Dear Brian,

I consider us to have been on friendly terms while you were at Macalester and I had a great deal of respect for the positive things you did for the college during your tenure as president. I especially appreciated your talents as an orator and your ability to articulate the values of the college and a liberal arts education more broadly. I also express gratitude for the money you raised and for your quiet insistence that staff and faculty be treated as equals. You may also recall that we differed in opinion on several occasions, but typically from a position of mutual respect.

Given this context, I was intrigued to see your new book, (provocatively entitled “Whatever it is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education”) which draws heavily on your experiences while at Macalester. I largely agree with your description of the many daunting headwinds facing American higher education today, including a shrinking population of graduating high school seniors, increasing numbers of families who no longer believe college is worth the investment and costs in higher education that are rising more quickly than people’s ability to pay for them. After describing these challenges, you then go on to discuss why you believe colleges like Macalester are incapable of adapting to this new environment. And here, my friend, I must respectfully disagree with your diagnosis of the structural conditions working against change. Worse still, I fear that this misdiagnosis may lead to a course of treatment, akin to medieval bloodletting, that leaves the patient in a much weaker state than before. For the sake of the Macalester community, here I offer a different perspective on three institutional arrangements that you frame as major factors inhibiting change: the position of research at a liberal arts college, tenure and shared governance.

You rightly note that Macalester often frames itself as a research-intensive liberal arts college where faculty who receive tenure must not only be gifted teachers, but active scholars. You then question the value of research at such a place, and whether or not there are positive synergies between research and teaching. In dismissing the value of research, you note your own journey as an English professor and your questioning about whether or not the world needed another book about Dickens. Reading this statement made me wince as I had heard you repeat it so many times during your tenure at Macalester. In fact, my reaction was similar to the one I have when listening to my crackpot uncle at Thanksgiving who annually rehashes the same critiques employing the same highly anecdotal evidence. Yes, Brian, perhaps the world doesn’t need another book on Dickens, but to use this to blithely dismiss the entire research enterprise was ludicrous. I also know that Macalester faculty bring their research into the classroom; involve students in their own research and co-publish with them; and discuss and present material differently to students because they are actively engaged in the knowledge production process. Research active faculty also tend to have extensive networks that they employ to help their students get jobs and graduate school placements. These synergies are a hallmark of a Macalester education and help the college distinguish itself from its peers.

Your critique of tenure seemed to boil down to the unfairness that it creates for non-tenure track faculty. Rather than do away with tenure, I would extend it to a larger proportion of faculty and ensure that there are adequate protections and stability for non-tenure track faculty. There are many compelling reasons to maintain the tenure system at a place like Macalester, but here I mention two. First, non-tenure track faculty and staff are often afraid to share their true perspectives with the college administration, leading to less informed decision making. Second, in a world where democracy is increasingly under threat, we need scholars who have spent their careers studying certain issues to feel secure enough to share their insights on important topics, even if their views are unpopular.

As you know, shared governance is a system wherein the administration, faculty and students jointly manage operations at the college. You write that shared governance is the bane of many a college administrator and it is overly slow and cumbersome. Here I must point out that a college like Macalester is a scholarly community (composed of students, faculty and staff) that is managed collectively rather than in a top down fashion. The advantage of a shared governance approach is that it can lead to deep and sustained change because it promotes participatory decision-making and widespread ownership of important initiatives. The alternative, administration-led model, may lead to faster change, but these shifts are often superficial and unsustainable.

I can think of at least two examples of situations where you, as president, circumvented the normal shared governance process to implement quick changes, both with superficial and problematic results. The first concerns the creation of the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship in the early 2000s. This was done with very little consultation with the faculty, appearing on our campus one day like a large mushroom in my backyard after a fall rain. The consequence is that the faculty have never really felt much ownership of this critical institution on our campus that is meant to serve as a bridge between the academic program and the outside world. The second example is Macalester’s 2015 strategic plan that was initiated and implemented under your leadership. Again, while faculty were nominally involved in the writing of this plan, it was largely drafted by the administration. As a consequence, most faculty barely knew that this plan existed and it had little impact on the way work was structured at the college.

While American higher ed is clearly facing a daunting set of challenges, I fear the damage your book may do by errantly attacking some critical institutional arrangements. My hope is that our energies will be directed elsewhere. Higher education is a public good (with clear benefits for democracy and economic advancement) which deserves greater levels of governmental support. We could do more to make sure a diversity of voices and perspectives are heard in all of our courses (including those we disagree with). And yes, we need to keep experimenting with different ways of reducing costs. So, wake up Ebenezer; your former underlings are not the problem.

Kind Regards

Bill Moseley

DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography