Measuring the value of collegiality among law professors.

• Author: Seigel, Michael L.
• Position: President's page

PROLOGUE

On Friday, February 12, 2010, Dr. Amy Bishop, an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Alabama Huntsville ("UAH"), opened fire during a faculty meeting, killing three of her colleagues and injuring three others. Authorities arrested Bishop on the scene and later charged her with capital murder. Circumstances indicated that Bishop's mortal attack stemmed from the decision of the University in April 2009 to deny her tenure. Several of the individuals she targeted at the meeting had been involved in that decision. (1)

A few months earlier, in November 2009, Bishop's appeal of the tenure denial had failed. (2) As a result, she was finishing her last year at UAH and looking for other employment. (3) Colleagues reported that she was fixated on the tenure decision, especially on the fact that one of the tenure committee members had called her "crazy" during the review process. (4) The official reasons given for Bishop's denial of tenure were her thin publication record, lack of grant support, and--critical to this article--concerns about her "personality." (5)

In many schools, the tenure committee's reference to Bishop's personality would have been improper because the standard for evaluating promotion and tenure traditionally includes only excellence in teaching, research, and service. However, at UAH it was perfectly appropriate. The school's promotion and tenure policy specifically states: "Faculty members are also judged as to whether or not their collegial relationships contributed to the advancement of the college and university." (6)

So what went wrong in the Bishop case? Some have argued that the problem lies with the system of tenure itself, which creates a pressure-cooker environment in which peers evaluate peers with incredibly high stakes--a lifetime appointment--hanging in the balance. (7) This may be the case. Another explanation, however, is that despite the reference to collegiality in the school's official promotion and tenure standards, UAH's faculty and administrators did not take Bishop's deficiencies in this area seriously enough until the moment of truth arrived. Indeed, there were many early signs that Bishop was odd, antisocial, potentially violent, and unstable, but these were generally ignored--until it was too late.

1. INTRODUCTION

   This article is the last in a trilogy addressing the issue of collegiality among law professors. (8) In the first piece, titled On Collegiality, (9) author Seigel defined "collegiality" and suggested that most law schools have at least one, if not two or three, "affirmatively uncollegial" members of their faculty. (10) Seigel posited that these individuals tend to interfere with the ideal functioning of their institutions by negatively affecting the well-being of their peers. In the worst cases, a pervasively uncollegial faculty will drive its best teachers and scholars away, harming the reputation and quality of the institution. (11) Seigel weighed the costs and benefits of enforcing a norm of collegiality in an academic institution and came down, ultimately, on the side of enforcement.

   Some readers of On Collegiality questioned the legitimacy of Seigel's cost-benefit analysis. Specifically, they commented that some of the factors Seigel used in his analysis could be empirically measured. In response, the present authors teamed up to conduct an empirical study of collegiality. The goals of the study were to determine: (1) whether collegiality correlates with the occupational and psychological well-being of individual faculty members; (2) whether levels of collegiality in law schools differ for faculty sub-groups broken down by gender, race, sexual orientation, rank, and tenure status; and (3) the characteristics of law schools that create a collegial climate. The beliefs underpinning the study were (1) that enforcing collegiality is costly at least in terms of the potential lawsuits it will generate by those who are denied promotion, tenure, or other benefits as a result of being deemed uncollegial, and (2) that this effort is a net negative unless promoting collegiality brings measurable benefits to the institution more valuable than the costs.

   The empirical study, carried out by means of an e-mail survey to 8,929 law school teachers, was completed in June 2005. The authors began their analysis of the data, and published the second article in this series, Some Preliminary Statistical, Qualitative, and Anecdotal Findings of An Empirical Study of Collegiality Among Law Professors, the following year. (12) That piece was limited to the reporting of descriptive statistics, such as the demographics of the respondents and their reported levels of job satisfaction, institutional collegiality, and administrative responses to collegiality matters. (13) It also set out many of the 482 narrative responses to the survey, in full. (14) The present article provides a more complete picture of collegiality in law schools by describing more complex findings obtained by conducting various statistical analyses of the data set. Some of the findings are quite stark and not all are as predicted.

