At Tuesday’s meeting, faculty members narrowly passed a motion to replace President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 as the chair of the University’s monthly faculty meeting. The chair of the Faculty Executive Committee — Brown’s central faculty governance body — will replace Paxson as the meeting’s leader.
With a three-vote margin, 75 of the meeting attendees voted in favor of the motion, 72 voted against it and 21 abstained from voting.
“It will feel different,” said J. Timmons Roberts, a professor of environmental studies, sociology and environment and society. “I think it might be quite a refreshing change to see who will participate in the meetings."
Nancy Khalek, an associate professor of religious studies and history, shared that when she’s participated in faculty meetings in the past, she’s received multiple emails from other faculty members thanking her for speaking because they “didn’t feel like (they) could talk.”
“I think that’s a problem,” she said. “My colleagues should not be afraid to speak freely at meetings.”
The proposed motion also included a clause stating that “the FEC should ensure that the conditions are created at faculty meetings for robust discussion and that agenda items pertain to matters of shared faculty concern.”
Former chair of the FEC and professor and chair of the German studies department Kristina Mendicino said that there was a gap between the title of “faculty meetings” and the extent to which faculty actually participate in the meetings, given “the way that they often unfold with lengthy reports from members of the senior administration.”
“If faculty members felt that the faculty meeting was more theirs — actually a faculty meeting rather than a briefing to the faculty by the administration — we might actually have more engagement,” said Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and FEC Vice Chair Omer Bartov. “And that is what all of us should want to have: A university in which the faculty feel that they’re very much part of the whole process.”
According to Paxson, the Faculty Rules and Regulations delegate the FEC to create the agenda for the monthly meeting, not the chair. “If the goal is more discussion and fewer presentations, the FEC has the power to do that now, so changing the chair doesn’t really solve what is inherently a scheduling issue,” she said.
Because many motions considered at faculty meetings are proposed by the FEC chair, Paxson said it could create a “perceived conflict of interest” if the chair of the FEC leads the meeting.
It is a “basic principle” of the faculty meetings that “members of a committee bringing a motion shouldn’t chair the discussion of that motion,” she added.
“If the chair of the meeting shouldn’t be someone who has too much business that’s connected with the issues under discussion, then the person in charge probably shouldn’t be either the president or the FEC chair,” said Brian Lander, an associate professor of history and environment and society. “But if it’s going to be either of them, and it’s called a faculty meeting, then I think it probably should be the FEC chair.”
But some faculty members also expressed concern about the perception of the change.
Carlos Aizenman ’93, professor of neuroscience and brain science, said that the motion would not “change anything fundamentally” and is “purely symbolic.”
But “symbolic change does make an actual change,” Lynne Joyrich PhD ’90, professor of modern culture and media, argued. “It can change the dynamics around something.”
Anne Hart, a professor and chair of the neuroscience department, said she does not believe the content of the meetings will change. “If people are afraid to speak because (President Paxson) and (Provost Doyle) are in the room, it’s not going to change because someone else is running the meeting,” she said.
She added that the committee may be “underestimating” how the decision may be “perceived from the outside.”
“I don’t think this is meant to devalue the President’s role,” Paxson said. “But fair or not, it’s going to be perceived that way. It’s going to be perceived as adversarial.”
By replacing the president as chair of the meeting, “you lose some of the accountability,” said Seth Rockman, a professor of American history and director of undergraduate studies. “The president chairing the faculty meeting assures that the president has to come and talk to their faculty, has to receive their questions, has to engage. It is a mode of accountability.”
Seyla Fernandez is a senior staff writer covering faculty.
