Another Pissing Contest in Academia

I've blogged before about incidences in higher education in which people take conflicts over small things and turn them into big knock-down, drag-out fights. Today's Chronicle offers another example of what looks like a small issue blown up into a big one:

Appalachian State Chancellor Defends Discipline of Professor Who Showed Film About Porn

The involvement of pornography here is largely a red herring - though it makes for a more attention-grabbing headline. What's most glaring is what's missing from this story - any indication of the administration, the faculty leadership, and the faculty member in question sitting down to try to work out a mutually-agreeable solution. Instead, everybody wants to hide behind high-minded principles and the high dudgeon of "appropriate due process".

Don't get me wrong - principles like academic freedom matter. And due process is an important thing. But if you have allowed a case that involves a professor making a few disparaging comments about athletes in class to escalate to the point where you're talking about due process and the legal ramifications of various decisions - you missed the boat somewhere. And if you've gotten to the point where the Chancellor is overruling faculty panel recommendations, it's gotten WAY out of hand. This is no longer a conflict between a faculty member and some of her students - it's a fight between the faculty as a whole and the administration. And that's just stupid.

There's mention in the article that all of this could have been resolved earlier if the professor had had a conversation with the offended students. That's true. But how about the Chancellor having a conversation with the offended faculty? How is it that they (in this case, the faculty panel) could recommend that there should have been a direct conversation to resolve the issue, but refuse to take their own advice? And is this another case of a high-handed administrator who can't be bothered to talk things out like an adult, but who makes Decisions by Edict?

The basic standard here seems to be clear: if you wind up in a Chronicle article airing your university's dirty laundry, you've failed. This is pointless escalation over tiny stakes - a classic failing in higher education. I've no doubt that there are lawyers in North Carolina preparing to make some mortgage payments over this as we speak. We'll see if the university can pull itself back from the brink before gobs of money are wasted on further pointless escalation.