STANFORD UNIVERSITY StCD6898
SENATE OF THE ACADEMIC COUNCIL SenD#4672
==============================
February 27, 1997
To: Members of Senate XXIX
From: Michael Bratman,
Senate Chair
Subject: Procedural Challenge to the CIV Review Committee's Report
Dear Colleagues,
As you know, our Senate agenda for March 6 includes a preliminary
discussion, requested by C-US, of the Draft Report of the CIV Review
Committee. C-US seeks early Senate opinions on the substantive and
intellectual issues concerning this report and its recommendations.
In order to proceed with this discussion, however, it was necessary for
the Senate Steering Committee to take up the matter of the procedural
challenge to the CIV Committee's work, raised by Paul Seaver, CIV
Director, and 21 other members of the CIV faculty, including 9 Academic
Council members. The Seaver letter was sent to C-US and to the Steering
Committee; both determined that this matter was within the Steering
Committee's/Senate's purview rather than that of C-US.
At the Steering Committee meeting of February 25, 1997, time was set
aside to consider fully this challenge. (All members of the Steering
Committee were present except John Brauman, who was out of town.) Paul
Seaver attended to present his objections, which were responded to by
Rob Polhemus on behalf of the CIV Review Committee. Other guests
included John Shoven (Dean of H&S, who charged the Review Committee at
the Senate's request), Ramon Saldivar (Vice Provost for Undergraduate
Education), and Anne Fernald (Chair of C-US). After thorough
discussion, the guests left, and all members of the Steering Committee
on the CIV Review Committee (Abernethy, Polhemus, Rice-ex officio StC)
recused themselves and left as well. The remaining members of the
Steering Committee convened to discuss further the information presented
in the preceding 40 minutes as well as the full legislative history, and
to consider possible actions.
This Steering Committee unanimously arrived at the judgment that:
1. The procedural objections to the CIV Review Committee's work are not
sufficiently significant to prevent C-US and the Senate from
proceeding with discussions of substantive issues arising from the
draft report; and
2. The CIV Review Committee should provide more information to C-US and
to the Senate concerning the forms of evaluation and the data
sources they used.
Enclosed, as background information only, you will find a copy of the
Seaver letter and the Polhemus response. It is the Steering Committee's
judgment that, while not perfect, the CIV Review Committee's extensive
work over the past two years responds substantially to their charge and
is of major significance. We believe that the report should be
considered now on its merits. We look forward to the thoughtful
exchange of views ahead, beginning on March 6th.
Cordially,
cc: Paul Seaver Michael Bratman
Rob Polhemus
Anne Fernald
John Shoven
Ramon Saldivar
________________________________________________________________________
StCD#6898
18 February 1997
To: Michael Bratman, Chair, Faculty Senate
Philosophy
From: Paul Seaver, Director, CIV Program
History
Re: Letter to the Committee on Undergraduate Studies
Dear Michael,
I am enclosing a copy of the our letter to C-US, which I delivered to
Anne Fernald. It was suggested that the Steering Committee would want
to take cognizance of the matter as well, since it concerns a matter of
a Senate mandate (or what certainly appears to be such). At any rate,
here it is for the information of the Steering Committee.
I would be happy to clarify our objections to the procedures followed by
the Polhemus Committee, if you or the Steering Committee wishes.
Best regards,
Paul Seaver
________________________________________________________________________
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CIV FACULTY CALL FOR 'GENUINE AND FULL REVIEW'
==============================================
We, the undersigned members of the faculty of CIV, formally request that
C-US not begin discussions of the proposed new Area One program until
and unless the genuine and full review of the current CIV program called
for by the Academic Senate in March 1995 (see text below) has been
submitted to C-US and deliberated on by both C-US and the Senate.
The CIV Review and Design Committee, chaired by Professor Rob Polhemus,
was appointed pursuant to Senate Document #4425, dated March 9, 1995,
which resolved as follows:
"In order to provide for the regular review of the CIV Program and
its tracks, both in the shorter and longer term, we resolve that:
"The Dean of Humanities and Sciences, through the School Curriculum
Committee and in consultation with the Provost, appoint such ad hoc
committees as necessary to conduct regular reviews. The first such
review must occur within two years, that is by the end of the
academic year 1996-1997, with regular review every five years
thereafter. The central concern of these reviews should be to
determine the success of CIV in meeting its programmatic objectives,
be they the objectives as originally charged in SenD#3307 or as
redefined by subsequent legislation.
