This post is the eleventh post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"
Codes of Conduct
When I was hired at UCI, the Dean told me that as a senior hire I would be able to build a group in my area. That didn't happen. I wasn't in the clique that held power in the department. For the most part, I was kept off the important committees.
After requesting year after year to be on the Chair's Advisory Committee, and pointing out at a faculty meeting that I had never been appointed to it, I was finally appointed to that committee by a reluctant department Chair.
The committee didn't meet at all in the fall. Or if it did, I wasn't notified about the meetings. I started to wonder whether it would ever meet.
Eventually, the department Chair asked his Chair's Advisory Committee to meet asap due to "the current state of the department". While the agenda was vague, the need for a meeting arose from very divisive faculty meetings about hiring.
The math department's committee meetings tended to be poorly run and contentious. I often felt physically ill after faculty meetings. Standard rules for how to run a meeting were almost never followed, leading to chaos and unfairness. I was used to having my comments interrupted, talked over, yelled at, or ignored.
The attendees of the Chair's Advisory Committee meeting were the department Chair, me, and the two other committee members whom I'll call X and Y.
X began the discussion by saying that the solution to the (unspecified) problem is to restrict the faculty mailing list so only certain administrators and staff can post to it. The department Chair added that it was important to have "unity".
After everyone else spoke, I saw my opportunity. I came prepared with a script, which I read.
Taking advantage of the fact that no one had specified what problems we were trying to solve, I identified the current problems as a sense of unfairness and a loss of autonomy.
I suggested that the department meetings use Robert's Rules of Order, which is an efficient way to run meetings, designed to make everyone feel that everyone is treated fairly and has a chance to be heard.
I said it would help if meeting agendas arrived before the meeting, and minutes were sent in a timely manner. That would help us understand what we're voting on before we vote. Good communication, transparency, and equal access to information help people feel that everything is done fairly and not just imposed on them.
If the administration takes away a power usually held by the faculty and imposes its will from the top down (for example by telling us what fields to hire in), or if people get rewarded for not following the rules (e.g., one group bypasses the department and goes straight to the higher administration to get what it wants), that leads to a sense of unfairness and a loss of autonomy.
As I spoke, Y kept interrupting, rather aggressively at times. At his insistence I gave examples of what I meant, and explained words he claimed not to understand.
I also pointed out that some faculty were distressed that the female job candidates were discussed as if they were commodities instead of human beings, and that some felt that it demeaned and belittled the contributions of the women in the department, made us feel unwelcome here, and set a bad example for how women should be discussed and treated. The administration tells the department to hire women. If the way our hiring is done not only leads to a sense of unfairness but also causes the female faculty to feel disrespected, that makes it harder to attract and retain good female faculty.
That point seemed to go in one ear and out the other.
I also conveyed some concerns and solutions that other faculty had told me, and ended with, "We can do better. I believe we're better than that."
This led to a discussion the likes of which I had never seen.
X, Y, and the department Chair identified the problem as our colleague W, and her insubordination. They considered her emails to be "disrespectful" and harmful.
W had been appointed to the Hiring Committee by the department Chair, but had resigned from the Hiring Committee due to what she perceived as inappropriate procedures and decisions, and sexism.
While W and I didn't always agree, we were among the few faculty who stood up to the powerful clique when we felt it behaved unfairly.
I asked for examples of what they meant about W's disrespectful and unacceptable emails so we would have something concrete to talk about, but they didn't give any. I pointed out that W had documented the statements she was challenged on.
The goal of X, Y, and the department Chair seemed to be to shut down W, and shut down opposition to their own agenda. They wanted to be able to tell the department that the four of us unanimously agreed to restrict who could post to the faculty mailing list.
They repeatedly interrupted me when I tried to respond to their questions. The department Chair and Y yelled at me angrily, frustrated because I wasn't agreeing to do what they wanted.
Y said angrily that there have to be "standards of behavior"; there are things that can't be said, and we need to codify it and make clear that people can't say these things.
I asked what he meant by "standards of behavior". He got angry, and tried to deny having said that. I turned to the others for confirmation, since we had all just heard it, but they wouldn't react.
It was clear that they were targeting W and the others who fought against them in the hiring battles. If they had actually been concerned about harmful speech or behavior, they wouldn't have yelled at me the way they did.
I didn't say it out loud, but I felt this was an example of the people in power trying to use a Code of Conduct as a weapon to silence the opposition.
I said that I felt pressured (I would have said "bullied" but I was afraid the word would trigger them) to have my name on a statement to restrict freedom of speech. I said I was not willing to do that. The way to counter speech you don't like is to use your own right to freedom of speech and counter it with more speech. If you don't like what W writes, you could write a rebuttal.
The department Chair (who did not grow up in a democracy) gave this analogy for why we need to obey him: "Trump is President. You may not like it, but he's the President, so you have to do what he says." X and Y responded with silence; they were astute enough to realize that such an argument wasn't going to convince me.
At one point the Chair stared at me so aggressively and for so long, while X was speaking, that I felt threatened. I laughed awkwardly and asked, "Why are you looking at me?" When he didn't reply, I said, "I don't understand. What am I missing? Why are you looking at me like that?" His reply was, "I'm listening to X."
X was more diplomatic than the others. When he noticed that his colleagues' anger wasn't having the desired effect, he turned to me and said, "So can we all agree to restrict the mailing list to [a small list of administrators and staff], and everything would be filtered through them?"
I took a breath. I turned to the department Chair and said that one reason Robert's Rules of Order works so well is that everyone addresses the Chair; there isn't cross-talk, with people interrupting each other. I pointed out that my understanding was that the purpose of the Chair's Advisory Committee was to give advice to the Chair. I was there to give advice to the Chair, and I had done so.
I was glad I had arrived well prepared and stuck to my script; that helped me stay focused and made it harder for them to push my buttons.
But when one of them said it's good that I came with suggestions, and it's good they were written down, he said it in a way that sounded like a threat, as if he planned to take the sheet of paper from me and use it against me. I had to restrain myself from grabbing the sheet so they couldn't take it; I knew that if I did, it would be clear that I was afraid of them, and I instinctively felt that showing fear would make things worse.
Their angry outbursts and interruptions left me feeling bullied and abused. By the meeting's end, my heart was racing and I had chest pains that continued into the next day.