[Nettime-bold] Interesting Academic Problems in English Depts.

[Nmherman@aol.com]

New York Times, March 17, 2002
Columbia Soothes The Dogs of War in Its English Dept.
By KAREN W. ARENSON

It has been 14 years since the outbreak of civil war in Columbia
University's English department, a war that sent some professors
scurrying for more congenial settings, turned feminists and
multiculturalists against traditionalists and left a fifth of the
permanent positions in the department unoccupied. By some combatants'
standards, an empty office was better than one filled by the unqualified
candidates supported by the enemy. 
One visiting scholar recently likened the department to "a deserted
village." At full strength, it would employ 46 tenured or tenure-track
professors, but just 37 work there now; a revolving cast of visiting
professors and graduate students has filled out the teaching ranks. And
some of those who remained did not talk to one another.
Now, in the academic version of a third-party peace proposal, the
department has ceded key decisions about its future to a posse of
outsiders from five competing universities, who are picking candidates
for the open senior positions.
With the outside committee and a new department chairman ? also brought
in from outside ? the department, whose reputation was once the envy of
colleges throughout the country, is trying to regain its luster.
That is a step forward in one of the longer-running battles in a
profession infamous for intellectual trench warfare. Since the 1960's,
fights to bring the perspectives of women, ethnic minorities and gay
people into the academy have consumed colleges, and particularly English
and literature departments. At Columbia, the political debates turned
personal, with each side accusing the other of no longer being able to
distinguish the quality of a candidate from his or her ideology.
"There were deep ideological differences, as well as people who really
didn't like each other," said David H. Cohen, vice president for arts and
sciences at Columbia, a primary architect of the effort to rebuild.
The five outside referees ? from Princeton, Cornell, New York University,
the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern ? have so far approved
three professors and are likely to recommend three more senior faculty
members when they meet again in New York next month. 
But the department's problems, which have been chronicled in The New York
Observer and elsewhere, are far from over. It will take time to fill all
the openings. And the number is likely to grow, since the department has
five professors over 70 and six more in their 60's. Already, some classes
are larger than they would be otherwise and students are working with
visiting professors who will not be there in a year.
What's more, the unusual hiring arrangement has created conflicts for
some of the outside referees, who are also looking to fill openings in
their own departments. "What I've done," said Mary Poovey of New York
University, who is on the committee, "is try to locate the best people
and recommend that Columbia go after them, and in some cases, recommend
that N.Y.U. go after them, too, and let the people decide."
Although the measures Columbia took to resolve the acrimony were extreme,
they reflect the deep rifts within English, a cornerstone of American
higher education. As an academic discipline, English has been in a state
of upheaval for decades. English departments across the country have been
rocked by fierce arguments over how much emphasis to give to
deconstructionism, feminism, post-Colonialism, queer theory and other new
schools of thought. Harvard and Duke are among those that have sought
outside help of some kind, though without necessarily ceding control.
The divisions at Columbia were never neat or fixed, but the lineup often
seemed to be men against women, old guard against new, liberals against
conservatives, close readers of text against new-theory advocates and
multiculturalists. 
"It became all about politics, not about literature," said one senior
professor. "When the work of a candidate was politically attractive to
some members of the department, it became impossible to question the
literary or critical merits of that work without being seen as
reactionary."
Although hiring is usually one of the most jealously guarded
prerogatives, because the decisions shape a department and its status for
decades, many of Columbia's English professors welcomed the intrusion.
"We should have gone into receivership years ago, because we weren't
really capable of making appointments," said Ann Douglas, an outspoken
feminist professor in the department. Still, the department is far from a
wreck. It has about 130 majors each year and an abundance of well-known
professors, including Edward Said. This year the department received 700
applications for three junior teaching positions.
Stanley Fish, who made Duke University's English department hot and is
now trying to do the same at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said
he still considered Columbia's department "excellent."
But about 15 years ago, frictions began to grow, interfering with the
department's basic operations. The bickering broke into the open in 1988,
when Joan M. Ferrante, a respected medievalist who had served on the
executive committee of the Columbia Faculty Senate, became chairwoman of
the department and tried to fill a new position for a feminist scholar.
"We had a number of senior candidates, people other universities would
have been happy to get," she recalled. "But the department turned them
all down ? the old boys. Then we moved on to people who had tenure, but
were more junior and had done good work. They were a little gentler with