"This process is modeled on that currently used for the periodic
review of Interdepartmental programs by the Deans, C-US, and
ultimately, the Senate. (This process is separate from but draws
upon the routine certification of CIV tracks assigned to the Area
One Committee in SenD#3307, the 1988 legislation enabling the CIV
requirement.)
"This decanal review should consider among other questions those
raised by the CUE report. The review should engage in fact-finding
to answer such questions as:
"1. How does CIV compare with programs of similar intent at
Stanford's 'peer' institutions?
"2. What are the results of systematic, carefully designed studies
of student opinion about CIV: a) upon finished the program
[sic]; b) during senior year or soon after graduation?
"3. What is the analysis by a balanced visiting committee of the
objectives and implementation of Stanford's CIV program."
Instead of conducting what was to be a model for a regular five-year
review process, it appears that the Polhemus committee has determined Ð
without meeting any of these review standards Ð to recommend the
termination of the CIV program and to introduce a new set of Area One
requirements.
While it thus has done what the Senate did not ask it to do, it has not
done what the Senate asked it to do. It did not carry out the review
requirements set down by the Senate. There was no review process
analogous to that prepared for recertification of IDPs. We have seen no
evidence that there were "systematic, carefully designed studies of
student opinion about CIV." Finally, there was, to the best of our
knowledge, no balanced visiting committee, in fact no visiting committee
of any variety.
Such a procedure violates the clear directive of the Twenty-Seventh
Senate in its action taken on March 9, 1995. It also violates obvious
standards of fairness: CIV has been judged wanting without the kind of
review called for in SenD#4425. CIV has been judged ready for
termination and a successor program proposed before CIV has been given
the opportunity to respond to the charges against it and permitting CIV
to devise remedies for any deficiencies that a genuine review process
might have identified.
We ask that C-US require the Polhemus Committee to conduct the review
called for by Senate Doc#4425 before C-US considers the proposed
replacement for the CIV program. To consider the proposed new program
without such a review would be to prejudge the CIV program as having
failed to meet its programmatic objectives set out in SenD#3307 and to
deny any opportunity for implementing reasonable reform.
AMIR ALEXANDER, lecturer in philosophy
PHILIPPE BUC, assistant professor of history
CAROLYN LOUGEE CHAPPELL, professor of history
JANE COLLIER, professor of anthropology
RICHARD CUSHMAN, lecturer in English (CIV)
ANDREW EISENBERG, lecturer in the Program in Structured Liberal
Education
JAMES FOX, associate professor of anthropology
SUZANNE GREENBERG, lecturer in the Program in Structured Liberal
Education
HELEN GREMILLION, lecturer in anthropology
OVID HURD, teaching assistant in humanities
PHILIP J. IVANHOE, associate professor of religious studies and
philosophy
KENNELL JACKSON, associate professor of history
STEVEN JOHNSTONE, lecturer in English (CIV)
MARSH McCALL, professor of classics
JULIUS MORAVCSIK, professor of philosophy
LISA ROTHRAUFF, lecturer in history
CHRISTOPHER SCHMIDT-NOWARA, lecturer in history
PAUL SEAVER, professor of history and director of CIV
J. B. SHANK, teaching associate in great works
CHARLES SIGISMUND, lecturer in the Program in Structured Liberal
Education
IRENA AUERBACH SMITH, lecturer in the Program in Structured Liberal
Education
KRYSTYNA VON HENNEBERG, lecturer in history
________________________________________________________________________
StCD#6901
February 22, 1997
To the Senate Steering Committee
I want to urge as strongly as I can that neither the Committee on
Undergraduate Studies nor The Academic Senate cease, refrain, or be
further delayed from formal discussion and open intellectual debate on
the report and recommendations of the CIV, Area One Review committee,
into which twenty months and much thought and work have gone. It's time
for the university's designated deliberative bodies to deal with
substantive educational issues, not tenuous legalisms meant to stop or
postpone meaningful consideration.
As chair of the CIV Review Committee, I'm responding to the letter and
petition, from Paul Seaver and others, sent to CUS and the Senate
Steering Committee, asking that CUS not talk about or take action now on
our report because, according to the signers, our committee has not
carried out the kind of review the Academic Senate mandated for CIV
(3/9/95). It pains me to have to address at some length and at this
late date procedural issues that could have been raised in our open
meetings this year or in our interim report to the Senate (11/21/96),
but it is necessary.
