Why are faculty opinions of the PRB so at odds?

To the Editor:

I have just completed three wonderful years as a member of the President's Review Board. I say wonderful because the activity of serving on the board was intellectually stimulating, the company insightful and the sense I have acquired of the breadth and quality of faculty at this university a bit of a revelation.

However, I would be remiss were I not to recognize that my experience is wholly contrary to what I as a faculty member thought of the PRB. Indeed, the board is almost universally feared and reviled by both faculty, departments and schools in this university. It is seen as a group of nit-picking formalists, out of touch with the realities that departments face and generally unable to appreciate scholarly norms outside (or as others see it, inside) the sciences.

Why are these two views of the PRB so at odds? The reasons are structural. While in form the PRB passes on the appointment and promotion of individual scholars to tenure and/or full professorship, given that the board sees very few negative departmental or decanal recommendations, what it does is review the actions of departments, and from a position that is generally outside of the relevant disciplinary norms. Such a posture means that the PRB usually is attempting to protect the university from the actions of its departments, though occasionally attempting to protect an individual scholar from the actions of his or her department. No department wants even the dean's nose in its business, much less that of an omnibus collection of university busybodies.

Given the structural relationship between the departments and the PRB, the major question that is posed in any case is simple: Are we being flim-flammed? As any department has every reason to engage in flim-flam in order to protect its autonomy, the PRB's question is a reasonable one. Still, if the PRB is asking a reasonable question, why does it seem to the departments that the PRB's actions are little more than fly-specking a candidate's record in pursuit of an enforced, uniformed formalism?

The reason is simple. Departments routinely present their cases with opaque files, files that do not speak in language that even reasonably well-intentioned outsiders can understand. When presented with an opaque file, almost all that the board can do to decide whether it is being flim-flammed is to poke and prod at the edges, then engage in fly-specking. Such a response may seem to be irrelevant to the case, but, given the records that the PRB has to work with, it is the best that the board can do. So, if the departments and schools want less annoying work from the PRB, assembling more understandable, more transparent files is how to get those results.

On the basis of my service on the PRB, I would offer three rules that might aid in preparing such files:

- RULE 1. Fess up. Occasionally there are superstars among us. However, most of our colleagues are good, though not superstar, teachers and researchers. Hiding that fact, or any other adverse fact, may work in a single case, but if discovered will harm not just the candidate in question, but other possibly even more-deserving candidates whose cases are presented to the board thereafter. The PRB has a surprising institutional memory; a reputation that a department can't be trusted lasts a long time and impacts the careers of many candidates.

- RULE 2. Explain. A candidate who fits into a department's program for delivering on its teaching, research and service obligations will have more credibility than one who seems to be a Martian, landed randomly among the earthlings. That means that the difference between being really useful and being simply one of the "good ole boys" is crucial to convincing the PRB that a departmental decision is worthy of being trusted.

- RULE 3. Put your best foot forward. Presenting a disorganized CV is the equivalent of showing up for one's thesis defense in jeans and a torn t-shirt. And presenting a puffed up CV is the equivalent of showing up for the same event in formal attire. Either presentation of the self raises disturbing questions of judgment at a time when such questions cannot possibly be helpful to the candidate. Strive for the maximum of order with the minimum of fluff. This means that types of scholarship-books, articles, conference proceedings, etc.; peer-reviewed and unreviewed-need be sensibly categorized; teaching load and grant participation, where present, reasonably detailed, and professional, community, university and department activities limited to items of some significance.

I have sent three pages of more detailed recommendations to the chairs of all departments. If individuals wish copes, I will be pleased to supply them.

John Henry Schlegel
Professor of Law