WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
CULLOWHEE, NORTH CAROLINA
Vol. 24, No. 6
January 2012 Special Edition
Extra! Extra!
Must We Cut Off Our Thumbs?
On the Illusions of Benefits from Collegiality
Iaceat Utilitas Species, Valeat Honestas
[Toss Aside Expediency, Let Honor Prevail]
By Daryl L. Hale, Associate Professor
Dept of Philosophy and Religion
In public affairs, wrong is very often done because of the appearance of benefit… But
nothing cruel is in fact beneficial; for cruelty is extremely hostile to the [social] nature of man,
which we ought to follow… If something is dishonorable, it is never beneficial. For the very
act of thinking something dishonorable to be beneficial is immoral.
[Cicero, De
Officiis, III.46, 50]
During his forced retirement from public office, Cicero had the chance to reflect
critically and candidly about a number of abuses he noticed emerging under the late Roman
Empire. His examples of apparent benefit are telling – Athenians decreed that thumbs of
Aeginetans be cut off (so their naval power was destroyed), and Rome sacked Corinth (to
expand the empire); in our day, we could add on recent methods of torture (sensory
deprivation, water boarding, etc.). As Cicero noted, while these methods often are useful (utile
is Cicero’s word for something useful and beneficial), they are not morally right or honorable
(honestas is Cicero’s term for actions that have human dignity); accordingly, when asked to
perform dishonorable actions, we should disregard apparent benefit or expediency (utilitas)
and let moral rectitude or honor (honestas) prevail.
Throughout my 20 years of teaching at Western, I have heard numerous voices extol
the virtue of collegiality. It is not enough, so the argument goes, for one to teach, publish, and
serve the university community; one also ought to be friendly and collegial to one’s fellowworkers and others. Actually, we can expand this argument more fully. In addition to a
professor’s basic tasks of teaching, scholarship, and service, it is perhaps also important for
one to exhibit some cooperation, some joint sense of responsibility, in carrying out those
primary duties. One also hears that one needs to be a ‘team player’ so as to enable the ‘team’
to reach its goals.
However, if my preceding exposition of Cicero’s worries has any application to this
situation, then his argument raises considerable concerns about attempts to push forward
collegiality as a central means of assessment for those of us in the Academy. For Cicero’s
concern, as I am construing it for the Academy, is that our use of collegiality can function like
inhumane tortures in the ancient Greco-Roman world – we use “collegiality” unjustly to punish
those who we regard as traitors or those not beneficial to our community. While I
acknowledge that Western has made great strides forward in creating new CRDs for assessing
faculty (explicit criteria), I fear there now is too much emphasis on this criterion of collegiality
in departmental, college-wide, and university-level committee decisions. I recognize that some
pre-professional programs may use it as an explicitly stated criterion: to them, I say ‘consider
the following concerns’; to others that use it implicitly, I caution ‘how fair is it to assess
candidates independent of stated criteria?’.
Why, defenders of collegiality might ask, is our criterion unjust or unfair? Consider the
following lines of argument as replies to those proponents of the apparent benefits of
collegiality. I doubt that these arguments will sway die-hard collegialists, since their
supporters have swelled in ranks and power, but all of us need to consider these objections in
order to participate in reasonable debates about whether or not to retain such a risky criterion.
1. One line of argument that has been used to support collegiality is the claim that it is
integral to all academic work, and so should be recognized. Recently, a Faculty Senate
resolution endeavored to soften the blow by denying that collegiality would be counted
as a 4th leg of the academic ‘stool’. However, this attempted mitigation was followed
with a severe warning – non-collegial behavior could constitute grounds for denial of
reappointment, tenure, promotion, or post-tenure review. Of course, that strict punitive
measure completely contradicted the earlier attempt to allay anxieties: if one can be
dismissed for not showing proper collegiality, then it already has become a 4th category
of evaluation, and even worse, one that trumps all the others (more like a stool with a
longer 4th leg to tip it).
2. Another claim is that collegiality is a professional, and not a personal, criterion. In all
discussions to which I have been party, collegiality is always invoked in relation to
some particular individual that others find troublesome, upsetting, hostile, caustic,
opinionated, or volatile. However, those concerns are subjective, personal issues, as
the language suggests. Of course, we can always find some other faculty member(s)
who will agree with our personal assessment, but that just shows how easy it is to
generate group-think, even among somewhat intelligent people. In fact, I have been
called all of those adjectives by faculty within my own college; and I am confident that
others at Western have earned the same accolades. But these are inter-subjective
reactions to personality characteristics that some faculty find offensive; and all of us
respond to some personality types better than to others. However, let’s not pretend a
‘collegiality’ criterion can cover over these subjective preferences with a veneer of
‘professionalism’ talk. All too often, all we are doing is trying to rationalize our
arbitrary, and often petty, dislikes by pretending they have some professional
legitimacy.