Though the petitioners and others of good will may disagree with our
recommendations for reforming CIV to make it more effective, that is not
what is at issue here: Regardless of the virtues or drawbacks of our
proposals, I assert categorically that our committee has conscientiously
tried, to the best of fallible human ability, to fulfill both the clear
spirit and the difficult, demanding and sometimes hard-to-construe
letter of the Academic Senate and its resolution (SenD#4425) calling for
review of CIV. From our first meeting 18 months ago until now, I, as
chair, have had before me and tried to follow the Senate's will and
language of legislative compromise specifying the complex task for our
committee.
I want to contest directly two misleading and potentially harmful
assertions by the petitioners. They state that our procedure "violates
obvious standards of fairness" and that we are recommending the
"termination" of CIV. Our review has asked the University for more
financial resources to support Area One. Do the petition's authors, as
their charge of improper or unfair review procedures might suggest,
really assert that such a conclusion, coming out of our deliberative
process just like any other of our recommendations, is somehow not
fairly arrived at and not "genuine?" Or do, in fact, the petitioners,
who presumably may also favor smaller classes and more money for Area
One, really object to the substance of some of our conclusions, not to
the legitimacy of our attempt to do what the senate asked? I hope so,
for it is substance that should be at issue now.
The committee has made scrupulous efforts to be fair to the whole varied
and various university community and its many views about the CIV
requirement. Our work and procedure may be misguided in part or whole--
the flesh is weak--but we have not been unfair in carrying out the
senate's mandate, as I trust the concerned intellectual community that
reads our report and proposals will find. We have tried not to skirt or
distort the challenge posed by the senate, but to meet its difficulties
and conflicts head on. This process has led us, not to end CIV, but to
try, according to our lights, to make it better. CIV is Area One in its
entirety--not one course format nor even individual tracks. We are not-
-repeat not-- recommending the termination of Area One, but its
preservation, renewal, and strengthening. We have, in fact, commended
the CIV program and its faculty for distinguished work and asked them to
go on doing it. "Termination" at Stanford means "it's over"--like Food
Research--not a mandatory three-quarter requirement: CIV may or may not
get a name change, but we want an Area One requirement to continue and
its objectives to remain essentially in place.
When the Senate resolution and its language is set next to our report,
it seems patently untrue to say that our committee "has done what the
Senate did not ask it to do. . . and has not done what the senate asked
it to do" and that our "procedure violates the clear directive of the
Twenty-Seventh Senate in its action taken on march 9, 1995." With the
breadth of the senate resolution we were given, it may, from some
platonic sense of things, have been impossible to conduct the perfect
and "full" review that would satisfy our critics, but the committee has
nevertheless conducted a "genuine," far-reaching, responsible,
thoughtful review in accord with the senate resolution. It has met
reasonable "review standards." Therefore I confidently leave it up to
members of the Senate, CUS, faculty, and students to judge whether CUS
and the Senate ought to be allowed to discuss our report formally.
Here is the Senate resolution:
IN ORDER TO PROVIDE FOR THE REGULAR REVIEW OF THE CIV PROGRAM AND
ITS TRACKS, BOTH IN THE SHORTER AND LONGER TERM, WE RESOLVE THAT:
The Dean of Humanities and Science, through the School Curriculum
Committee and in consultation with the Provost, appoint such ad hoc
committees as necessary to conduct regular reviews. The first such
review must occur within two years, that is by the end of the
academic year 1996-1997, with regular reviews every five years
thereafter.
The central concern of these reviews should be to determine the
success of CIV in meeting its programmatic objectives, be they the
objectives as originally charged in SenD#3307 or as redefined by
subsequent legislation.
This process is modeled on that currently used for the periodic
review of Interdepartmental programs by the Deans, C-US, and,
ultimately, the Senate. (This process is separate from but draws
upon the routine certification of CIV tracks assigned to the Area
One Committee in SenD#3307, the 1988 legislation enabling the CIV
requirement.)
This decanal review should consider among other questions those
raised by the CUE report. The review should engage in fact-finding
to answer such questions as:
1. How does CIV compare with programs of similar intent at
Stanford's "peer" institutions?
2. What are the results of systematic, carefully designed studies
of student opinion about CIV: a) upon finished (sic!) the
program; b) during senior year or soon after graduation?
3. What is the analysis by a balanced visiting committee of the
objectives and implementation of Stanford's CIV program?
