The Stanford Senate Academic Council
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The Stanford Senate of the Academic Council Reflections on Fifty Years of Faculty Governance, 1968–2018 StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 1 3/4/18 11:54 AM StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 2 3/4/18 11:54 AM The Stanford Senate of the Academic Council Reflections on Fifty Years of Faculty Governance, 1968–2018 written, compiled, and edited by Peter Stansky Ethan W. Ris Susan W. Schofield Hans N. Weiler and Past Senate Chairs and Academic Secretaries with the assistance of the Stanford University News Service, Registrar’s Office, and University Archives published by the Stanford University Office of the Academic Secretary with the support of the Stanford Historical Society StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 3 3/4/18 11:54 AM StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 4 3/4/18 11:54 AM Robert W. Beyers. 1974 Dedicated to Robert W. Beyers, an intrepid newsman committed to the integrity of the press and to the effectiveness of faculty governance. Beyers served as the Information Officer for the Senate in its early years. This book was made possible through the generous support of the Robert & Charlotte Beyers Fund of the Stanford Historical Society. StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 5 3/4/18 11:54 AM Stanford University, Office of the Academic Secretary © 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any informa- tion storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the Stanford University Office of the Academic Secretary. isbn 978-0-9847958-3-3 Typeset by Classic Typography in 11/14 Garamond Premier Pro StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 6 3/4/18 11:54 AM Contents biographical notes ix photo citations x preface xi Reflecting on Fifty Years of Faculty Governance at Stanford xi Hans N. Weiler chapter 1 The Senate, 1968–2018: A Brief History 1 Peter Stansky chapter 2 Academic Senates in Comparative Perspective: Models of 103 Faculty Governance in American Higher Education 103 Ethan W. Ris chapter 3 A Tapestry of Senate Memories: Reflections 145 by Senate Chairs and Academic Secretaries 145 chapter 4 Senatorial Tributes: 201 Chairs Being Toasted and Roasted by Their Peers 201 appendices 1 Fifty Faculty Senates at Stanford, 1968–2018: 253 An Annotated Index 253 (with photos of Senate Chairs and Academic Secretaries) Laura Guzman and Hans N. Weiler 285 2 The Stanford Faculty Senate Oral History Project 285 2 Natalie Jean Marine-Street 287 3 The Faculty Senate’s Role in Authorizing Degree Programs 287 2 Tom Wasow and Susan Schofield 291 index 290 vii StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 7 3/4/18 11:54 AM StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 8 3/4/18 11:54 AM Biographical Notes Peter Stansky is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University. He has written extensively on aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth- century British history, including such topics as William Gladstone, William Morris, the Blooms- bury Group, and George Orwell. He was the chair of the Tenth Faculty Senate. Susan W. Schofield is Stanford University Academic Secretary, Emerita. She served as Academic Secretary from 1996 to 2002, at the end of her thirty-two-year career as a Stanford administrative manager. A third-generation Stanford alumna, she has deep ties to, knowledge of, and affection for the university. Ethan W. Ris is Assistant Professor of Higher Education Leadership at the Univer- sity of Nevada, Reno. He holds a PhD and an MA from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and is a former fellow at Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. His research examines twentieth-century intersections of nonprofits, govern- ment, and business in the name of higher education reform. Hans N. Weiler, Professor of Education and Political Science, Emeritus, joined the Stanford faculty in 1965 and was a member of the Faculty Senate for several years in the 1980s. He was President of Viadrina European University in Frankfurt (Oder), Ger- many, in the 1990s, and served at Stanford again as Academic Secretary to the Uni- versity from 2014 to 2017. His research and writing include comparative studies on governance and change in higher education. ix StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 9 3/4/18 11:54 AM Photo Citations Stanford News Service photographers Linda A. Cicero (since 1990) and Chuck Painter (prior to 1990) took the majority of the photographs in this book. The only exceptions are as follows: Chuck Painter/Tim L. Dawson Pages 13, 15 Visual Arts Services Page 43 Stacy H. Geiken Page 59, top Peninsula Times Tribune Page 62 Jose Mercado Photos of Robert Beyers (Dedication) and Academic Secretary Arthur Coladarci (page 265, right) Ed Souza Photo of Senate Chair Michael Bratman (page 271, top) x StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 10 3/4/18 11:54 AM Preface < Reflecting on Fifty Years of Faculty Governance at Stanford Stanford University’s Senate of the Academic Council—also and more succinctly known as the “Faculty Senate”—has served for fifty years as a remarkable instrument of faculty governance. It was born in the unsettled times of the late 1960s against the backdrop of major social conflicts spilling into the hallowed halls of America’s institutions of higher learning, and out of a search for more effective ways of involving faculty in shaping the academic life and the institutional future of their universities. The Stanford Senate was invented and put on its way by a group of faculty inspired by the visionary Herbert Packer and supported by the university’s Board of Trustees and administrative leadership. It replaced a system in which a small Executive Committee acted on behalf of the Aca- demic Council, which comprises the totality of Stanford’s regular faculty. The Academic Council was by then too large to be an effective governance body, and the Executive Com- mittee was too small to be representative. This initiative created a system of represen- tation that was designed to bring the interests and insights of both the professoriate and the university’s constituent schools to bear on the decisions and policies affecting teaching, learning, and research at Stanford. By all accounts, and as the contributions to this book show, the Senate has served the aspirations of its founders well and has been an important factor in Stanford’s dramatic rise to academic leadership in the world of higher education. In anticipating a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Senate, and in a series of consultations with former chairs and members of the Senate, the Steering Committees of the Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth Senate, the Academic Secretary’s Office, and members of the university’s administrative leadership, two sentiments emerged quite prominently: first, that the Stanford Faculty Senate has stood the test of time rather well, and second, that some reflection on its history would be not only appropriate but also quite possibly useful for mapping out its role in the future well-being of Stanford University and its ac- ademic mission. These sentiments have generated the plans for this volume, whose real- ization has been generously supported by the Stanford Historical Society. While quite a few good and busy people—including but by no means limited to my collaborators on the editorial team, Peter Stansky, Ethan W. Ris, and Susan W. Schofield—put a great xi StanfordSenate4thpages.indd 11 3/4/18 11:54 AM preface deal of time and effort into bringing this project to fruition, writing the definitive history of fifty years of faculty governance at Stanford was neither intended nor accomplished. What we hope to have created is an instructive variety of perspectives and reflections on this history, revealing the Senate’s many layers and facets of representation, deliberation, and participation in the service of Stanford’s academic pursuits. We were very fortunate to be able to persuade two very accomplished historians— Peter Stansky and Ethan Ris—to assume major writing assignments for this book. In taking a long walk through fifty years of the Senate’s records, Peter Stansky has pro- vided an account of that history that reveals the richness and diversity of the Senate’s deliberations over the years, while at the same time reflecting his very personal under- standing and appreciation of this body. It seemed important also to include in the book a broader analysis of faculty governance that would go beyond the Stanford case and provide a comparative perspective on the range of governance arrangements in Amer- ican higher education. Ethan Ris, a freshly minted PhD of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, took on this task and has produced a rich analysis of key issues in faculty governance, illustrated by a set of case studies on how some other American universities have (more or less successfully) organized the involvement of their faculty in making and monitoring academic policy. In addition to these first two chapters, the editors have made a special effort to give the floor (as one would say in a Senate meeting) to those of our colleagues who, over the years and very much in their own ways, have shaped the yearly iterations of the Senate as chairs and academic secretaries. For Chapter 3, we invited all of those who are still with us to share their views of what they found remarkable or noteworthy about their expe- rience presiding over, or facilitating, the deliberations of the Steering Committee or the full Senate during their term of office. Much to our delight, a very large number of them responded and have brought together a rich panoply of impressions and reflections on what all of them seem to consider a memorable experience.