What a Mess: The Tenure Appeal Meeting at Ohio University

I got a comment this morning about the outcome of the the appeal meeting at Ohio University for Bill Reader's tenure case.  You may recall that I wrote about this in detail in my post on The No Asshole Rule Versus Compassion for the Mentally Ill. The meeting appears to have been an ugly scene.  According to the report in the school paper:

"A standing-room-only crowd of students and faculty members in Baker University Center 219 heard Dean Greg Shepherd and Director Tom Hodson defend their decision to deny Reader tenure, calling him a non-collegial bully incapable of working with current tenured faculty."

Reader and his supporters offered a much different perspective:

Reader painted a drastically different picture in which professional jealousy and personal disagreements motivated Hodson and three tenured professors to conspire to ruin his career.

Toward the end of the nearly three-hour hearing, Assistant Dean Eddith Dashiell said she's considered the school a "hostile work environment" since 1997.

"The school of journalism has had a history of bullying," Dashiell said, adding that the behavior of the school's tenured faculty during her 18 years in Athens has made her feel threatened and uncomfortable.

It is impossible to know the truth based on the facts in this report.  But it is possible for all of us to take this as a cautionary tale.  When you as a boss let things fester and don't deal with "asshole problems," be it among a single colleague or many of them, you risk having things degenerate into a a total mess like this one.  When everyone starts calling everyone else an asshole, as is happening here, then it is a sign to me of an asshole infested place.  As I wrote in The No Asshole Rule, when you are embedded in such a situation, it is very difficult to avoid becoming an asshole both because emotions and norms are so contagious, and if you spend your days confronting one asshole after another, often the only way to survive is to throw the crap back at them.   Again, I don't know how much of this is true of the School of Journalism at Ohio University, but regardless of what happens after this case, it seems to that the leaders -- probably at the School level-- need to step and figure out what is going on and how to stop it.  In such situations, a change in leadership is usually necessary even if particular bosses are not to blame, they are so entwined with old destructive patterns and perceptions that replacing them is necessary for starting  anew.

Finally, to repeat my main advice about asshole infested places like this one seems to have become (I hope I am wrong, but if you read the above story, it sure seems like a reasonable inference), the best thing you can do is to figure out how to get out as fast as you can if you are trapped in such a human cesspool.

Comments

[Apex]

@KLB

I really like how Warren Buffet puts it: "Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks."

[Randy Bosch]

Far too often, "entitlement" including "tenure" - whether official or just through longevity - leads to such destructive behavior.

In a Journalism School? Any clues to how this relates to the problems "main stream media" is facing?

[Karla Bee]

I've always been taught that you will find assholes wherever you go and if you run from a problem you will find another one. Your advice contradicts my lessons. How do you know when you should stay or go?

KLB

[Catherine]

Bob,

This story also makes me think about how hard it is sometimes to really identify who is the bully and who is the target. My hope is the school brings in outside and neutral help to shed an objective eye on the situation. Thanks for the update on this story.

[working girl]

It still sounds to me like the bosses are the bad guys here.