Where's the fair debate?

Until now, most of the African-American faculty and staff of IU have deemed it prudent to stay out of the fray of the chancellor issue, which has now degenerated into a question about the quality of IU President Adam Herbert's presidency. That is because we were optimistic that our robust intellectual environment would facilitate an informed, honest, reasoned and inclusive deliberation. \nYet, there is the sad as well as the seemingly inordinate anti-intellectual nature of faculty discourse surrounding the issues at stake, including incidents of biased and sloppy media treatment. \nIt is, therefore, in the spirit of a balanced approach that we wholeheartedly agree with the common sentiment that 1) IU media-cum-communications relations need to be fine-tuned, and 2) the chancellor search should have gone forth much earlier.\nHowever, we also encourage our faculty colleagues to engage in such discussions within the context of IU's historical and structural challenges rather than blame a single officer of our eight-campus university system for problems that have long plagued our Bloomington campus that President Herbert is working hard to address. We feel very strongly that trite sound bites and disrespectful and uninformed deliberations should not find welcome abode in an intellectual environment such as ours, lest we appear to our students and the larger Bloomington community as a bunch of spoiled brats who are upset because things have not gone our way.\nWe agree that what appeared in the media about the nature of the search and the standing of candidates could have been better handled by all who were involved. We also agree that the Bloomington campus chancellor search should have taken place at a faster pace. To his credit, however, President Herbert did not leave the position vacant. \nIn an intellectual environment, whereby faculty encourage students to make claims based on fact and not fallacy, on evidence and not mere opinion, it is amazing to hear that much of the criticism of President Herbert is based on sentiments like: "He's never there"; "We do not know what he does"; and "He has a lot of personal charisma, but he is not a real leader." \nThe queries that immediately come to mind are: Is the chancellor search the only issue on which the president is to be evaluated? Is Bloomington the only campus about which the president should be concerned? \nThe level of misinformation and inaccuracies surrounding these issues is astounding in an intellectual environment, where truth and accuracy are supposed to reign. For example, one of the allegations at the November emergency faculty meeting was that "President Adam Herbert is not being reviewed by the Board of Trustees, and that it should be done…" The truth is, though, President Herbert is reviewed by the board, and, in fact, as part of the process, he even prepared a written report on his activities in August. \nWe urge the Bloomington Faculty Council to take the high road of honesty, as well as forthright deliberations. Above all, we urge the board of trustees to stay the course of providing the president with the requisite resources and support to lead IU effectively.\nThe board should also underscore unequivocally that it has not abandoned, for the sake of a few vociferous faculty factions, the power to hire and fire IU presidents now or in the foreseeable future. We must do our best to safeguard the sacred principles of fair play, honesty and due process, which are crucial to the academic standing of our beloved IU.