On March 3, faculty members voted to replace the University president with the Faculty Executive Committee chair as the presiding officer at faculty meetings. This motion was brought to the faculty without substantial prior discussion, and there was not yet a robust, shared understanding of the proposed change’s scope prior to the March 3 meeting. We are among a sizable number of faculty concerned about the implications of the narrowly approved change.
A motion to repeal this change — restoring the president as the presiding officer — has been co-signed by over 60 faculty from 30 units and sent to the FEC for inclusion on the April 7 faculty meeting agenda. We do not speak for the other motion co-signers, but we urge the FEC to place this motion on the agenda so that the change can be more extensively discussed, and we also urge our colleagues to join us in restoring the president as the presiding officer to ensure that faculty governance can improve as needed.
First, the process that yielded the March 3 vote was not sufficiently participatory. Big changes to faculty governance merit serious and sustained discussion, but the vote to remove Paxson as presiding officer came without the opportunity for robust engagement of the faculty on this issue. Usually, faculty have the opportunity to engage in this discussion at town hall meetings, but through no fault of the FEC, this was not the case. An initial town hall to discuss the report from which the motion to remove Paxson emerged was scheduled for Dec. 15, but the topic appropriately shifted to the tragic mass shooting that took place on Dec. 13. Another town hall was scheduled for Jan. 26, but it was moved online after in-person University classes were canceled due to snow. As many public and private schools were also closed that day, faculty members with children may have been unable to attend the meeting. A third town hall, scheduled for Feb. 23, was canceled when another three feet of snow fell on Providence. That meeting has only just been rescheduled for March 30. The faculty simply did not have the opportunity to discuss this motion sufficiently before Paxson’s removal was approved.
The March 3 vote also did not demonstrate a strong majority preference from the faculty, which major governance changes should receive. It seems that the FEC believed this motion to be uncontroversial enough that it could be brought forward in advance of sustained deliberations. However, the discussion and vote at the March 3 faculty meeting showed that this was not the case: The measure passed by a slim margin of three votes, with a notable twenty-one abstentions. Clearly, further deliberations are needed to clarify the intended and unintended consequences of a change that is so controversial.
Not only is removing Paxson a mistake, but rashly moving forward with a highly-contested governance change does not set us up to have effective and productive deliberations about faculty engagement in university governance. The December FEC report has raised questions about governance that deserve sustained discussion and engagement by the faculty. Considering these proposals in a measured, thoughtful, consultative way — such as through the work of the just-announced ad hoc committee on governance structures — will help ensure that changes to faculty governance serve the laudable goals of increasing faculty engagement that the FEC is advocating for.
Apart from the procedural flaws we have described, installing the FEC Chair as the presiding officer at university faculty meetings does not solve the real issues with faculty participation that the FEC has identified — it creates new ones, as The Herald’s editorial page board has recently written. We have the opportunity to overturn this vote so that the necessary discussion and deliberation can take place. To ensure faculty governance changes work well, making them should take time. And our goal should be governance changes that have strong faculty support — not ones that are hastily taken and insufficiently debated. Moving forward thoughtfully — and indeed modeling rigorous debate — is all the more vital in a moment when higher education is under heightened scrutiny.
Jessaca Leinaweaver is a professor of anthropology and served as chair of the department of Anthropology from 2020 to 2023 and as Director of the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies from 2016 to 2019. Emily Dolan is a professor of music and serves as the chair of the music department. Scott Frickel is a professor of sociology and the Institute for the Study of Environment and Society. Tara Nummedal is the John Nickoll Provost’s Professor of History and a professor of Italian studies, and serves as the chair of the history department. They can be reached at jessaca_leinaweaver@brown.edu, emily_dolan@brown.edu, scott_frickel@brown.edu and tara_nummedal@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
