As a faculty member with my head in the clouds and my body suspended somewhere between an ivory tower and my office, I rarely interact with the school's upper-administrators (as opposed to the chair of my department or other directors of programs). I get email from on high in the form of campus announcements: reminders, new policies, minutes from meetings, and more reminders. But daily interaction is limited to the days I venture forth into the Administration wing to drop off paperwork I shouldn't have procrastinated on submitting.This article indicates that I should care about whether my college president is a minority. It so happens that our SLAC president is a female minority, and the president before that was the typical 60-something white male, but I've never actually noticed that it made a difference to my life. While I recognize that perhaps family-oriented administrators will be more sympathetic to not scheduling meetings during a time I have to pick up my kid from school, or not assigning weekend duties, I am struggling to figure out whether my daily job is in any way affected by the ethnicity of my president.
Q: What are your thoughts? Am I missing something big that I should care more about? Am I looking at this in the completely wrong way? Should I be looking at this more from the perspective of the whole school rather than my own myopic duties?
You say that your SLAC president is a "female minority" and that her predecessor was a "typical 60-something white male."
ReplyDeleteWhy not say that your president is a "typical female minority"?
A lot of proffies would lose their jobs if they publicly referred to anyone on their campus as a "typical female minority."
So you say, "I've never actually noticed that it made a difference to my life."
Denial.
It makes a difference. Your manner of discussing this reveals that you think that 60-something white males are all pretty much the same, but that each female minority is special and unique.
Sorry, had a horrific spelling error in my previous response: I took the terminology from the linked article, which classified presidents in that manner.
DeleteNow I'm a fucking liar. I said I wasn't going to comment on this post again, but I'm commenting. So I'm just a goddamned liar, and no one should trust me. Read the article instead. Read it and see if it refers to "typical 60-something white males."
DeleteI knew this would go nowhere good.
Next thing you know, somebody's going to accuse someone else of being "intellectually dishonest."
Fuck.
Now I'm not going to comment again....
Introduction: "Today's typical college leader is a married white male with a doctorate in education. He is 61 years old, up from 60 years old in 2006, according to the American Council on Education's latest survey, "The American College President 2012.""
Delete:-)
DeleteThe part that worries *me* in that sentence is "with a doctorate in education." That, I think, would have more (negative) effect on my experience than whether the possessor of that doctorate was male or female, or hir ethnicity.
DeleteIn the interest of science, I would happily welcome anyone different from the uninterrupted string of old white dudes that have occupied my college's presidency for over 150 years. When and if that ever happens, I'll report my findings. What's clear to me right now is that our current prez is living in a bubble of white male privilege that everyone else is too scared to burst, and it does matter. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the Prophets of the Mormon church; each older than the last, stuck in a timewarp somewhere in the early 1950s.
DeleteI hate this topic. I feel like I'm being bated (although I know Contemplative Cynic wouldn't stoop to that). I am tempted to delete my previous comment, because I can already sense that the shit's going to hit the CM fan. This will go nowhere good.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that CC and I probably agree that it would be nice if we could stop talking about a president's race and instead focus on hir actions in the office of the president.
Fucking jesus h.
CC, you're great.... Great, I tell you. Warm, wonderful love emanates from my heart in your direction.
And I'm not going to make any more comments on this post.
Race doesn't affect anything as far as I'm concerned. Job title on the other hand: "President" is just a code word for someone that has meetings all day and gets paid 4x more than what an engineer makes because of it. Sends a great message that its better to be busy than productive....if salary is any indication of what is "better".
DeletePresidents spend most of their time fundraising. It sounds pretty easy but if you could explain why somebody should give a million bucks to my school, you're a better man than I.
DeleteI'm stepping outside for a beer.
ReplyDeleteThe university where I adjuncted for a while has a white female president. The university where I now work has a white male president. For all the contact I had/have with either prexy, I don't see any noticeable difference.
ReplyDeleteSo here's my problem: articles such as this don't want to discuss implications behind these numbers; they simply want to report that numbers have declined, and indicate that this is a sad fact, with no analysis of WHY this is. WHY is this a sad fact?