Here, in brief, is how we interpreted this language and the problems it
raised:
"IN ORDER TO PROVIDE FOR THE REGULAR REVIEW OF THE CIV PROGRAM AND
ITS TRACKS, BOTH IN THE SHORTER AND LONGER TERM, WE RESOLVE THAT":
The senate resolution was passed in two stages: the first three
paragraphs were adopted first and the rest of the resolution was
approved later in the March 9, 1995 meeting. Tension exists between the
two halves of the resolution, a tension born of compromise. A petition
of CIV instructors had objected to any outside oversight committee
reviewing CIV, as the CUE report had recommended, and objected also to
the CUE report advocating wholesale changes in the Area One Requirement.
Those signers wanted consideration of CIV limited to how well it met its
present "programmatic objectives" and they feared the opening up of the
Area One Requirement to recurrent controversy. The resolution was meant
to gain the support of those, such as members of CUE, who wanted an
extensive review of CIV right away and those who wanted to put in place
a process that would feature internal review and normalized, regular
renewals of the requirement. Our committee, or any potential committee,
would have to reconcile conflicting demands of "shorter and longer
term," and we have done our best.
Here are excerpts from the discussion preceding the resolution's passage
(Senate Minutes 3/9/95):
"The substitute resolution specifies an initial review to take place
by the end of 1996-97 and then sequences of regular five-year
reviews that should determine the success of CIV in meeting its
programmatic objectives."
"Simoni [Senate Chair] suggested that the Senate divide into two
parts the suggestion that we adopt a procedure similar to the IDP
review process for reviewing CIV on an on-going basis and then turn
to the second item, an ad hoc committee for an overall review of the
program.
"After a brief discussion . . . , that portion of the substitute
resolution that proposed a continuing review process similar to that
now used for IDPs, passed by unanimous vote.
"Chairman Simoni then turned to the issue of setting up a one time
committee to examine the original objectives of CIV and its success
in meeting those objectives. Simoni pointed out that while CIV
started in 1988, it has never had a systematic review by the Senate,
who charged it."
The setting up of the ad hoc committee was controversial, some
considering another committee to be unnecessary "at any and all times,"
but very strong and prevailing majority sentiment was expressed "that
the oversight committee would take seriously the need to justify this
requirement for people who are taking it."
"The Dean of Humanities and Science, through the School Curriculum
Committee and in consultation with the Provost, appoint such ad hoc
committees as necessary to conduct regular reviews. The first such
review must occur within two years, that is by the end of the
academic year 1996-1997, with regular reviews every five years
thereafter."
The first paragraph and the two which follow set up a mechanism for a
long-term review process. The first refers to multiple "committees" and
"reviews" and their timing, and it requires an initial review, and --
significantly, in light of the senators' keen sense of the normal
demands upon faculty members' time -- sets a fixed date for the
completion of the first report. Our committee, working flat out, has
met the time requirement -- barely.
"The central concern of these reviews should be to determine the
success of CIV in meeting its programmatic objectives, be they the
objectives as originally charged in SenD#3307 or as redefined by
subsequent legislation."
The second paragraph, into which avid legalists could possibly read
contradictions in the resolution, states that the central concern of the
on-going process of multiple reviews over the years be the success of
CIV in meeting the legislated objectives of the Area One Requirement,
but it does not state that should be the only concern. I construe
"regular reviews" to refer to all reviews subsequent to the initial
review. Even granting there may be some grammatical ambiguity in the
reference of "these reviews"--though "these reviews" would seem clearly
to refer to the immediate antecedent "regular reviews"--logically it's
hard to see how the sentence would be coherent, how the objectives could
ever be changed, or how the rest of the senate resolution could be
carried out if "these reviews" were interpreted as narrowly curbing the
scope of the first review. This paragraph surely allows for the review
process to examine and modify the objectives of the CIV Area One program
and requirement. Our review has both explicitly and implicitly
addressed the subject of the success of CIV in meeting its objectives,
which we by and large support and affirm. It recommends redefinition of
the objectives, as the senate resolution obviously envisages.
"This process is modeled on that currently used for the periodic
review of Interdepartmental programs by the Deans, C-US, and,
ultimately, the Senate. (This process is separate from but draws
upon the routine certification of CIV tracks assigned to the Area
One Committee in SenD#3307, the 1988 legislation enabling the CIV
requirement.)"
This language applies mainly to the long-term, continuing review
processes, and we read it as not having for us the specificity and
immediacy of the next paragraph, which was precisely directed at us.
