No ones perfect, least of all university professors -- at least I speak for myself. We do our best daily to encourage students to speak their minds, write and create well, and think critically. When we fail, we try again. Independent thought, evaluation of evidence, and open discussion are the core of our profession.
So, when Alberto Pimentel, managing partner at the firm conducting Florida State Universitys presidential search, claimed that one of the current four candidates would not be a viable candidate in any other state,the remark caused concern and for good reason.
FSU now faces three urgent challenges to its national standing: (1) It seeks membership in the Association of American Universities, a nonprofit organization of 62 leading universities in the United States and Canada. (2) Its athletic program has attracted national scrutiny due to situations with which we are all familiar. And (3) it has fallen from 40th to 43rd in the US News rankings of national public universities.
Reasonable people may differ about which of the four candidates under consideration for the FSU presidency can best meet these challenges.
The FSU Faculty Senate and its resolutions are one way that FSU faculty members express their opinions within the larger FSU community. The Senates resolution of Sept. 10 was an expression of the Senates concerns -- no more, no less -- hardly a personal, partisan, or political attack.
Universities operate through open discussion. The process of peer review is central to faculty hiring, annual review, promotion, and tenure decisions. Faculty members depend on criticism from colleagues to improve their research and teaching. When we give professional talks or submit research manuscripts to academic journals, we expect to receive criticism that will improve our writing. What may look like an attack in the Sept. 10 resolution is, in a university setting, business as usual.
By that token, faculty is an extremely conservative bunch. We aim to preserve an environment for the free exchange of ideas that is part of a long academic tradition. We uphold and defend an environment in which neither money, nor popularity, nor political affiliation determine the worth of ideas.
From this point of view, the best reason to choose one candidate over others as FSUs next president is that the final choice has emerged under scrutiny by the universitys various stakeholders in open, public discussion. There is nothing personal, uncivil, or unprofessional about this process. In a democracy, and under our Constitution, free deliberation is an eminently conservative, deeply American value.
The time for public debate is now. After the final selection of a new president, FSUs faculty will greet it with the utmost professionalism, regardless of the choice. Collegiality, collaboration, and mutual respect, despite differences, are the other values that faculty hold dear.
This week, FSU and the public will hear from all four current presidential candidates who, together, possess a surplus of nationally recognized talent. We can hope that the discussion will remain free and open in the spirit of the great, national, public university that FSU is and aims to become.
(Editor's note: This column is in response to Barney Bishop's Sept. 11 column in Sunshine State News, "Ivory Tower Professors' Opposition to John Thrasher Is Why He Must Be FSUs Next President").
Joseph Hellweg is an associate professor in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. His research is on religion and performance in West Africa. He is a recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships and a 2014 recipient of the Developing Scholar Award at FSU.