ReplyDeleteThis then leads me to search among those whose opinions I value for WHY this is a sad fact because, if I draw from my own experience, I find no difference in my life between my former president and my current one, leading me to wonder, again, what I'm missing.
Instead of telling me what I'm missing, I hear that I am in denial and I have committed a serious injustice to 60-something white males by paraphrasing the article itself, or that this is a topic better left alone. That does nothing to help me understand what, exactly, I'm missing...
Ethnicity?! I'm still trying to guess the species.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, folks. Once you climb the social ladder to arrive in the rarefied air of university presidents, you would find them mostly the same. Becoming a college president requires a certain, narrow set of personal qualities overwhelm subtle distinctions that are created by ethnic backgrounds. Likewise, it doesn't matter where the CEO of Bank America came from.
One major difference among presidents is that a minority president can appeal to people of similar ethnic backgrounds in order to raise money or create/quell some controversy related to race, gender or ethnicity.
Are we talking about THE president or a university president? Hehe.
DeleteWhile the actual behavior of the president may be the same - since the job requires certain kinds of basic competencies and attitudes - it does actually make a difference where the person came from. It's an indicator of opportunity.
DeleteIt's not just "controversy." These are real indicators of real social problems. Your last statement makes it sound like the only reason to seek diverse candidates is to have a token of non-discrimination, and that's a problematic attitude.
I'm not sure whose problem my attitude is, but it's not mine (as long as I stay anonymously Beaker Ben).
DeleteControversies can be real, created or a mix of the two. Tokenism has nothing to do with it. A school should hire the best president available because more problems are created by general incompetence than lack of sensitivity or understanding of identity groups.
Things like gender as race *have* to be considered, because all too often, as drunk in a midnight choir also points out, White and male is seen as the "norm." As the norm, people in these categories are given an often unconcious but very real boost upwards, while those out of the perceived norm lose out. So part of choosing the actual "best president available" is assessing if the person is really the best candidate, or are people just blinded by their social privilege.
DeleteIt's not a problem for *you*, Beaker Ben, it's a problem for society. Hence, problematic. But you did state that the minority president would be there to "quell" questions about gender, race and other issues.
Beaker Ben: I'm totally using that line about whose problem your attitude is from now on.
DeleteI agree that competence should be the measure by which presidents are judged, but would one be likely to judge as more competent someone of a certain ethnicity over someone else? Is competence quantifiable?
You're practically daring Ben to throw down some sig figs.
DeleteI'm going to wait for the final word from the Supreme Court.
Joan, I'm with you, I think. People need to make judgements but also be aware of the extent to which their biases play a role in that judgement.
DeleteThe article actually explains pretty clearly why you should care.
ReplyDelete1. The continuing presence of the "typical" White male president indicates that lower-level opportunities for non-Whites and women remain closed;
2. As a gauge of climate, having the majority of leadership remain White and male is problematic; and
3. The increase in corporate consultant aid in choosing presidents is troubling as an indicator of the change in academic climate, including that there are now college presidents who never worked in academia prior to taking the job.
While there may be little difference in day-to-day functioning under a masculine or feminine, White or person of color, straight or gay, disabled or able-bodied person president, the fact that the statistics show that the majority of presidents at the majority of universities remain middle-aged White men most likely indicates that opportunity is not, in fact, equal.
(Out of curiosity, Contemplative Cynic, are you White?)
@Contemplative Cynic: I don't believe you're actually cynical. You are suspect! Now, declare your allegiance: Are you cynical, or are you not cynical? We need to know (just out of curiosity, of course).
DeleteOops, I commented again.
Delete:-)
Southern, Bubba, Ph.D., I am both suspect AND cynical, hence my questioning of an article that simply states it's problematic (but does not really analyze the implications of the problem).
