Faculty Retreat, August 23, 2004

Good morning,

I asked Curtis for the opportunity to address you today on the topic of community, in what turns out to be my maiden speech on the Lewis & Clark campus. I did so for the simple reason that you, the faculty and staff of the College of Arts and Sciences, are as a group the single most important element within the institution in determining the nature of the college as a community—and when I say “college,” I am referring to Lewis & Clark, not just the College of Arts and Sciences; when I mean CAS, I will try to remember to say so. There, I’ve tipped my hand. For although today’s activities are a retreat of the College of Arts and Sciences, I as the president of this college can only conceive of the Lewis & Clark community as a composite community that includes not only CAS but also the Graduate School of Education and the Law School, that includes not only the faculty and staff but also the students, current and past, that includes parents, volunteers, donors, Board members, employers, and so and on and so forth. So, although we here today will be focusing on what I might characterize as the core community within the institution, the College of Arts and Sciences, we should be careful not to forget that community has many dimensions at a place as complex as Lewis & Clark.

I need at the outset to make a confession. I am the one guilty of having suggested the theme “Community” as the organizing premise for this retreat, and so I suppose that I need to justify that action. In the future, it may be useful to canvas you the faculty and staff for ideas on the theme of future retreats and to set a theme for the next time that is responsive to contemporary shared concerns rather than one that reflects a top-down agenda or set of issues. This year, though, I the newcomer have exercised the prerogative of suggesting the theme “community.” I hope it is a theme that finds some resonance among you and that our time together today will be all the more fruitful for it.

Why community? As I underwent the painstakingly thorough procedures associated with the college’s search for its new president, I heard time and time again and from many quarters here on campus the comment that, for all its strengths and for all of its good qualities, Lewis & Clark suffered from a diffuse sense of its own identity as a cohesive community. For me looking at this institution from the outside, the lack was not immediately apparent. Indeed, I have been struck by the cordiality and civility of the LC community during the several months of the search process, not only toward me as a candidate, but internally, among the members of the community with whom I had occasion to interact during the course of the search. That an institution that has been so welcoming to my wife, Marcia, and me and to our family could to some extent suffer from a lack of a sense of internal cohesion seemed and seems to me to be a contradiction. And as it turns out, I have come in recent days to believe that the contradiction is more apparent than real.

It goes without saying that the events of the last couple of years did indeed tear at the fabric of the College. My own knowledge of these events is based upon hearsay, of course, and comes to me second hand. To some extent, the divisive effects on the faculty and staff, on the Board, on friends and alumni of the College are still palpable, evident even to me, a newcomer. Nevertheless, I have a very strong sense, and I hope you agree, that the last year—the period of Paul Bragdon’s interim presidency; I think we in this College owe Paul a tremendous debt of gratitude for his wise leadership—this last year has been a time of healing. Indeed, I would hazard the assertion that the tensions and antipathies within the Lewis & Clark community occasioned by the departure of President Mooney and the events surrounding it have been fairly well accommodated, if not forgotten, by the college community. One wonders whether the time may be past for yet another bout of soul-searching about the nature of Lewis & Clark as a social entity. Although there is no sense of crisis as we begin our deliberations on the subject of community today, I would nevertheless like to suggest that the topic continues to be timely and relevant for all of us here this morning. Community is as community does, so that the sheer act of engaging in the discussion is itself an affirmation of our community, and I don’t think anyone will suffer from an examination of ourselves in this context, and it might actually do some good. So I suggest that we stick with community as a theme.

I would like to divide my comments for the next few minutes into three sections, the first two of which will give you some sense of my own thinking about what communities—and particularly academic communities—ought to be or ought to strive to become. In particular, I want to engage in a brief examination of the notion of institutional citizenship within the context of the academy, and more especially of Lewis & Clark. As a group, we educators are a feisty and combative lot, not particularly focused through our professional engagement on the building of community. Our great strength is our commitment to the life of the mind generally, to teaching and conducting research within our own field of expertise, and to the community of interest with colleagues at other institutions that is defined by our disciplines and their collateral fields. Within this or any institution of higher learning, there must be a healthy tension between that strong centrifugal force for individual autonomy and the imperative to maintain the whole. Striking that balance is what I call engaging in good institutional citizenship. Second, I want to share some thoughts with you about my recent experiences in Germany, and especially my observations with regard to the distinctly German methods for incorporating the individual into the community. My own thinking on social dynamics has been very much advanced by having experienced at length a period of immersion in a society other than my own, and I want to use this opportunity to share some of those thoughts with you. But toward the end of my remarks, I want to get concrete and talk about several quite tangible things that we might do, some easy, some not so easy, to begin to encourage a sense of integration and interdependency among the individuals and groups and on this campus. Let me be very clear. I enjoy as much as the next person a theoretical discussion of the pathologies of human corporate groupings. Here today, however, I think it is necessary for us to get real. At the end of this day, our goal should be to come up with an action plan, a set of deliverables, a list of low-hanging fruit—things that we can do quickly, cost-effectively, and with minimal disruption—to facilitate community here at Lewis & Clark, as well as a set of middle- and long-term initiatives for moving us further in promoting the cause of community over the course of the next several years.

