All but official: Dean Lynch is leaving IC

While I may not have been covering the latest in the student loan scandals (hint: it’s baaad), I have a bit of an excuse. I graduated from Ithaca College, drove cross-country with all of my belongings, flew home to visit family and am now in the middle of?used-car hunting.

But enough about me, blissful me enjoying my last moment of slackerdom. Business at hand: buried on page B6 of the San Francisco Chronicle is the identity of the recommendation for Dean of the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Guess who? Dean Dianne Lynch. It’s not official yet –? she still has to be approved, but it sounds pretty done-deal — and will be leaving South Hill at the end of 2007. Lynch came to the Park School of Communications in 2004 and has definitely made her mark. Cellflix, Second Life, plasmas and snack carts, a growing connection of students to the administration (coupled with a bizarre sense of entitlement that may or may not be tied to our now obligatory MacBook Pros, also her idea), a buzz of excitement and?energy in faculty, what appeared to be an expert vision on putting Ithaca on the map,?deftly-executed damage control on an arguably unsavory?journalism program and on the previous out-in-less-than-a-year Dean Christopher Campbell, etc. It’s no wonder that Berkeley did all but rename the damn school after her to get Lynch to jump ship.

The timing of this decision - along with her continued radio silence from her usually up-to-the-minute blog - is also noteworthy. Students gone, faculty already packing up. There’s just an update from The Ithacan Online, no stacks of?copies to be picked up and perused on campus.?By the time students return to campus it’ll be old news, just another loss to what seemed to be a program ready to start blossoming. What will the future hold for the Park School (I mean, ahem,?”the best undergrad communications school in the world“) when our “dynamo” Dean Lynch?follows the?sun?out West? I’m betting it’s an f-word, and this time it might not be just?flux.

Not so fast: Is Dean Lynch leaving Ithaca?

Now, I hardly write about things related to Ithaca College, but this is an interesting development here that is raising a few eyebrows around here and the blogosphere. Dianne Lynch, the dean of the Park School of Communications, was on the short-list (and was the front runner after the interviews) for the deanship at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Now I don’t want to have to be the one who compares these two institutions of higher learning to each other, so I’ll let Lynch do it for me:

Given that I think [Berkeley]’s the best journalism grad program in the world, if not the universe, I decided I would at least go out there and talk to them about the program and the job. [...] I was right: It really is the best journalism grad program in the world, if not the universe.

High praise indeed, but does it mean she’s leaving town? Fret not, Parkies!

But I came home to the Park School, thought about it for a few days, and came to the conclusion that I don’t belong at Berkeley. I belong right here, in the Park School. Because you know what? Park really is the best undergrad communications school in the world, if not the universe.

This post was from March 15 in a blog, All Things Park, the dean diligently updates on all things Park-related after her March 5th interview with students and faculty. After withdrawing her application (to much obvious disappointment from the search committee), the faculty, staff and students breathed a sigh of relief. The Park School has been in a constant status of upheaval and flux, especially the newly-formed journalism department, and while the dean seems to have the utmost confidence in the program, the students have not been silent in their criticism.

And while Berkeley would be obviously an immense opportunity ? reports from the faculty meeting with Lynch prior to the interview were overwhelmingly positive ? Lynch made it clear it was her “final decision.” The Daily Californian reported that it had nothing to do with Berkeley but rahter her “personal commitments” here at IC. Those commitments, by my guess, would be the open searches for the chair of the journalism department, chair for the television-radio department, a workload position for an understaffed j-department, and a director for the not-yet-existing Center for Independent Media, something designed to put the Park School on the map. (Full disclosure: I sat on one of these search committees.) A lot of balls to keep juggling, especially when you’ve got Cal on the phone.

But now things get real interesting: 92510, a insider-baseball-y blog from the East Bay Express, reported earlier this month that Lynch and Provost George Breslauer at Berkeley were in “active discussion” and gave a timetable of a few weeks for the results, thanks to a J-school wide email. The report devolves into some conjecture, gossip and standard-blog-fare snarkiness, so I sent off an e-mail to Lynch asking her a litany of questions. Her response:

The provost at Berkeley called me two weeks ago to ask why I had withdrawn from the search; I gave him my reasons. He asked whether I would be willing to reconsider if he could address all of the issues I raised. I said I would be willing to discuss it.

And that’s all there is. Apparently an all-faculty meeting in Park will take place this Friday, but a lot of rumbling over this apparent 180? is being made. A lot of unanswered questions ? especially given her first comments on the withdrawal and what these reasons were/are ? hopefully will be answered tomorrow.

But for me it raises questions of hiring in general: at what point is a final decision really final? At what point are “personal commitments” let go? No one would blame Lynch for taking the job, but what is to be made of her decision to resume talks again, let alone if she were to take the position now?

Stoking the fires of free speech

Faithful reader Nic points to a recent column at the New York Times about the WHAM brouhaha at the University of Rhode Island. WHAM, the White Heterosexual Male Scholarship, was clearly designed to stir some controversy, just like it did at Roger Williams, right down to their “As a White Heterosexual American Male, what adversities have you had to deal with and overcome?” essay prompt.

The College Republicans got what the wanted, of course, with the Student Senate falling over itself to be outraged. Even after Robert Carothers, the university president, said, uh, guys, you can’t do that, they tried to sanction them. Cooler heads prevailed, and WHAM stays.

But FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, is at the center of this storm, something that seems to happen any time there’s a conservative publication under attack. (They do champion some liberal speech, too, but with less consistency.) I’ve followed their work for a while, and this week their champion cause is Tufts University’s conservative newspaper, The Primary Source. Back in December 2006, the paper ran an (unsigned) Christmas carol parody, like they do every year. This year’s: “O Come All Ye Black Folk.” Some of the more choice lines: “O Come All Ye Black Folk/Boisterous yet Desirable” and “All come! Blacks, we need you/Born into the ghetto/O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas.” Just a little light-hearted humor satirizing affirmative action policies, right?

Faster than you can say Don Imus, the paper apologizes (poorly) and retracts the carol. Now the firestorm is over a parody of the Muslim student organization’s ad ? during Islamic Awareness Week, no less ? highlighting Muslims’, ahem, contributions to militant terrorism. But instead of being just rightfully upset, the group took the conservative newspaper to court. Campus court, that is. The MSAT is claiming, along with another student citing the un-jolly carol, that The Primary Source creates a “hostile environment.”

In a meeting that took nearly 5 hours, both sides defended their position, with more people coming to rally for sanctions against the Source. While this isn’t grounds to call Tufts the boot camp for “totalitarian secret police to try to shutter the opposition newspapers,” nothing is gained by a Tufts student saying she didn’t like the discussion sparked by the carol about ? tadow! ? affirmative action.

Should we silence people? No, definitely not. Should we understand that with great power (the First Amendment) comes great responsibility (i.e. don’t be patently offensive under the guise of bad parody. See also: Don Imus)? Obviously. Should this be a great moment on campus to open talk about “inclusivity” and diversity and what free speech and really have a meeting of the minds? Guh. I think TPS is content to run its unsigned gutter humor in a lame attempt to be biting, and as student you can hold them accountable for their actions or promptly ignore them.

My critical race theory professor today put it best today: sometimes we’ve had enough Teaching Moments?.