Colleagues,

[I've also posted this to the "facultyretreat" listserve, for the Faculty Roles and Responsibilities group.]

I'll confess to being grumpy about the metaphor of "family," arguing that it has too much potentially off-putting or divisive baggage.

I'll agree with Garry that we need to reflect on the concept of "collegiality" and its effects, but let me suggest that we need to be very thoughtful here. In some sense, "collegiality" is at the heart of the academic community, and I'm enough of a cultural conservative still to believe that the faculty *is* the university and that all our successes flow from the font of that insight.

"Collegiality" will be tricky and even dangerous: we cannot abdicate the faculty responsibilities to make judgments in hiring and tenuring/promoting, but we also need to support our colleagues, at the same time that we balance this with challenging them and letting them find opportunities to challenge themselves. And let us not forget diversity, not only in terms of faces, but also in terms of the breadth of our disciplines and pushing the boundaries of our disciplines. We should find and sustain colleagues who will keep our programs vivified, and that does not always mean a lack of tension, or even transient frustration. It is clear to me that we cannot operationalize "collegiality" as "shares my politics," or "goes to my church," or "is affable at a backyard picnic."

dfg

-- Anonymous, February 11, 1999