The first theme that I would like briefly to discuss is the importance that I attach to the notion of institutional citizenship. At the outset, let me state categorically that I have no reason whatsoever to think that any given individual within the Lewis & Clark community or that the community as a whole is lacking in the qualities that go with good institutional citizenship. That is not my purpose in raising the point today. What I would suggest is that it is useful from time to time to stop and think about what it means to contribute positively to the good of the community, that is to say, to fulfill the obligations of good institutional citizenship in the course of our daily lives.

What do I mean by good institutional citizenship? Let me raise, by way of illustration and example, several issues that have come to my attention over the course of the last several weeks where institutional citizenship is tested at Lewis & Clark. This small set of institutional hotspots and how we react to them may be a useful means of measuring how well we do as citizens of our community. Here goes.

The first has to do with indirect or administrative cost allocation within the college. Administrative overhead and how it gets paid is one of the hottest topics for any complex institution, and Lewis & Clark is no exception. The matter is one, I have learned, that is far more controversial within the Graduate School and the Law School than it is in CAS, for the simple reason that most of the central services are, for understandable historical reasons, located within CAS. But ask yourself: the last time that you engaged in a discussion or heard a debate over how central administrative costs are allocated among the three units of this college—CAS, the Graduate School and the Law School—what was your initial response? Did you consider the legitimate concerns of the other units, or was yours the defensible reaction that CAS-based activities provide more value and services than could ever be recovered through the common services allocation anyway, so any amount of cost recovery is justified? On a scale of one to ten, with one being outright antagonism, five being indifference, and ten being concerned collegiality with regard to you colleagues across the way, where did you stand?

My second point with regard to institutional citizenship has to do with service on faculty committees of governance. From Curtis and others, I understand that there were not enough candidates to cover the vacancies for the elections last spring, which to me suggests that there may be a problem here in CAS when it comes to this important aspect of institutional citizenship. Let me hasten to add that I fully understand that there are many good reasons for any given individual choosing not to volunteer for serving on this or that faculty committee. Prior service is certainly one good reason, and everyone understands that committee work expands to fill double the amount of time that is allocated to it. Still, I am curious to hear you thoughts, and this is topic that I am sure you will want to weigh in on either later today or in conversations later on.

Third, what about broader matters in the realm of resource allocation, such as space use, the apportionment of travel funds, access to facilities or to research funds, parking, or a wide range of other matters having generally to do with the disposition of resources? How would you gauge the tenor of discussion, the give and take with regard to such matters at Lewis & Clark? Would you personally call yourself a good institutional citizen in how you respond in such discussions, or would you rather consider your position one of, shall we say, justifiable self-interest?

I’d better stop there before I get myself into too much hot water. In point of fact, I have found that as a general rule, the people of Lewis & Clark are a generous lot, that you tend instinctively to consider the larger context and to respond with humanity to such issues, that you are, to use the German term, kompromi_bereit, willing to see the other side of issues and to compromise. On the other hand, I am not a Pollyanna. I understand full well that within Lewis & Clark as within any complex, dynamic organization there are bound to be rivalries, competitive situations, and personal likes and dislikes that must be respected, must be given quarter. And I also understand that some of those antagonisms are the result of deeply held beliefs about the institution, its priorities, and how it should be run. Not for a moment would I suggest that such convictions be uprooted in the interests of some sham notion of community in which everyone shares a common sense of the institution. Far from it. It is precisely at the intersection of opinion and belief that the flame of dialog burns brightest.

What I do suggest is that our notion of community should rest upon a respect that we each have for each other as full members of the organization and upon a desire to strike a balance between well considered self-interest and the good of the whole. Of course the term “self-interest” is itself loaded with pejorative connotations. As a rule, none of us within the institutional context acts purely out of self-interest in the narrow sense. Rather, we have particular professional interests and areas of engagement that we would like to advance, and our primary focus as professional educators is to pursue those means that will achieve advantage for our particular field of intellectual engagement, for our department, for our program. That is what I mean by “self-interest.” But we live alas in a world of scarce resources, and as important as advocacy is as a desirable trait in academics, so too is the knack of negotiation and cooperation. Strong communities are strong because they can tolerate and learn from dissension. But in the final analysis this and every institution is dependent upon the good will and active engagement in of its members in the give and take of governance in order to succeed.

