So you might have heard that we're having some excitement at the ever-New School. Our president, Bob Kerrey, fired the provost, Joseph Westphal, over the weekend, and appointed himself provost in the interim. Westphal had served only three months, appointed (without a search or consultation with faculty) when Kerrey fired the last provost, Ben Lee. In his eight years as president, Kerrey has in fact seen five provosts, at least three of whom he fired. Impossible job or impossible working conditions? With this trail of corpses one wonders if anyone could survive as provost. Westphal seemed like he might last, since he's an old friend of Kerrey's, but it was evidently not to be.
The faculty is stunned, the deans are in uproar, the faculty senate is distraught, and a group of "senior faculty" gathered this afternoon and passed a no confidence vote. (I wasn't there - not senior enough to have been sent an invite, I guess!) A president's appointing himself provost is highly unusual, and, when the president's never been an academic, makes no sense at all. Kerrey's move confirms many faculty's sense that he doesn't understand higher education, its values or even its structures. Some of the "senior faculty" took their motions to a meeting of the Board of Trustees - who turned around and passed a unanimous motion in support of Kerrey. In non-academic circles, getting tenured faculty riled up can be seen as a sign you're doing something right!
What comes next is anyone's guess, but it won't be pretty. It's unlikely to help a dysfunctional institution get its act together. (I'm not sure I'd trust any one in administration or "senior faculty" to get it right.) I just hope it doesn't affect our curricula, doesn't scare students away. How to reassure them that having no provost may be no worse, or even conceivably better, than thinking you've got one when really the lights are on but nobody's home?
