PROPOSAL FOR MY WORK WITH THE FACULTY LEADERS
CATHY FORESTELL AND SOPHIA SERGHI AT WILLIAM & MARY
#1
The first is for Cathy Forestelll to position herself as a faculty member willing to assist the Provost with the new Vice Provost, David Yalof.
I can imagine a few possibilities regarding the new Vice Provost’s ole. Whatever the specifics, it strikes me that the work being done by the Provost and the Vice Provost can only benefit from a third participant.
This idea by itself will seem off-the-wall. However, it is a first step toward doing other things in 2023.
THE ISSUE OF SHARED GOVERNANCE
Part of what Cathy would be doing in an informal capacity would be working out with Sophia, and presenting to the Provost's office, a new concept of shared governance.
There is a very brief window of time that Cathy and Sophia can seize in order to reconstruct the faculty’s governance role at William and Mary.
A possible sketch
An AAUP administrator and I have sketched an outline for a renewal of shared governance at the College.
In the sketch worked out so far, the undergraduates would be an integral part of shared governance.
The AAUP has no blueprints for us to follow, but they support the inclusion of students in institutional decision-making.
Our sketch is only that. It needs to be handed off to Cathy and Sophia and others on campus, including students, so that a broader dialogue about academic governance can take place at William and Mary.
The AAUP would be happy to see innovation by the college regarding shared governance. They were focused almost exclusively on the pandemic until the bizarre sequence of events at Linfield College unfolded last year.
Now their concern is shared governance.
The AAUP has concluded that shared governance is necessary to defend academic freedom.
This is a pot-Linfield interpretation. I don’t know where this goes exactly, but this is a good direction for the College to go.
I’ve had discussions with Joerg Tiede, former Associate Secretary, Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance at the AAUP about shared governance.
Joerg edited the Red Book. He says that 1915 tenure, 1940 tenure and academic freedom, 1958 procedural standards—all these are supposed to look the same at every university in the country.
The AAIUP expects that shared governance, however, will vary across different college campuses, according to history, tradition, size, and so forth.
I must insist on AAUP-relevant action because of the embarrassment six years ago.
The College faculty were not concerned with faculty rights, or academic due process, or tenure, or academic freedom.
The two faculty members who ended up embarrassed by the episode were Cathy and Sophia.
Other than Cathy and Sophia, I could not find one faculty member at W&M who understood what happened with the AAUP regarding the dispute over my employment, despite my having circulated relevant communications with supporting explanations.
Here is the sketch so far:
#2
I have a promising project on game theory and war that, as fate would have it, could be the basis for bringing in significant funding from various agencies in the U.S. and Europe interested in explaining war.
In the United States, the National Science Foundation would be interested. The NEH would have an equal interest because advanced in the paper on models in science, which are the most pressing issues among philosophers of science.
I am preparing to make a family trip to California later this week.
I am also preparing to move to Sweden, not permanently, but for long enough to work on the Conflict Data Project at the University of Uppsala.
Someone there told me two weeks ago that, whatever the funding opportunities in the U.S. there are many more in Europe under the supervision of the E.U.
The game-theoretic model I use in the paper was developed in two steps, a 1995 article by James Fearon (Stanford) called “Rationalist Explanations for War,” and a 2006 article by Robert Powell (Berkeley) called “War as a Commitment Problem.”
I put these papers together in what I term the Fearon-Powell model.
This game-theoretic model dominates the academic study of conflict. But not one person has tested it successfully.
This paper advances two successful tests. Game theorists will like it because it makes their work empirical. Feminists will like it because, once that work become empirical, they are no longer attacking assumptions, but the bad historical research it leads to.
I propose giving this research funding project to Prof Michael Tierney in the Government Departmen.t.
Mike is the perfect person for this assignment. His work on TRIP involves similar outreach and networking, but is real social science, which Mike prefers to be doing.
For instance, W&M will be requesting data from the Correlates of War project in Ann Arbor and the Uppsala Data Conflict Data project in Sweden.
- College faculty would be well-served by moving beyond the paradigm according to which recognition from the College and input into the administration’s decisions are yardsticks of faculty success.
- We propose an account of shared governance at William & Mary through which the faculty gain an essential interpretive context for understanding developments and a framework that ensures continuity of faculty action and the coherence of planning and strategy.
- In this scheme, the faculty advocate for students as well as themselves. They explain their capacity to contribute in ways that acknowledge both faculty and student interests.
- The faculty’s contributions to shared governance should
- defend basic rights and freedoms at the College, and
- advance a conception of community upon which these rights and freedoms depend.
#2
I have a promising project on game theory and war that, as fate would have it, could be the basis for bringing in significant funding from various agencies in the U.S. and Europe interested in explaining war.
In the United States, the National Science Foundation would be interested. The NEH would have an equal interest because advanced in the paper on models in science, which are the most pressing issues among philosophers of science.
I am preparing to make a family trip to California later this week.
I am also preparing to move to Sweden, not permanently, but for long enough to work on the Conflict Data Project at the University of Uppsala.
Someone there told me two weeks ago that, whatever the funding opportunities in the U.S. there are many more in Europe under the supervision of the E.U.
The game-theoretic model I use in the paper was developed in two steps, a 1995 article by James Fearon (Stanford) called “Rationalist Explanations for War,” and a 2006 article by Robert Powell (Berkeley) called “War as a Commitment Problem.”
I put these papers together in what I term the Fearon-Powell model.
This game-theoretic model dominates the academic study of conflict. But not one person has tested it successfully.
This paper advances two successful tests. Game theorists will like it because it makes their work empirical. Feminists will like it because, once that work become empirical, they are no longer attacking assumptions, but the bad historical research it leads to.
I propose giving this research funding project to Prof Michael Tierney in the Government Departmen.t.
Mike is the perfect person for this assignment. His work on TRIP involves similar outreach and networking, but is real social science, which Mike prefers to be doing.
For instance, W&M will be requesting data from the Correlates of War project in Ann Arbor and the Uppsala Data Conflict Data project in Sweden.