DeleteBarb from Batavia: I am also cynical enough to wonder whether other places have more input from presidents, because in our department, the president has had absolutely NO say in who we have hired or not hired. Perhaps the president has a say in who is hired in Administration, but not in the 'lower-level" opportunities. That conclusion doesn't ring true to me because I, perhaps, naively, am not privy to all of the ways in which the office of the president functions. I have worked in a presidents office for a year (at one point in my career when I couldn't find a teaching gig), and that particular president sat in many meetings, attended fund raising events (many, many events), and had me write speeches to give at various functions.
I think everyone should have equal opportunity to become a myopic, bottom-line, business wonk pretending to give a crap about academe. Therefore, it is a problem when white men are overrepresented in this category. But the category itself could go, and I'd be fine with that.
ReplyDeleteNow this, this I could get behind. Down with all presidents!
DeleteI have little experience with school presidents, but I have known a few 60-somethings. White or not, I find they, like many younger people, often fall into two categories. Some people have a relatively open mind and are interested in, and are willing to give validity to, new ideas, whether they agree with them or not. Some people have decided already what is valid and what is not, and new ideas are judged based on these ideas. In one part, this is life, and there are successful people on both sides.
ReplyDeleteOn the other part, age plays a significant role. My, anecdotal and unscientific, experience has suggested that those who are less willing to entertain new ideas are likely to be 'stuck' with permutations of the ideals where/when they grew up. So, that 60-something white male may be an open-minded, intellectually curious, compassionate old guy, but he may also be stuck with opinions formed in the 60's, when he probably lived in a very white neighborhood and was raised by parents who probably condoned, and may have actively participated in, segregation.
This is where race and gender make a difference, at least at the statistical scale. I think that portion of the population that is willing to entertain new ideas will be similar across race and gender. That portion that is less willing to permit new concepts is likely to show distinct difference based on their personal upbringing, which will be highly biased by race and gender.
CC: I assume that isn't rhetorical, so here goes.
ReplyDeleteThere are whole fields of study that can shed some light on why this is a bad thing, like critical disability studies, queer studies, anti-racist studies, and gender studies, just to name a very few.
The quick and dirty answer: white, male, able-bodied, straight, and affluent is still the (often unquestioned) "norm". Just saying this can make people very uncomfortable, because we're supposed to be over this kind of stuff (see: Obama is President of the US/gays can serve in the military etc.)...but a quick look at the hundreds of anti-choice laws passed in US states in the last year, the pay gap, the disproportionate incarceration rates of black men, the white=legitimate citizen assumption behind Arizona's "show ID" laws, the bullying and suicide rates of LGBTTQQI youth (and I could go on and on) will tell you we're not.
This is about systemic, not individual, privilege. Individuals, no matter their gender/race/sexual orientation/ability/class/age etc. can be awesome...or total assholes. But when, on a systemic level, certain groups continue to be over-represented in positions of power, then particular fundamental power imbalances continue to replicate themselves.
It's not just about having examples you can relate to or mentors to actively encourage you to help you through the ranks, though that's certainly a part of it. It's about diversity of experience, instead of certain bodies getting to be seen as (and stand in for) a non-existent universal experience.
The thing with privilege is that it is often invisible to those who have it...and hyper visible to those who don't. If you're wanting to look further, I'd suggest starting here: http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf
And yes, I agree that the ongoing neoliberalization of the academy impacts how much the person in the president's chair can actually impact what's going on (because if you're not down with a certain kind of agenda, you aren't getting hired in the first place).
Finally, I have to say that the trolls don't really bother me (though I do wish they'd lurk somewhere else). Rather, it's these kinds of threads that hurt and make me take a break from the site...because too often we stay silent rather than call our virtual (and anonymous!) colleagues on their shit, or we decide it's not our fight, or we're too afraid of being diminished or ridiculed to speak up...or we don't take the opportunity to actually engage with each other respectfully and perhaps even learn on the "hot" issues.
...and thank you to all who commented while the cursor was flashing alongside the above thoughts.
DeleteWell, I am sympathetic to this position, and belong to more than one underrepresented group, and yet there's this: "But when, on a systemic level, certain groups continue to be over-represented in positions of power, then particular fundamental power imbalances continue to replicate themselves."