My second theme today has to do with my recent experience as a foreigner living in Germany, and please indulge me as I share with you a fairly personal set of experiences that my family and I have recently gone through. As you all know, I have come to Lewis & Clark after a stint as the chief academic officer of a new German university, International University Bremen. In 1999 when Marcia, the boys, and I first arrived in Germany, that is to say, in Northern Germany, where Bremen is located, we felt immediately welcome, but in an “arm’s-length” sort of way. My colleagues with whom I worked in founding the new university, our neighbors, and our contacts through our children’s schools and through normal daily life were not unfriendly, but our German friends in their relationship to us were initially a bit formal, not particularly relaxed, and perhaps overly courteous. Becoming close to our Bremer colleagues and associates took time, a great deal of time. Over the course of these last five years, however, we did indeed become increasingly close to a wide range of individuals, from the university professors with whom I worked each day, to the shopkeepers along our street whom we patronized, to the parents of our sons’ friends.

The slow process of our integration into the life of the city of Bremen was so gradual that I can now scarcely pinpoint the exact moment when we, at long last, belonged. But by the end of those five years, we did indeed belong to Bremen in a score of different ways. How close we had grown and how fully integrated we had become into the life of the city around us only became apparent as we prepared to leave earlier this summer. With the announcement of our impending departure for Portland in May, the invitations literally started flowing in. We were inundated with requests from friends and acquaintances to come to brunch and to dinner. Marcia had so many farewell teas that it became a bit of a family joke. We began to gain weight. Our sons complained because we were never at home in the evening. In the end, we were ultimately wined and dined by our good friend the Buergermeister of Bremen himself, complete with reminiscences until late into the night and ending with hugs all around as we took our leave.

I have developed a comparative communal theory from all of this with regard to the different ways in which German and American communities function, or more precisely, how they constitute themselves by admitting new members. In Germany, it may as a rule take a relatively long time for someone to become a part of the Gemeinschaft, the community, but once you are in, either through formal membership in a sport club, a literary society, or service organization, or through something as informal as a monthly chamber music group—once you are in, you are in for good. More than that, joining a group in Germany confers a strong element of mutual obligation among the members of the group. If you miss more than a couple of practice sessions of your bowling club or amateur chamber orchestra, for instance, expect a string of telephone calls or email messages checking up on you. Dropping out of a regular tennis foursome has some of the intensity of divorce. In German society, one’s persona is shaped by the groups to which one adheres, and in turn, all of the members of the group rely upon each other to a very high degree precisely because of this close identification with the group.

We Americans, on the other hand, are relatively more casual in our creating and in our breaking off of associations. We are likely to make friends quickly, to move swiftly to a first-name basis in our personal relationships. On the other hand, we generally are more prepared to relinquish our relationships a bit more readily, to transfer our membership from one golf club to another, to change employers, to switch churches with relative ease in comparison with the Germans, who as a rule tend to stay where they are planted, to develop strong and enduring loyalties. What I am saying here is, of course, all relative. I do not want to suggest that in American society relationships are any less intense than they are in Germany or that social bonds are less valuable. In the end, however, we left Germany with a vague sense that our friends and associates there felt betrayed by our departure. Not that they begrudged us the wonderful opportunity to come home to the U.S. and particularly to come to Lewis & Clark. By allowing us to enter into their social groupings, however, either in formal or informal ways, our German friends and colleagues placed upon us a certain expectation that we would remain, that we would reward their acceptance of us with our loyalty to them. More than that, they seemed to a certain degree to be bothered by self doubt, that somehow they had failed to show us enough welcome and to incorporate us fully enough into the ebb and flow of their lives. Otherwise, why would Tom and Marcia have left so readily? Was it something we said?

So where am I headed with this, you may well ask? Just this. I would like to think of Lewis & Clark as the sort of institution whose members are marginally more inclined than their counterparts at other institutions to feel, if not betrayed, then at least a clear sense of loss when someone leaves, for whatever reason. The flip side to this sentiment is, of course, that we should become somewhat more committed to each other than is the norm at other colleges or universities. This is not an easy thing to achieve in an institution where people come and go with such frequency. For example, we do not by policy permit individuals to remain who have not during their time among us achieved the high level of productivity in teaching, research, and service that we equate with tenurability. There is, in other words, a natural reserve that goes with the knowledge that some junior faculty will necessarily not remain within the community beyond the time needed for the tenure review process to work itself out. And as for our students, we have them only for a short period of their lives in any event, and then we send them off to launch their careers or pursue their studies somewhere else away from the college. Turnover, to be blunt, is high in academic communities, and to that extent, there is a personal price to be paid by becoming too engaged, too committed to other individuals who might be required or otherwise who might choose to leave us at some point.

