The Philosophers' Cocoon

Navigating departmental culture as a junior faculty member

In our new "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

This might be an odd question but I’m relatively new to a smallish department. I want to have collegial relationships with my colleagues in the philosophy department and would love to have support building my teaching skills. I can’t get a handle on the culture, though, and it seems the current department members operate largely independently. What kinds of support can I directly ask for that would be socially appropriate even if they all seem quite busy?

I would love to sit in on their classes for observations and have them sit in on mine, I would also love direct feedback on my syllabi, rubrics, and assignments, but they seem so busy and I don’t want to make waves. In the long term I’d love to organize philosophy specific talks to the wider college, book circles, events etc. But so far I’m just getting a general sense of…. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that they were understaffed before my hire so they are all tired.

Is there a low stakes way to reach out and make it clear I’m interested in collaboration without putting pressure or making it come off as criticism? Or should I seek support elsewhere in case my hunch is right that they prefer to work independently? This might be an odd question since it’s about social norms, I’m not sure if this is unique to our discipline or if any small department would have this sense of uncertainty.

These are great questions. As a member of a relatively small department myself, my sense is that it may be good to begin by simply having an honest conversation like this with other faculty the OP senses they have a good and supportive rapport with (hopefully there are some!). It could well turn out that the "culture of working independently" really just is something like people having too much on their plate, perhaps both at work and at home. For example, in my own case, my spouse and I welcomed our first child into the world 14 months ago. Since then, my life priorities have been basically (A) meeting my professional obligations (viz. teaching, service, research) while (B) devoting every other spare minute to child care and being a good father and spouse. Similarly, I know other senior colleagues who have teenagers, etc., and I can only imagine how much of priority their children are to them.

Anyway, I suspect that in a lot of cases, faculty in small departments would love to do things like organize talks, book circles, etc., but may simply not have the bandwidth to do these things. So, I suspect they would have no problem at all with a junior faculty taking the initiative on these kinds of things, while being honest about what they (the colleague of the junior person) can do. Which brings my back to my initial suggestion to the OP: just try to approach faculty you are comfortable with and have an honest discussion about what you're hoping for, while recognizing that others in the department may for whatever reasons have limits on the kinds of things that they can do. At least in a healthy department, I am pretty sure that faculty would take no offense to discussing the kinds of things the OP mentions, and probably love a junior colleague with so much passion and initiative for taking part in and supporting a collegial life in the department!

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Navigating a small department with preexisting internal conflicts?

In our new "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Thoughts about how to successfully navigate a small department with preexisting internal conflicts? (I'm a mid-career, tenured philosopher, fairly new to the place.) I'd prefer not to say more to avoid identification--though sadly, this description probably fits a few institutions.

Great question. I'm not sure that I have many good tips to offer, as fortunately my own small department doesn’t fit this description. But I guess if I had one tip to offer, it would be this: don't presume to understand the nature or the depth of the conflicts there are. Obviously, there are many sides to most stories, and believing you have a grasp of the nature of them might land you in trouble. Also, of course, not all conflicts are equal. Some are mere conflicts of personalities or priorities, others the result of legitimately bad or even unethical behavior. I don't know if there are any good rules for handling different types of conflicts like these, as they can differ in so many details (every situation is different).

So perhaps it would be best to hear from readers who have grappled with this stuff. Do you have any helpful experiences, tips, or other insights to share?

One quick reminder: please be mindful of the Cocoon's safe and supportive mission. The Cocoon isn't the kind of place to spread rumors or "out" people or departments, either explicitly or by implication. Comments that run afoul of our mission in these or other ways will not be approved.

Grappling with department feuds as a new prof?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a new prof writes:

[I]magine yourself in the situation where you have just been hired as an assistant professor in a new department. Your initial sense of euphoria and busy work for the fist year and a half or so prevents you from seeing it, but slowly, it dawns on you that there is a long-standing ugly feud going on which has been going on for maybe decades, long before you arrived. For instance, a dispute between secular and religious people in a religious-identifying school, continentals vs analytics, a sexual harassment scandal involving a faculty member who is still around that made a deep rift but where no accusations resulted in, say, a title IX case.

Battle lines are drawn. Usually it's quiet but you find yourself in a search committee where it comes to the fore, for instance. How are you supposed to deal with this? Pick a side? Try to be "neutral"? Trying to resolve the situation, which people have tried before of course, will probably not work for someone who comes in new (and who only gradually realizes what work culture they've unwittingly been hired into). Any tips welcome.

I'm sorry hear about the OP's situation. I've never been in this situation myself, but have known people who have--and, from what I've heard, there may be no easy answers. Sure, you could try to "stay above the fray", but the problem then can be that people on different sides of the feud may blame you for not picking sides. So, I don't know--and again, I'm probably not the best person to provide any real advice on this, as I haven't had to deal with anything like this first-hand.

Does anybody with more experience with situations like this have any helpful tips or other insights to share?

Surviving departmental politics as junior faculty

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, Struggling Dissenter writes:

I am a junior faculty member. Concerning departmental affairs (or any affairs) I tend to have a different opinion than many others. I also tend to get misunderstood. I wonder if there are advice and experience on how to survive departmental meetings and similar decision making scenarios. E.g. Should I be more quiet?

An excellent query, and one that I suspect many new faculty identify with. One reader, Jaded Junior Faculty, submitted the follow response:

Department politics can be a hellhole of wasted energy and bad feelings. If you can stomach it, go to the meetings but stay out of the fray. If you can't keep your opinions to yourself, skip the meetings. I stopped going to meetings about a year ago and my life and job satisfaction and general stress levels improved dramatically. People had been nasty to me, yelled at each other and me, intentionally twisted my words around, accused each other of the worst motives, and so on. I thought I was simply offering my input in a friendly way, but I was "taking sides" on battles that have long been raging. It was shocking, coming from a generally convivial graduate institution. All that to say: These battles are not worth fighting. You will only make yourself and everyone else miserable. Either wait for the worst actors to retire or apply out.

Another reader, Also Dissented, submitted the following reply:

Pick your battles. I was in a department with some unsavory personalities, and I just made sure I only voiced an opposing opinion on the issues that really mattered. So you can let many of the small issues go - nothing will hang on them, at least nothing big. And if you are feeling you are misunderstood, when you raise remarks do it in a more teacherly manner - do not assume that they will understand your concerns. Instead, provide some background or motivation for what you want to say. Eg. "It seems that some of you think we should be teaching so much generally education. I can see your concerns, but I think we need to ensure that the department is seen as cooperative with the administration. And some of these courses can be ideal places to recruit new majors and minors."

I appreciate both perspectives, and suspect that which approach one should take probably depends on a variety of factors, including one's own tolerance for risk and how functional or dysfunctional one's department is. However, in my experience, it can also matter a great deal how you dissent in meetings--to do so, for example, in a charitable way that makes it clear that you're interested in working productively with your colleagues even when you disagree, rather than as an adversary.

Another tip I have is to try to talk to people individually before and outside of departmental meetings. This can not only help you sort of feel out points of agreement and disagreement before meetings or decision-making scenarios occur. It can also be good for forging positive interpersonal relationships with colleagues, showing that you proactively care about what they think as an individual. Moreover, my experience is that conversations may go a lot better outside of the complex dynamics of a group meeting. Finally, once you know how various parties feel individually (and how strongly they feel about various issues), you may be much better prepared to determine before a meeting occurs which battles are "worth fighting", and which forms of dissent are likely to blow up in a bad way (and which you may or may not want to avoid).

Anyway, these are just a few of my thoughts. What are yours?