The faculty feud

The strategy is not without its critics. Universities are, at the core, academic institutions responsible for education and research. So while Bates’s pledge to treat students as “customers” sounds appealing on the surface, academics argue there’s an important distinction between training someone to do a job and providing them with an education. But rarely does the tension between the two points of view escalate beyond gripe sessions in the faculty lounge.

Most DeGroote faculty members kept their opinions of Bates to themselves during his first five-year term, according to the university’s report. But when his appointment came up for renewal last year, several professors stepped forward to complain about his leadership, and requested meetings with McMaster’s president. Some even urged the selection committee to turf Bates.

The report suggests there were various reasons for the opposition, including Bates’s alleged lack of commitment to academics and a perceived shift toward a corporate management style. Some professors also alleged that Bates attempted to “sideline them by removing them from administrative functions or restructuring certain programs in order to weaken their position at the school,” according to the report. Others accused him of using “strong-arm” tactics to influence faculty votes on key issues.

It’s not all Bates-bashing at DeGroote. Some argue the source of the school’s troubles are a small group of jilted faculty members who are putting pressure on others to join their cause. His supporters, according to the report, feel empathy for Bates and suggested he has been subjected to various demeaning tactics. “Faculty members in both camps reported feeling ‘psychologically harassed’ by other faculty members,” said the report, adding that some needed to take prescription medicines for “depressions, anxiety and stress-related illnesses.” The report also suggests that there has been a 20-year history of discord at the school, long before Bates arrived.

In December 2008, McMaster’s faculty association stepped into the fray. It organized an “unprecedented,” but non-binding, referendum vote on the question of Bates’s reappointment. Forty-four of the 61 full-time faculty members cast ballots. More than 80 per cent voted against the dean. “The results were pretty dramatic,” says John Berlinsky, the faculty association’s president. And yet, the selection committee gave Bates another five-year term, which was approved by the senate and board of governors.

Now the faculty association is urging the two sides to get together and work out their differences—and fast. Berlinsky says he can’t recall such deep divisions at McMaster since he started teaching there in 1986. The stakes are particularly high, he says, because of the school’s new 90,000-sq.-foot campus in Burlington. The school will house graduate and executive programs for some 800 students. “If the school isn’t functioning,” says Berlinsky, “there’s a lot of [financial] risk to the university.”

The university seems to recognize that it has a potential disaster on its hands. “We are taking action,” said Peter George, McMaster’s president, in an April 1 address to the business school. “But the issues that need to be addressed are complex and there’s no single answer, no silver bullet, so to speak, that will put the school on a stronger path forward.” Like Bates, George declined to be interviewed. When asked whether the school is pleased with Bates’s performance, Andrea Farquhar, a McMaster spokeswoman, notes that his contract was renewed and that the school has grown considerably under his watch. “The issues that have to be tackled within the school aren’t simple and they don’t reside with one individual,” she says.