Please don’t confuse my comments here as being an admonition for Lewis & Clark to become warm and fuzzy overnight. For all I know, Lewis & Clark may already be as warm and fuzzy as any of us wants it to be. What I do want to suggest, however, is that we give some thought to how we facilitate the integration of new people into our community, to how quickly we respond in personal and professional ways to the arrival of new colleagues in our midst. And here again, I am speaking not only of CAS but of the entire institution. What mechanisms do we consciously use, what activities do we engage in that will ensure that new colleagues feel welcome? Beyond that, how do we keep in touch once old colleagues leave? Indeed does it make sense to try to keep up old relationships with former colleagues, with former students within the context of the community? I would at least raise the issue, especially in this day of email, listserves, and instant messaging, of considering our community to include, when it is so simple and when it makes sense to do so, those who have moved away, for whatever reason.

As for my German colleagues, I can say that though my separation from them is finally complete, I remain in almost daily contact with several old associates through email and the occasional telephone call. That this activity will over time begin to fall off I have no doubt. But that is not the point. What I truly value in my relationships with my old colleagues in Bremen is the abiding sense of their having valued my contribution to their lives and work. Perhaps one element of good community building is our simply letting ourselves know occasionally that we appreciate each other’s contribution to the common good.

To conclude my remarks today, please let me move to some fairly concrete measures that we might take that would in all likelihood move us in the direction of achieving a stronger sense of community. As I have indicated, I would like us to emerge from today with a list of action items for implementation and for further review. I offer a brief list here and hope by so doing not to preempt or short circuit discussion, but rather to set us thinking about what we might actually undertake in the interests of fostering greater integration within our college.

1. First, as a newcomer myself who is confronted with memorizing some 4,000 new names and faces in a very short period of time, I would like to suggest that we place the photographs of all willing members of Lewis & Clark College on the intranet of the college. This task could be facilitated through the directory database, so that when a name is called up through the directory, a small photograph of the individual pops up at the same time, along with the snail mail address, email address, and phone number. I believe the college captures a digital image anyway for the security identification card. If the data are already there, perhaps it could be shared. This is an example of what I mean by low hanging fruit.

2. Second, in the interests of facilitating the integration of the several elements of the college—Lewis & Clark, not only CAS—I think that we need to find ways to engineer greater opportunities for the faculty from all three units of the college to convene when there are matters of common concern with regard to the administration of the institution. It may be useful occasionally to have meetings of the entire college faculty or to establish, where useful, college-wide faculty committees for the airing of common concerns and mapping solutions. At present, the most consistent interaction among CAS, the Graduate School, and the Law School is in the Executive Council. That there are no governance mechanisms in place that encompass all of the academic units of the institution is a matter of some concern and, frankly, surprise for me. It may be time to remedy that in ways that are useful for all elements of the community.

3. In addition, we need to take care to organize in greater numbers events that are purely social in nature, where faculty and staff from the various units across Lewis & Clark have a chance to mingle. I know, for example, that Marcia and I are interested in using Cooley House for just such a purpose, with the intention of bringing elements of the Lewis & Clark community together who might otherwise not have the opportunity to interact with each other. Beyond that, preliminary thinking might be in order with regard to a dining facility or club, for instance, where faculty and staff could meet in a social setting, either for leisure or for business. I know that some discussions have been held on this topic in the past, but I would welcome the opportunity to revisit it with an eye toward enhancing the opportunities for interaction among the disparate members of the college community. I make no promises, but I think that this is a topic that needs serious examination.

4. One final opportunity that we are currently facing at Lewis & Clark for community enhancement is that of choosing the new Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences. I have heard quite independently from the different faculty members who served on the Search Committee for the new president that the selection process itself was an unexpected opportunity for them to become more fully integrated into the functioning of the college as a whole. Perhaps we can learn from this example. I for one would like to use the process for selecting the new dean to do some community building, primarily within CAS but also across the institution as well. I will shortly be asking for nominations and volunteers from the CAS faculty for individuals to serve on the search committee. I already have commitment from the Board for two members to serve on the committee as well. I will also be asking for representatives from Executive Council—thereby hopefully adding some institutional perspective to the process—and for student representatives to serve. Although I have my own fairly concrete ideas about the qualities that I will need in the new dean, and although the role of CAS in the decision process must of course be paramount, in the very act of creating a consensus about the qualifications for the position we have a wonderful opportunity to engage in a positive way in the assessment and affirmation of our values as an institution.

Well I hope that these comments have helped to get your juices flowing. I hope further that I have conveyed to you how important it is to me that we nurture among all of members of the college community a sense of our mutual interdependency, how important it is that we all be solid institutional citizens. In the final analysis, I am convinced that this institution is greater than the sum of its parts. The ways in which we collaborate with one another, the ways in which we accept each other as people within the body politic, and the ways in which we accommodate contention among our numbers have a great deal to do with our success as college and as a community. I look forward to a lively set of discussions today, and I thank you for your attention.

Remarks made to the College of Arts and Science faculty retreat