2. BACKGROUND

   Collegiality is a common subject of discussion among law faculty and administrators. Typically, the discussion centers on the small number of uncollegial colleagues that plague an institution. In some cases, the behavior of a faculty's worst actors creates general morale problems that hover below the radar screen. In other cases, an institution's collegiality problems erupt, causing the exodus of faculty members, negative publicity, and concern among students and alumni about the institution's future. Often, the very individuals harmed by uncollegial behavior defend the offending colleague's right to be underhanded and nasty based on their (mis)understanding of academic freedom. (15) Administrators frequently take a hands-off approach for similar reasons, and because they fear being sued. (16)

   In On Collegiality, author Seigel examined various existing definitions of collegiality put forward in the legal literature. Seigel found them to be lacking, and devised one of his own. His definition recognized the many facets of collegiality, as well as the distinction between the level of behavior necessary to meet fundamental or "baseline" collegiality and that required to attain "affirmative" or "aspirational" collegiality. The empirical study that forms the basis of this article was derived from Seigel's approach to collegiality.

   Seigel defined baseline collegiality as "conducting oneself in a manner that does not impinge upon the ability of one's colleagues leagues to do their jobs or on the capacity of one's institution to fulfill its mission." (17) As he elaborated in On Collegiality:

   [t]his means, first and foremost, treating peers civilly, though not necessarily cordially, and refraining from ad hominem attacks in any setting and under any circumstances whatsoever. It implies doing one's job--teaching, research, and service--at a minimally acceptable level, because if one is not pulling one's institutional weight, somebody else has to make up the difference. Essential collegiality also entails always acting in good faith, that is, in concert with one's honest judgment as to the best interests of one's institution. A passively collegial faculty member does not gratuitously attack or impugn her home institution or its administration publicly or privately; likewise, she does not engage in disagreements with administrators or colleagues unless she honestly believes that disagreement is necessary to further her own legitimate interests or the interests of her school. For a passively collegial faculty member, means are just as important as ends. Baseline collegiality requires that one conduct all disagreements with civility and through means solely designed, as the AALS admonishes, to persuade on the merits. Deceit, intimidation, corruption, and personal attacks are not acceptable forms of behavior, regardless of the stakes. Finally, baseline collegiality requires accepting the collective judgment of one's colleagues after an open and honest debate. There is nothing wrong with fighting a good, clean, principled --even passionate--fight, but when the battle is clearly lost, it is time to move on in good (or at least not bad) humor. Prolonging doomed battles, or exhibiting only grudging and grousing acceptance of a new policy enthusiastically embraced by the majority, is selfish and harmful to the institution. (18) "Affirmative uncollegiality" is the mirror opposite of baseline collegiality. It is defined as "conduct that interferes with the ability of one's colleagues to do their jobs or with the capacity of one's institution to fulfill its mission." (19) More specifically,

   [u]ncollegial conduct can take many forms. It might be a persistent lack of civility that creates a negative atmosphere and harms faculty morale. Or it might be the habit of sending flaming e-mails, full of nastiness and venom, to colleagues with whom the sender disagrees on issues of law school governance. Uncollegiality also includes such activities as gratuitously denigrating colleagues behind their backs; shouting down opposition at faculty meetings; making false accusations and complaints about colleagues to administrators, or about either or both to external authorities; criticizing colleagues and the institution to outsiders, such as employment candidates or the press; refusing to cooperate or collaborate when these are requirements of one's job; using deceit and other illicit means to achieve institutional goals; and acting in bad faith by advocating and pursuing institutional goals and policies because of self-interest or other illegitimate motive, rather than from a sincere evaluation of the best interests of the institution. (20) Finally, there is affirmative collegiality. Faculty members ought to aspire to this level of collegiality, but if they fail to meet it...