I remember the first Faculty Senate meeting I attended like it was yesterday. After signing up on the RSVP list, I just showed up there and was finally able to put faces to the people making so many tough decisions on University governance. As the first person in my family to ever attend a school as historic as Stanford, I was overwhelmed by the experience of being in the same room as its top academic leadership.
I admired them endlessly. And what’s more, I trusted them — naively — to take care to make sure of student and faculty well-being.
My previously unwavering admiration for our Faculty Senate is now being tested due to the recently announced restructuring of the Creative Writing Program that aims to cycle out Jones Lecturers in the next two years. Many lecturers have stood up against this change, which disregards the hard work they have put in to make the Creative Writing Program at Stanford the highly regarded program that it is. And many students are rallying against this change as well.
What has shocked and disappointed me most is the Faculty Senate’s lack of action in response to this restructuring. As the central body entrusted with protecting faculty interests, I expected far more from them than allowing such a damaging decision to go unchallenged.
To the leaders of the School of Humanities and Sciences on the Faculty Senate — namely, Dean Satz and Associate Dean Safran, who both defended this restructuring — I ask: How could you allow this to happen? How could you justify stripping the Creative Writing Program of the very lecturers who have built its reputation and who continue to shape the student experience?
Stanford boasts a nationally renowned program in creative writing precisely because of the Jones Lecturers. As the instructional heart and soul of the program, they include in their ranks not only highly-acclaimed writers but also those that have taught Stanford students longer than much of the Class of 2027 has even been alive. Jones Lecturer Tom Kealey, who joined the University in 2004, estimated that the lecturers “advise 90% of the students in creative writing and almost 50% in English.” Jones Lecturers bring deep experience and even deeper care to their teaching. Naturally, this has skyrocketed student demand for their classes, which should prompt all professors to treat the Jones Lecturers with the dignity and respect that they deserve.
The restructuring does not fairly value the work of the Jones Lecturers. In response to the great care that they take to inspire their students — the very work that makes creative writing at Stanford what it is — the Working Group of Creative Writing Academic Council recommended that they all be fired. To add insult to injury, this aforementioned working group is allegedly composed entirely of English professors, who are not nearly as involved with creative writing as the Joneses are. This “peasants and lords” brand of leadership runs afoul of a key pillar of governance: representing the voices of those most affected.
Not only were the Jones Lecturers denied a vote on their future, but the working group also issued an anonymous, feeble rationale for their dismissal. This refusal to take responsibility only deepens the sense of disdain the professors seem to hold for the Joneses.
In my opinion, the English professors are exhibiting first-degree callousness and condescension when making this decision. These professors are, as phrased by one Jones Lecturer, committing a Red Wedding massacre against the Creative Writing Program. They are to blame for making the English major “less desirable.” It is evident from their remarks that these students would agree that their school’s supposed academic leadership aren’t valuing the work “that really changes people,” not even the very major of President Jonathan Levin during his undergraduate years at Stanford.
The English professors’ cold-hearted perversion of leadership has presented the Faculty Senate a golden opportunity to ensure that the Joneses and the Creative Writing students see justice. Specifically, Satz and Safran right the wrongs by urging the Faculty Senate to reverse the Joneses’ termination, to give the Joneses the respect they should have always received.
Stanford should be a place where the winds of freedom blow, and that can only be the case if its professors stop undermining what makes creative writing so special in the first place.