DeleteIt seems to me that when certain positions of power replicate themselves no matter who occupies them, then the problem is the power structure and not the identity of those who arrive at the top of them. I *wish* Margaret Thatcher, or Sarah Palin, or Clarence Thomas, or Condoleeza Rice, or Roy Cohn, or [groping around for another gay politician on the right] had had the interests of their identity-group in mind. Plenty of people seem happy to play the identity-card to get into a place of power, and then happy to pull the ladder up after them and use whatever corrupt modes of doing things come with the power package. So, over years and years of studying, teaching, and writing about the movements and identities of various marginalized groups, I find myself looking at the person's politics much more than at their race/ethnicity/whatever. Give me a progressive, fair-dealing white guy any day, over a vicious nutjob who happens to be female.
Thank you for your thoughtful answer. I understand the problem of systemic ignorance and I appreciate that drawing attention to a systemic problem might actually lead to some kind of solution to the overall problem.
DeleteI am not sure how to interpret the last paragraph. Are you inadvertently calling me on my shit, or are you saying it's good that we're having a dialog about this? Or not that at all?
@Frog and Toad: Absolutely...but then don't we have to go back and look at why there are so few progressive, fair-dealing not white/not dude options out there? (I'd argue that the protection of whiteness, straightness, and class privilege is what *allows* certain white dudes to present themselves in this way, and could cite a number of Canadian politicians as examples, starting with Jack Layton, whom I adored and voted for...yet still resented that I had to rely on him to speak for me.)
DeleteI did say it was the quick-and-dirty answer...
@CC: I was talking about the (paraphrased) "I hate talking about this / I feel baited / this isn't going anywhere good / I'm going out for a beer" comments that were posted before I got here, and reflecting on previous responses to my own past comments on issues of power and privilege.
I perceived your comments as coming from a place of genuinely wanting to learn and have a dialogue, which is why I responded.
I think dialogue can be great...but it can also really suck. So far, so good (says drunk, trying not to jinx it).
Hope that helps.
DIAMC: Thanks for clarifying, and I had the same response as you did about those not wanting to actually engage in dialogue or who simply wanted to criticize my un-PC terms without explaining why I was so far off the mark.
DeleteDespite my inarticulatory (?) post above, I mainly wanted a reality check because, believe it or not, I spout the rhetoric of the enlightened left, along with PC speak, and have participated in debates on race and gender, have considered the problematics of white privilege. I even called a colleague on that for walking barefoot on campus because he "liked the attention he was getting" (which I told him indicated how completely wrapped in white privilege he was), so I am, despite all evidence to the contrary, not completely ignorant of theories and systems of race and gender, or white privilege.
Having experienced being the "token minority" as well as being denied jobs because I didn't "look ethnic enough," I know how important it is to have diversity at the top to influence awareness and practice down the line. But I just hadn't considered our presidents as particularly powerful in day-to-day policies or running of the school. And perhaps that's where I need to expand my view to include "the bigger picture" beyond how MY particular class load or snowflakes are dealing with life and see how the the system is affected, and thereby, also affects me. I appreciate your taking time to help me get back in gear.
@diamc: Right from the initial post, CC referred to a "female minority" and a "typical 60-something white male." I pointed it out because that was no way to begin a productive discussion. It revealed a bias, whether or not the initial poster wished to acknowledge it or not. If she had written "typical black student" or "typical lesbian," then she would have been smacked by the CMers.
DeleteI felt baited. I don't think it was intentional on CC's part. I think she's just not aware of the obstacle she threw into the conversation, right off the bat. It bent me the wrong way and I said so. It may very well be the case that she herself felt baited by the original Chronicle article. Sometimes I think two of the Miami Four are actually Jerry Springer and Morton Downey, Jr.
This thread has "identity politics" written all over it.
DeleteFWIW, ich bin ein Cynic.
True, dat! I was being my usual sarcastic self, which didn't come out clearly. I should have used "quote marks" or cited the paragraph from which I constructed the "typical 60-something white male."
