Thanks Tim. I’m thinking also that when someone gets herself into a PhD program, a process begins where this prospective academic is entering a guild, craft, field in which there may be a paymaster like Macalester but there is also the beacon or hand of colleagues beyond the college of university with whom she/you/we engage in research. I don’t think this broader commitment is rendered void by signing an appointment letter. It seems presumptuous for a college leader or president to assume that all the “work” of the faculty member is under the direction of the college leadership. That “conversation” should never have happened without acknowledging that commitments to research are not simply pieces of college time.
Exactly. Which is another reason why faculty are immediately in opposition when this is the frame--it's not resistance to change as an abstraction, it is a disagreement that is fundamental about who has the authority to reallocate or reassign labor--and to foreclose or control all extra-institutional commitments.
Thanks Tim. I’m thinking also that when someone gets herself into a PhD program, a process begins where this prospective academic is entering a guild, craft, field in which there may be a paymaster like Macalester but there is also the beacon or hand of colleagues beyond the college of university with whom she/you/we engage in research. I don’t think this broader commitment is rendered void by signing an appointment letter. It seems presumptuous for a college leader or president to assume that all the “work” of the faculty member is under the direction of the college leadership. That “conversation” should never have happened without acknowledging that commitments to research are not simply pieces of college time.
Exactly. Which is another reason why faculty are immediately in opposition when this is the frame--it's not resistance to change as an abstraction, it is a disagreement that is fundamental about who has the authority to reallocate or reassign labor--and to foreclose or control all extra-institutional commitments.