Once upon a time, there was a land of liberty known as Poland.  While the rest of Europe was going through the counter-reformation, the Thirty Years’ War, and the beginnings of absolutism, Poland had the world’s most liberal constitution.  Nobles (who formed a rather substantial portion of the population) had the right to elect their king.  Religious freedom existed (though Catholics remained a strong majority).  The king could not declare war or peace without Parliamentary agreement (the Sejm), nor could he raise taxes without them.  That said, he was responsible for maintaining an army, paying state debts, and paying for the education of noble youth.  Parliament had the right to form coalitions to push through certain political aims, and the right to foment an insurrection if the king tried to infringe upon their privileges.  Most astonishing of all was the Sejm’s practice of liberum veto: the right of any individual noble to veto legislation, thus requiring all legislation to have consensus among the nobility.  All of this was known collectively as the “Golden Liberty”.

I mention all of this because of an intriguing line in Julie Cafley’s Globe piece on the subject university governance.  To wit: “Universities are a paradox. While their governance structures are slow and process-driven, professors enjoy a high degree of flexibility and independence”.  Indeed, one could go further: governance structures are slow and process-driven precisely because professors jealously guard their flexibility and independence, and wish to throw obstacles in the path of anything that might threaten them.

The nature of tenure, academic freedom, and prevailing academic management practices do give academics enormous freedom in their working lives.  They do not have a liberum veto over university policy, but they certainly do have freedom over how they do their jobs; there are very few ways an institutions can influence how a professor delivers his or her teaching responsibilities, or research activities.  In the US, faculty at private universities have been denied the right to bargain collectively because the Supreme Court ruled that their working conditions amounted to them being managers, not employees.

Universities – North American ones anyway, less so elsewhere – are, by design, anarchies.  This is mostly to the good: top-level intellectual collaboration is a lot like jazz, and there are few jazz musicians who are free of anarchistic tendencies.  But managing anarchy – even just nudging the enterprise in the right direction – is very tricky, especially when the executive has very little effective power.  But an excess of libertarianism/weak central direction can be damaging.  In the 16th and 17th centuries, the liberum veto was used sparingly.  But as the 18th century wore on, and the need for greater central expenditures became pressing, the Polish nobility was gripped by an anti-tax, anti-central government feeling. Nobles started throwing vetoes around like confetti.  Nothing got done.  The country grew weak.  And eventually, over the course of the final quarter of the eighteenth century, it was dismembered, and its various bits incorporated into Austria, Russia, and Prussia.  It did not reappear as an independent country for 120 years.

There are lessons here for universities.  Jazz is good, but paralysis is not.  In order to succeed, universities need to be effective organizations.  Consultation: yes; freedom: yes – but sometimes decisions need to to be taken quickly, and then actually implemented in a faithful fashion. “Rapid Collegiality”, let’s call it.

I’m not saying it’s easy to achieve; in fact, I can think of few things more difficult.  But when universities start appearing ineffective to the outside world, the outside world wonders why on earth we support them to the tune of, say, 2% of GDP.  And, then, like Poland, a long slow decline could begin.