Administrators are Disciplinarians
Despite proclamations of “academic freedom” and “shared governance”, administrators want to have the final say at universities. Instead of acting as the facilitators of faculty planning, they want to call the shots. And, predictably, admins get upset when others don’t like this. Ultimately, admins seek to discipline those that step out of line—“the nail that sticks-up gets hammered down”—despite faculty not needing such discipline. Faculty have their own discipline from their scholarly fields and departments. Administrators’ discipline is interpersonal and universal, targeting all lower in the university hierarchy—it’s “discipline” that demands obedience and fealty. Faculty members’ discipline is self-focused and exists within the traditional norms and frameworks of their fields of study—it’s discipline that acknowledges best practices and respects accumulated bodies of knowledge.
Incidentally, department chairs are mini-administrators, promoted or selected from the rank-n-file of faculty. From the perspective of their departmental colleagues, chairs ought to be assistants who execute the faculty’s will. Chairs should also advocate on behalf of their faculty colleagues, nominating them, praising them around campus, defending their interests, and helping to advise how best to navigate university bureaucracy. But, that’s not really what admins want departmental chairs to be focused on. University admins want chairs to be factory-floor supervisors, keeping their faculty in-line, conveying directives from higher-up the food-chain, and encouraging faculty to “get up to speed” with whatever new initiative admins cook-up. In other words, chairs are caught between a rock and a hard place: faculty and admins want them to serve radically different functions. To the extent that chairs end up spending more of their time attending administrative meetings and less time walking the halls, talking to their colleagues, whose perspective do you think will eventually become more important? Chairs that step out-of-line and protect faculty power are drawing targets on their backs. Departments that have chairs active in unions have seen their university statuses threatened and attacked because chairs didn’t bow to the administration’s agenda.
Faculty don’t need bosses to do their work: they can teach their classes and conduct their research without any interventions, thank you very much. And, there’s no reason why democratic self-governance and confederation can’t facilitate all university decision-making. But, administrators often convince themselves that the faculty are “out of control” and require discipline, which they are more than happy to offer. Administrators buy into a social darwinist view of humanity as evil-by-nature that requires “strong leadership” to steer the ship. This is, of course, bullshit. Workers have always been better able to self-manage their work than supervisors. If we inquire “discipline for who or what at a university?”, it becomes very clear that administrators’ answer is “for admin power”.