Our interpretive procedure here was to take the dictionary definition of
"modeled" as "similar to" and to read "draws upon" broadly. CIV, which
means the Area One Requirement for practically all students, is not an
IDP program. We, however, have tried through consultation and fact-
finding to fulfill the general directive of this clause, which--please
note--does not say the first review was to be "a model for a regular
five-year review process." Our review process has been much more
thorough than the usual IDP review process, and we have analyzed
extensively the most recent reviews of tracks done by the Area One
committee and evaluations it sanctioned. Our committee has been
mandated to carry out something much broader and more time-consuming
than an IDP review, and we have done it.
"This decanal review should consider among other questions those
raised by the CUE report. The review should engage in fact-finding
to answer such questions as:
1. How does CIV compare with programs of similar intent at
Stanford's "peer" institutions?
2. What are the results of systematic, carefully designed studies
of student opinion about CIV: a) upon finished (sic!) the
program; b) during senior year or soon after graduation?
3. What is the analysis by a balanced visiting committee of the
objectives and implementation of Stanford's CIV program?
This second half of the Senate's resolution, passed separately, is
directed precisely at our "decanal committee" and not some other one in
the future, and therefore we took its charge as binding and construed it
to be central to our required duties. Note that we were required
unequivocally to consider the questions raised by the CUE report. It is
important to know what such questions were in judging whether, and how
well, we have done what the Senate asked us to do, and whether we have
overstepped our mandate, for these were no small matters, nor were they
limited to "programmatic objectives."
Here are direct quotes from CUE raising the kinds of basic "questions"
the senate told us to face and not to duck:
"Given the apparent problems of CIV, should the requirement be
maintained?" (p. 24).
"Although we recommend that there should be a first-year course
modeled on CIV, we are convinced that the current program must be
transformed"(p. 24).
"We recommend that the process for transforming (and, if possible,
renaming) CIV begin at once and that it be placed in the hands of a
design committee composed of faculty members who are prepared to
teach in the new program. Their first task would be to clarify the
goals and establish a common agenda for a new course on culture. In
some cases, this would involve refashioning existing tracks, but we
would hope that new tracks would also be created" (p. 25).
"Some tracks were specifically created to meet the new requirement,
but several of the largest began as part of the Western Culture
program or had been long-standing departmental or interdepartmental
courses.. . . . Neither the supervisory efforts of the Area 1
Committee nor the common list of six authors or works shared by all
the tracks has been able to provide the kind of cohesion and
consistency promised by the program's founding legislation" (p. 24).
"We rejected suggestions to divide the course into separate
quarters" (p. 24).
To have to consider, review, and report on such fundamental issues
involving CIV/Area One shows the breadth and reach of the Senate
mandate. Our recommendations and conclusions differ radically from
CUE's, but we took seriously, and had to take seriously, the overall
questions it raised about Area One reform.
It is important to read carefully and note that the Senate's resolution,
in its reference to the decanal committee, does not specifically require
it to address any particular questions except those raised by CUE (which
include "objectives"). We have addressed the first two "such as"
questions, as our interim report to the senate and our report (and its
appendices) to the Dean and CUS show. Although I myself visited and
compared programs of six "peer" institutions (Columbia, Harvard,
Princeton, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and Georgetown, Stanford is a
different kind of university from our "peer" institutions and presents
unique problems. Our program is not directly comparable to that of
other universities.
The question of systematic, carefully designed study of student opinion
is a hard subject, as the deliberations in the Senate about student
evaluation have shown. We designed and administered a study of
graduating senior opinion about CIV that has proved useful and
informative, and we have worked to improve and broaden the evaluation of
Area One, which is in place. I am surprised that anyone can read
through the five hundred replies to our question of seniors on "how to
make CIV better," for example, and not find important, illuminating, and
helpful evidence of serious student opinion.
As our interim report stated, we discussed at length last winter having
a visiting committee and we decided that the use such a committee for
CIV undergoing a review by an outside committee at this time would be
neither feasible nor helpful.
Our review offers serious intellectual and pedagogical matters to talk
about, debate, and act on. The university community should not waste
time arguing about preventing discussion of a report as legitimate as it
is liable to get out of the language of the Senate resolution. If the
Senate or CUS doesn't like the CIV Review Committee's recommendations,
they can reject or amend them. But they should be allowed to read and
freely judge them on their legitimate merits, which are considerable.
I will recuse myself from the Steering Committee decision on what to do
with the petition from Seaver et al., but as Chair of the CIV Review
Committee, I will not absent myself from the discussion.
Rob Polhemus
Chair, CIV Review Committee