Fond as she is of outliers and revolutionaries, Ms. Mentor says it's diplomacy that usually works best in academic quarrels

Question (from "Fred Nobel"): My annual evaluation (written by my department chair, for salary purposes) shows every sign of inattention. It has grammatical errors, unclosed parentheses, awards left out. I'm up for tenure this year, and several of these slapdash reports make up my academic record. I don't want to annoy my chair, whose support I need, by correcting his grammar. But what should I do about his embarrassing missteps?

Question (from "Carson"): As a low-level administrator at a research institute, I have my own grant money and am able to spend half of my time on my own projects, but I'm still seeking that elusive tenure-track appointment. Recently, I published a letter in the local newspaper, contradicting the institute director's views about my research and the institute's mission. The director reprimanded me and told me to run all of my work by him in the future. I am now worried that my research will not make it through his ideological screen.

Answer: So, your boss is planning to poison the Jefferson County water supply. His pile of supplies in the corner of the department lounge keeps growing: cyanide pellets, maps of vulnerable reservoir entrances, dynamite, chisels, ropes, even a cat-burglar outfit. The last time you poured yourself a glass of water before class, Dr. Boss cackled evilly and said, "Enjoy it while you can."

Should you call to schedule a meeting with your dean, who insists that faculty members make appointments two weeks in advance? Should you spend three days carefully crafting a well-written and persuasive letter to the local newspaper, urging them to undertake a full-scale investigation of "possible malfeasance" on county property?

When it's the water supply or public safety that's involved, Ms. Mentor urges you to dial 911, call the FBI, notify everyone you know, seek whistle-blower protection, hop on the nearest bus, and hide out in Sheboygan.

But if it's a misspelled personnel report, or a disagreement about the direction of research, that's not the time to panic, abscond, or become a martyr. Instead, be a diplomat. Start small. Pick your battles. Learn to shrug off what you cannot control or change.

Fred needn't fret over his boss's illiteracies. They're not Fred's responsibility. Like the students who write semiliterate screeds on course evaluations ("She made us right to many paper's"), Dr. Boss will be taught by others. His memos will be ignored or passed around with snickers; he'll have to spend inordinate time explaining and retracing ("That's a typo. What I meant was. ..."). If Dr. Boss's report does fail to list Fred's Nobel Prize, that is Fred's chance to demonstrate the tact and grace that all stars should use with the little people in their lives.

"I'm sorry to bother you," Fred can e-mail his boss, or even say in a quick poke-head-in-the-doorway moment, "but my Nobel was somehow left out of the personnel report. How can I make sure that everything I've done over the last five years is included?"

Ms. Mentor's readers will note that Fred has spoken impersonally, in the vein of "Mistakes were made" rather than "You stupid little canary." He's also offered to help correct the errors — which means they'll get done — and he's let his boss save face. They're now allies.

But poor Carson has gone public and trashed his boss. Rather than showcasing what he might accomplish in a tenure-track job, which would require a letter of recommendation from the boss, Carson seems to have bitten the hand that pays him.

Ms. Mentor would have advised Carson to begin with a private appointment with his boss: "I have some concerns about" — paperwork, pay, personnel, whatever the issues. Any knot that can be handled simply, through meetings or mediation, won't tie everyone up. You won't trigger investigations or involve starlets and tabloids.

Local newspapers should always be informed about institutional problems, such as budget shortfalls and draconian faculty firings. They should get copies of studies of campus racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and homophobia. They should be sent news releases about grant getters and Nobel Prize winners.

But once disputes between administrators — two little people whose problems may not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world — appear in the newspapers, they create a firestorm of speculation. ("What did Carson or Dr. Boss really do? Someone said there might be a third party involved, and maybe it wasn't only about research protocols.") Rumors will persist long after Carson is gone — which is apt to be soon. (Ms. Mentor thinks he should be applying now.) "He was high maintenance," some will say. "Couldn't get along with people. Smart, but surly."

But what if Carson's clash with his boss does involve an "ideological screen," as he claims? Ms. Mentor wonders how that kind of fight can be helped by involving the newspapers. No one, except maybe The New York Times, has on-staff experts in, say, historical interpretation, scientific fraud, or literary theory. If it's an academic quarrel, it's best handled by the academicians — or, at least those who see reality clearly.

Ms. Mentor is fond of outliers, revolutionaries, and screamers from the sidelines, but some squabbles are really not about lofty ideologies. She once knew a "Kropotkin," an anarchist teaching at Ordinary U., who announced that all his students would get A's and they needn't come to class: "I may not be there, either," he said. "Mankind is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." His hopelessly bourgeois students protested ("We want to learn organic chemistry!"), and Kropotkin later claimed, "I was fired for my political beliefs." But as his colleague whispered to Ms. Mentor: "They would've fired anyone who didn't show up for work. Even a Republican."

Fred Nobel shows up for work, does it admirably, and should be rewarded and lauded. Carson needs to think about team loyalty, respect, and learning to work and play better with others — which means acknowledging the old cliché that the fights in academe are so intense because the stakes are so small.

Administrators have a basket full of clichés to describe a "smooth working environment," including "Keep the lines of communication open" and "Keep problems in-house. Don't go over someone's head." Being a tattler or a snitch mostly doesn't work, because it violates established paradigms and annoys unoriginal minds. Academic units flourish best when the fur flies least.

But if you see a cat-burglar suit, and it's not Halloween or Mardi Gras, and it's quietly nestled with tools for breaking and entering, brewing and bombing, don't stop to call the dean or put together your perfectly punctuated pseudonymous missive to Ms. Mentor.

It's time to scream.

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Question: I notice you write "collegial" where normal humans (nonacademics) would write "congenial." Could it be that colleaguelike is not the same as smiling-friendly-like, and maybe I need to do deep research and rearrange my categories?

Answer: Yes.

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Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor regrets that there is a growing backlog of missives that she cannot answer personally.Nevertheless, she welcomes rants and queries, guarantees confidentiality, and directs troubled readers to her archive (http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/ columns/ms._mentor) for instant solace and advice.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. She is the author of Ms. Mentor's New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia (University of Pennsylvania Press). Her e-mail address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com.