. We have already begun this essential collaborative work with our various, successful university committees-such as those on shared governance, ASPT reform, and the presidential search. Such committees can serve as models for future collaborative endeavors.

Those collaborative endeavors will of course be shaped by new missions and visions for our own, unique community. In this regard, I urge the Board to embrace the report's view of the university as "unlike a business and unique." The powers and even more the responsibilities of university presidents with regard to "vision" more nearly resemble, I would argue, those of public officials rather than those of business executives. Such officials, like university presidents, typically preside over disparate communities composed of constituencies with often different, and sometimes conflicting, missions and goals. Public officials cannot simply "articulate a vision" for their communities, they cannot merely "move [their own agendas] forward." They must listen to the various constituencies, attend to their visions and hopes. They must persuade; they cannot simply impose. They are, first and foremost, public servants dedicated to the common good. Likewise, I believe, effective university presidents. They understand that "collegiality" is the heart of the university. They regard collegiality as an active, ongoing endeavor rather than a slogan. "Collegiality" means not just cordiality; it means "participation" in fulfilling the institution's vision and mission. It means above all "collaboration"-within the framework of a clear hierarchy, of course, but still in the spirit and even more the active practice of joint labors in the service of a public trust.

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