I got an email from a colleague who I had not heard from for years, and as often happens when people contact me for the first time in a long time, her note touched to The No Asshole Rule. She linked to an article published at Inside Higher Ed that described the strange case of Ohio University Journalism Professor Bill Reader who, "Despite glowing teaching evaluations and no documented trace of disciplinary action in his past" narrowly (7-5) was approved for tenure by the evaluation committee, which set the stage for several administrators to decide to deny him tenure. I have never seen a vote like this… in fact, having voted on a lot of tenure cases, my guess is that a possible meaning of such a vote could be "we don't have the guts to make a real decision, so we will leave it to administrators to decide," as such votes are usually recommendations to them — and a 7-5 vote really isn't a recommendation at all, it means "it is up to you." In any event, it is no surprise that this vote "served as a precursor for recommendations of tenure denial from the
school’s director, the college of communication's tenure review
committee and the dean." The No Asshole Rule (translated in academic language as "the norm of collegiality") was cited as a primary reason for these denials, "Reader’s director and dean have cited a “pattern” of non-collegial and
even “bullying” behavior as the reason for their concerns, and those
misgivings were “heightened,” his dean said, by Reader’s admittedly
angry reaction to the narrow tenure vote.
Apparently, the final decision around the case has not been made, that is coming in a few weeks. But regardless of how the decision goes, it raises a serious issue that advocates of The No Asshole Rule like me need to consider — that people who show all the hallmarks of acting like an asshole may be doing so because they suffer from serious mental health problems. Indeed, although claims and counter claims are flying in this case about whether Professor Reader made threats after the vote, it is clear that he was suffering mental health problems before the close vote and really freaked out after that. As Reader himself admits in the article:
When Reader learned that Hodson planned to recommend
against awarding tenure, he made the bizarre decision to expose scars
on his arms where he had used a branding tool to burn the words
“comfort” and “truth” into his flesh. Reader branded himself during a
difficult divorce two years earlier, and he told investigators that he
wanted to demonstrate to Hodson and Robert Stewart, the school’s
associate director, that his commitment to work had contributed to the
dissolution of his marriage.
“I just felt completely betrayed,
and to be honest I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown,” Reader
said. “I probably shouldn’t have shown them my arms, but I did.”
This incident and some nasty emails that Reader apparently sent do suggest that he was acting like an asshole. Regardless of the exact facts of the story, it raises an interesting and difficult question about how to treat abusive and destructive people who are acting out because they are suffering from mental health problems — and in this case there are hints that Reader was good at his job (and that students liked him, they don't give nasty teachers good teaching evaluations). I am all for enforcing The No Asshole Rule in academia, and believe that consistently abusive and selfish people (who are otherwise competent) should not be rewarded and promoted — and unfortunately I have seen too many cases were such people are promoted and then go on to leave a path of destruction for decades.
BUT if such behavior has not been a problem in the past, and is provoked by life pressures or changes in physical health, it seems to me that compassion and understanding is called for… so in a case like Reader's (I don't know the facts well enough to say what should be here done for sure), perhaps the best thing to do is to delay the tenure decision for a couple years and make it contingent on him changing his behavior — in other words, contingent on him returning to sufficiently good mental health to keep his inner jerk in check. I realize that circumstances vary from place to place, and that may not be right or possible in this case, but I think that showing compassion and emotional support is necessary in such situations. Skilled and well-meaning people are sometimes overwhelmed by what life throws at them, and discarding them despite great skill and potential troubles me — especially if there is good reason to believe their behavior can change.
To be clear, however, if someone has a pattern of abusive behavior and — regardless of the cause — it does not stop, that means to me that the person is incompetent to do the job, and should be grounds for not promoting someone or firing them.
This brings me to another lesson from this case — if the report is accurate, the administrators who voted to deny him tenure made things much harder on themselves and ultimately on Reader because they did not have the guts or energy to call him out on his nasty behavior before the tenure decision (at least in writing). In fact, his written evaluations suggest quite the opposite, especially from his bosses (notably school director Tom Hudson, who voted against Reader apparently because of his hostile behavior). The story reports:
There is not a single piece of documentation from Reader’s eight
years at Ohio, however, that shows he was ever disciplined for any
“volatile, bullying, or other anti-social behavior,” according to a
report of the university’s Office of Institutional Equity…. What
is documented before the tenure vote is a pattern of congratulatory
evaluations, endorsed by the very department head who is now
challenging Reader’s tenure status. In 2004, Hodson called Reader “the
ultimate team player.” He followed that up in 2007 by declaring “I am
proud to be your colleague."
Despite Hodson's written praise, and a lack of any written documentation, Gregory Shepherd, the college’s dean (who also made the decision to deny Reader tenure), argued:
“Just
because something doesn’t occur in a narrow piece of the written record
doesn’t mean there were never any discussions, conversations.”
Shepard declined to elaborate. So there may have been conversations where Reader was given pointed feedback and a chance to quell his nasty behavior — I want to be careful to make clear that I do not have all the facts on this case. But there is a key lesson here if these bosses lacked the will or skill to do to give Reader negative written reviews and work with him to change his alleged behavior. This not only may weaken their legal case against him, if such a spineless pattern persisted throughout Reader's career at the school, it damaged everyone involved. Academic administrators have tough jobs, but I don't have much sympathy for any boss who lacks the courage to take tough but necessary action — and then votes to fire someone (despite a history of glowing written reviews) by claiming that, really, this had been a problem all along.
There is an important and broader cautionary tale for every boss here: If you don't have the guts to do the dirty work, and can't or won't find someone to do it for you, you are in the wrong job. If you let an asshole run wild for years and years, write glowing reviews all the while, but finally get so fed-up that you vote to fire him or her — in my book you don't deserve any sympathy when the whole situation blows up in your face. This theme, that the best bosses have the guts to do the dirty work (and understand that there is a big difference between what you do and how you do it… the best bosses make and implement hard choices without turning into bossholes) was also a central theme in my HBR article on "How to Be a Good Boss in A Bad Economy" — the article is here and I talk about it here).
To return to Professor Reader's case, the whole thing sounds like an unfortunate mess. I hope that it is resolved in a manner that is best for Ohio University students in the long run — that is the most important thing, even if the impact on students if often ignored in such decisions.
P.S. Everyone involved in this case would have benefited from reading and following the advice in C.K. Gunsalus' The College Administrator's Survivial Guide.
P.P.S. Check out Sherman Dorn's post on this case, he does a great job of digging into the norm of collegiality and how tough it is to enforce and figure out what it means in practice.