Ben Schiff is the the chair of Oberlin’s politics department. Until recently he was a candidate for dean of the college of arts and sciences. He will be on sabbatical next semester.

In your remarks at last week’s faculty meeting you indicated that you thought that President Nancy Dye had personally vetoed your candidacy for College dean. How did you come to this conclusion?
The wording of the statement to faculty from the Search Committee that announced the candidates to be brought to campus stated that finalists had to be acceptable to both the committee and the president. I was interviewed by the committee and the president and my impression of that interview was quite positive. I am not aware that the committee believed that I was unqualified and given this, my conclusion is that the president had reservations about my candidacy.

Do you have any idea what these reservations were?
I’d rather not speculate about that.

If things had turned out differently and you had been made dean of the College, what would your plans be for the division?
I think we need a dean that is a visible advocate for the faculty and promotes the implementation of faculty governance routines and strives to create legitimacy for the dean’s office and the administration by being as open and transparent as possible. I believe that our dean’s office has not well fulfilled some of those objectives recently and I thought I could change that. We now have a Strategic Plan and some serious constraints on the College that need to be dealt with. Many of those constraints are in the realm of the college of arts and sciences. Changes in staffing and the curriculum need to be considered in accordance with that plan but according to appropriate governance procedures.

What did you mean by “the President is the problem?”
I talked to a lot of people, a lot of faculty members, while I was still a candidate, and there’s a lot of concern in the College that our normal patterns of governance are being undermined by opaque decision-making at the top of the administration. In addition, people feel that initiatives are inconsistently pursued. The place seems to lack direction because the leadership is just not well focused. People tell me stories of what I consider to be organizational disfunction and how it’s being produced by actions at the top. We have a terrific faculty and wonderful students. Enormous good will and energy has been put into efforts by the faculty to create committees and programs. The problem of opacity and lack of leadership isn’t coming from the faculty, it’s coming from the administration.

The other point which I perceived in your speech was that the faculty could work to overcome some of the problems you mentioned. How do you think they should go about this?
I think faculty involvement in the dean selection process is crucial. However it proceeds, I hope the faculty is highly engaged, makes its preferences clearly known and then holds the dean and the rest of the administration responsible for the open governance and participatory action that should be the norm. These aren’t sudden problems. It’s not strange or peculiar that an administration closes in and refuses to consult. Any administration has to fight those impulses.

Do you think students have a role to play?
I’m not very close to the student culture. I’ve had students come tell me that they too are unhappy with closed decision-making. Certainly students have a role to play. I’m generally reluctant to recruit students into faculty controversies. I think that’s really corrosive. Students should be involved with books and classes, not fighting the administration, but to the extent they want to act on their feelings about how the school is run that’s a role they can play.

You played a pretty strong role in the development of the Strategic Plan. How did you feel about the document that finally emerged?
I think it has its strengths and its weaknesses like any negotiated document. It is a product of compromises. I don’t think it has yet established priorities and actually points to clear curricular changes or, for faculty, ways to ameliorate the problems of the balance between teaching and scholarship. I’m not sure that it was based as solidly as it could of been in careful research. The process of its adoption in the end was rather hurried and last minute. The process of implementation will determine its value.

Do you think that this kind of change can happen under the current administration or is some type of “regime change” necessary?
I think the president is the problem and there are two conceivable solutions. One is that the president changes the way she conducts her administration and the other is that a new president operates in a different way.