TAKEOVER IN TOUGH TIMES: Officials at Vanderbilt University were so concerned about turmoil in its political-science department that they placed it in receivership.
Bitter infighting led to the departures of three chairmen in four years. Then, last June, the university took away the department’s right to hire and fire and brought in the dean of the law school, Kent D. Syverud, to make day-to-day decisions. The university managed to keep the disarray under wraps until the student newspaper broke the story last month.
The troubles stem partly from philosophical differences, reflecting a rift in the discipline between those who favor a statistics-based methodology and others who push for a less mathematical approach.
“It also took a real nasty, personal turn,” says Wendy A. Hunter. She and her husband, Kurt G. Weyland, were associate professors of political science at Vanderbilt. Shortly before the law dean was brought in, they announced that they had accepted job offers from the department of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
Ms. Hunter says that, among other things, the failure to select a chairman prompted their departure. “It was a guerrilla war of attrition,” she says. “Why would you want to work under those conditions?”
Ms. Hunter and Mr. Weyland, who oppose the statistics-based approach, say that colleagues with different views made them feel unwelcome, even telling students not to take their courses.
Currently, the department has five faculty openings, but it can’t fill them while the law dean is in charge. Richard McCarty, dean of the College of Arts and Science, says he worries not only about filling those positions, but also about stopping the bleeding. “I think we might lose some more people over this,” he says.
John G. Geer, a political-science professor at Vanderbilt, shares those fears. He calls putting the department in receivership “a bad decision” that has made it difficult to hire and keep professors. Will he leave the university? Says Mr. Geer: “I won’t comment on that.”
Ms. Hunter and Mr. Weyland, however, say new management was long overdue. Says Ms. Hunter, “The unfortunate thing is that Vanderbilt is a wonderful university on a stellar trajectory -- with the exception of the political-science department.”
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NOT A PRETTY IMAGE: Alison Nordström says she never would have pictured it. But this month, the founding curator of Daytona Beach Community College’s Southeast Museum of Photography found herself resigning from a job she loves, because of what she calls “a slap in the face to academic freedom.”
Ms. Nordström contends that at a routine meeting in October, the college’s president, Kent Sharples, closed the curtain on a planned exhibit showcasing photojournalists’ work in Afghanistan. She says she was told that the show was inappropriate and unpatriotic in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and that her exhibits had “always betrayed a liberal bias.”
Just before Thanksgiving, she contends, she was given two options: Take a paid leave through the end of her contract, which expires June 30, or be reassigned to a position outside the museum. “Either way, my yearly contract would not be renewed,” she says, noting that she asked for the dismissal in writing but “that was never forthcoming.”
Mr. Sharples disputes Ms. Nordström’s account; he says that he encouraged the exhibit on Afghanistan, and that Ms. Nordström, 51, was never told her contract would not be renewed.
But Idris A. Muhammad, an affirmative-action and equal-opportunity officer at the college, sat in on meetings between Ms. Nordström and college officials. He says it was his understanding that “originally, she was told her contract would not be renewed.”
Mr. Sharples says he has no idea why the museum director would resign suddenly after 11 years on the job. “Perhaps she is looking to pursue career opportunities in some other place,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to her about her resignation.”
Ms. Nordström -- who has led the museum to national prominence -- says she opted for the paid leave, with her resignation effective as soon as it ends. “I resigned as a matter of principle. They were trying to stop me from doing my job.”
Mr. Sharples says the Afghan exhibit will go on. “I would never under any circumstances discourage a potential learning opportunity for our students or the public,” he says.
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