DeleteQuite frankly, you'll need to prove your Cynical quotient, Southern Bubba, Ph.D. Only people of a certain percentage of cynicism are credible enough to comment on race and ethnicity. :o)
Aside from the topic of this article, I find the sensationalism annoying. There is a decrease in minority university presidents! From 14% way down to ... um ... 13%. Year to year, how much do you expect the data to fluctuate. One percent seems well within the acceptable range of error given all the variables that go into the outcome of picking a university president.
ReplyDeleteLet's also consider the percentage that would be appropriate. Not the result we feel would indicate "fairness" but how many would we reasonably expect.
Let's say that a person needs to have the following qualifications to be considered for a university presidency:
50+ years old (experience, wisdom, agism)
terminal degree in academic field
executive leadership experience in business or relevant experience in academe (e.g. provost)
Obviously, there are other qualifications like the ability to raise money and hire smart people but those are not relevant to this issue.
What percentage of PhD/JD/etc. degrees were given to non-white and/or female candidates in 1990? Of those, how many have achieved the leadership experience to be president?
My point is that, given the uneven distribution of degrees granted at the time (and today even), we should not expect the percentage of minority presidents to mirror the general population or even come close. Maybe 13% is reasonable. Not good, not fair, not satisfying but reasonable given the circumstances.
Good point.
Delete"I am not sure how to interpret the last paragraph. Are you inadvertently calling me on my shit, or are you saying it's good that we're having a dialog about this? Or not that at all?" Was this directed at my post? I couldn't tell. But if it matters, I wasn't calling anyone on their individual shit.
ReplyDeleteNo, it was in response to Drunk saying: "it's these kinds of threads that hurt and make me take a break from the site...because too often we stay silent rather than call our virtual (and anonymous!) colleagues on their shit..." Sorry for not addressing that to a specific user when I posted below your comment.
DeleteAdministration is its own ethnicity
ReplyDeleteI'm down with that.
DeleteOr possibly, as Ben points out above, species.
DeleteI think I come down somewhere in the same general place as Ben and F&T on this one: while I generally believe that having the population of university presidents mirror the population as a whole (or at least the population in their age range) would be a good thing, and I'd hope that individual university administrators' experiences would inform how they perform the job, it seems to me that the job as it presently exists, and the power structures that create and sustain it, shape the occupant(s), or at least the self-selection process among potential occupants, to a greater extent than the occupant is able to shape the position and its effects. There are, of course, some rare exceptions, both in positions and occupants, but, for the most part, I fear that the system is more powerful than the individual people who play a part in it.
ReplyDeleteIf the salaries for college presidents, provosts, deans, etc. were no higher than those for the best researchers and teachers at their institutions, I think the picture might change. Of course, for the administrators to get any respect from potential donors, that might require shifting the whole salary scale precipitately upward ;)
I wonder what it would take to shift the pay scale of the admin creatures. Since they're like Congress and essentially set their own pay, is that likely to ever change?
DeleteI'm late to this bunfight - I was outside having a beer with Hiram until Midnight Choir convinced me to add my bit. There seem to be two questions wrapped up in "does in matter?" and we're sliding back and forth between them. One is: "is it fair that most uniprez are aging white males?" I haven't read the article, but Barb's precis suggests that this is the one the article was about. I think we all agree that the answer is no.
ReplyDeleteBut when I read Cynic's post I thought "does a non-AWM uniprez make different decisions or have a different leadership style?" I think a number of arguments have been made over the years that equal opportunity is not just fair, it's also beneficial by bringing in 'different perspectives.' Sonia Sotomayor's "wise latina woman" comment springs to mind. The answer to this second question is less immediately obvious. My uniprez is a typical AWM, but several members of the senior admin are women or minorities, and some of them are mistrusted just as much among the faculty as any of the white males.
I always think of the quote (Gloria Steinem?) that "feminism is the radical philosophy that women are people too". One corollary of this is that a lot of people are just jerks.
Frog and Toad nailed it. Too many AWM's in senior admin is a fairness issue. But too many jerks in senior admin affects the university.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to see if Hiram is on to the scotch.