3. I seriously doubt that any future task force or review council is going to come up with
defensible language for a morally dubious category, like that of collegiality. The more
the last Collegial Review Council tried in its resolution to treat collegiality as ‘not a
separate 4th category of evaluation’, the more they had to bend it beyond what it ‘could
mean’ (to quote Lewis Carroll’s Alice). And it’s highly unlikely that a definition of
such a dubious category can include both a sense of shared responsibility (attend to
how subjective deciding what ‘shared’ entails, noble though that is as an aspiration),
and an adequate sense of respect for differences in disciplinary expertise, background
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preparation, and scholarly-pedagogical styles (given the university’s commitments to
diversity). And even if we could figure out a way to include it in CRDs, it would likely
be used, as it now seems to be, not only as a 4th category, but as the trump card over the
traditional triumvirate (teaching, research, service).
4. Invoking collegiality, especially as a separate dimension for evaluating candidates,
poses a serious threat to academic freedom. All too often, collegiality gets collapsed
into ‘friendliness’, ‘enthusiasm’, ‘dedication to the discipline (profession)’, none of
which may seem harmful, but it gets further reduced then to ‘being a team player’, and
at that point, it is obvious that it means one is expected to exhibit excessive deference
to administrative decisions and forego genuine deliberation. Such expectations clearly
violate deep-seated commitments to academic freedom, and require faculty members to
sacrifice a right to dissent from the ‘tyranny of the majority’ of one’s colleagues and
administrators. [See Bruce Henderson, People’s University, pp. 96-7 for cautions of
abuse at SCUs.]
5. Even at its best (the shared responsibility aspect), collegiality is construed as
homogeneity or conformity. This usually means that it becomes a political tool for
holding others in line with a dominant administrative or faculty voice. However, the
long-standing democratic tradition of critique and dissent need not conflict with
collegiality. Just consider Socrates’ mission as a gadfly to his fellow Athenians (Plato,
Apology), J. S. Mill’s argument for fellow Britons to abandon corrupt institutional
practices of slavery & permit female emancipation (On Liberty), Mary Astell’s appeal
for women’s right to education, or Dr. King’s eloquent call to Americans for
abandoning the racism of our past. All of these were carried out peacefully but we
recognize in each the valuable role that gadflies and institutional critics play in
broadening and deepening our genuine sense of collegiality. [See AAUP’s statement
‘On Collegiality as a Criterion for Faculty Evaluation’; and notice how quickly a
Culture of Conformity issues in a Culture of Silence, as M. J. Herzog reminded us in a
recent Faculty Forum issue.]
Finally, to return to Cicero’s advice to a public worn down by Roman tyrants, let us not
cut off our own thumbs by caving into the corporate dictators of American private and public
life. Clearly, invoking a criterion of collegiality is useful but, following Cicero’s distinction, it
is neither truly beneficial nor honorable. In all recent discussions, the appeal to collegiality
fails due to its being invoked for personal and political reasons, its conceptual incoherence, its
threat to academic freedom, and it is stifling the pivotal roles of gadflies and critics for
institutional integrity. True collegiality nurtures, not negates, differences among colleagues,
and their long-standing practices of dissent and reasonable opposition in our democratic
traditions.
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Editorial Notes
By Vera Holland Guise
Faculty Fellow, Coulter Faculty Commons
Yes, our mail bag is full! Curse or blessing, but here at the outset of a new year we find
ourselves challenged to be able to fit into The Faculty Forum calendar all the excellent
articles written by faculty for faculty AND all the thoughtful and provocative reactions to those
articles. What does this mean? Does it reflect greater frustration among faculty, or could it be
an elevated level of hope and renewal? Whatever the underlying cause(s), we are encouraged
to see so many faculty members eager to write for The Faculty Forum and quick to respond
and comment. And so we renew our commitment to bringing you the best WCU faculty
renderings on the hottest topics of our times and sharing and posting your feedback. This is the
first time in our 24 ½ years that The Faculty Forum has published a Special Edition. We
already have a second one in the hopper for February, and after that we will reassess; is it
possible that we will need to make two editions per month the norm? We are so pleased with
your input and responses, and we reaffirm our pledge to you to seek out timely and wellwritten feature articles that address the concerns and issues faculty face here at Western. So,
keep those articles and commentary coming and we’ll be in over-drive to keep the pace.
To access the entire 24 ½ years of The Faculty Forum, click on this link:
To access this Special Edition, click on this link:
To access the main January 2012 issue of The Faculty Forum featuring Jayne Zanglein’s article
entitled A New Year’s Resolution for WCU: Let’s Work Together to Make a Difference
click on this link:
To access the article as a PDF, click here.
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Oh, yes, and have a Happy New Year!
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