those, but they still couldn't agree. I finally decided that it required
stern measures, and I said, `Look fellows, if we don't fill this line, we
are not going to fill any line, so let's move on.' Then there was a
palace revolution."
Her opponents said they were not against hiring a feminist, but did not
believe the candidates were of high enough quality. The department
ultimately hired Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a post-Colonial theorist.
And despite pressures to resign, including some from female colleagues
alarmed by the hostility against her, Professor Ferrante completed her
three-year term.
Another high-visibility battle involved Carolyn Heilbrun, a leading
feminist scholar who had served as president of the Modern Language
Association and held an endowed chair at Columbia. She left Columbia in a
huff in 1992 after the department rejected a feminist scholar she was
championing, her third unsuccessful effort. "Columbia will continue to be
run by male professors who behave like little boys," she told The New
York Times at the time.
The nastiness prompted some professors to turn their attention to writing
and lecturing, and discouraged others from being willing to lead the
department. When no one was willing to take the chairmanship in 1999,
Columbia decided to seek a chairman from another university.
After the department nominated two candidates ? Jonathan Arac, a former
Columbia professor from the University of Pittsburgh, and Kate Flint, a
professor from Oxford University ? Professor Cohen, the Columbia vice
president for arts and sciences, chose Professor Arac over Professor
Flint, who had more votes. "I spent the next four weeks opening hate
mail," said Professor Cohen, who declined to comment on why he opted for
Professor Arac.
The department's acting chairman, Martin Meisel, resigned from his
position in protest. And since Professor Arac was not ready to say yes,
Columbia tapped a member of the classics department, Roger Bagnall, to
fill the gap. It also created the five- member outside panel to handle
senior appointments. Besides Professor Poovey, it includes David Wallace
of Penn, Michael Wood of Princeton, Hortense Spillers of Cornell and Eric
J. Sundquist of Northwestern. (Junior hires were still left to the
department.) 
Professor Arac, 56, ultimately accepted the post and arrived on campus
last August. Sitting in his sixth- floor corner office in Philosophy Hall
recently, he appeared unhurried and calm, and expressed conviction that
the wounds could be healed. He is trying to rekindle social and
intellectual ties among the faculty members; he held a reception in the
fall and introduced a seminar series for junior professors to present
work.
He suggested that the differences among department members are smaller
than they have seemed: "There is a large common ground," he said, adding,
"My No. 1 job is bringing our faculty numbers up to where they need to be
and making the department a place where faculty members feel good."
A specialist in 19th-century British and American literature, he says he
engages with great works of literature but also uses new theoretical
approaches. One of his recent books explored how "The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn" became at the same time an idol ? one of the most
taught books in the United States ? and a target, as African-American
students and parents argued against its being a required part of the
curriculum.
Despite the original bitterness over how he was selected, many of the
Columbia faculty, including Professors Ferrante and Douglas, applaud
Professor Arac's hiring, and say his presence has been calming.
"The fabric of civility was becoming progressively frayed, until the
moment of Jonathan's arrival," said Prof. John D. Rosenberg, who
specializes in Victorian poetry and 19th- century autobiography. 
Department members also feel encouraged by the recent announcement of a
new senior hiring: Bruce Robbins, a Rutgers University professor who has
been visiting at Columbia this year. The outside referees approved him,
but like all senior appointments at Columbia, the choice must be vetted
by an ad hoc review committee that includes professors from Columbia and
outside the university and by Columbia administrators. Professor Arac
says he does not expect problems.
Faculty members say the absence of two outspoken senior professors also
made the department more peaceful, although both are highly respected
academically. Robert Ferguson, who had a joint appointment with Columbia
Law School, is now at the law school full time. Jean Howard, a
Renaissance scholar, is a visiting professor at the University of
Pennsylvania. She said she does not want to discuss whether she will
choose to remain there permanently. Professor Arac and others say they
hope they can persuade her to return to Columbia. Professor Ferguson
could not be reached for comment; a colleague said he was traveling.
English department professors say that turning over hiring decisions to
outsiders has also reduced the departmental quarreling.
"We are not squabbling among ourselves over issues over which we don't
have control," Professor Rosenberg said. "Our main problem now is severe
understaffing."
Professor Arac, who meets with the outside committee but has no vote,
said he was actively wooing several candidates nominated by the
committee, although he declined to say who they were. He and others agree
that the department will not be ready to stand on its own until more
candidates say yes. 
But Professor Arac is optimistic: "No one has said, `I would have loved
to have come, but you're such a mess.' " 

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