Confessions of a Wayward Academic

by Tom Corbett

  That sense of collaboration lasted for decades. In the 1930s, Ed Witte was summoned by President Roosevelt to head the committee that created the Social Security Act; and in the early 1960s Robert Lampman did the key analyses that provided the conceptual foundations for the War-on-Poverty. Throughout this period, there existed a dominant ethos that scholarship had a moral component dedicated to the public good. An early University of Wisconsin president, Thomas Chamberlain, captured this underlying foundation of the Wisconsin Idea as follows.

  Scholarship for the sake of scholars is refined selfishness.

  Scholarship for the state and the people is refined patriotism.

  A wonderful sentiment to be sure but probably a tenure-killer in today’s academic climate. As the social sciences chased the methods and respect enjoyed by the physical sciences with rapt adoration, their interest in and connection with the real world faded from view.

  I loved Irv Piliavin, the faculty member who brought me into the academic world. He was a funny, engaging, and very bright man though I suspect many students found him most intimidating. We talked a lot over the years and I found his biases illuminating. He would characterize colleagues who decided to become administrators within the University as selling out their true calling for mere money. He really could not understand why they would abandon research. And those that drifted toward public service were a bigger mystery to him. While I am certain he liked me personally, I am convinced I disappointed him terribly. Rather than following in his footsteps, I had gone over to the dark side. In truth, I never left the dark side.

  I was never shy about expressing my opinions on these matters. Still, there were these inexplicable pushes to get me on the faculty. The faculty of that period presumed that this is what I must want since this is what all members of the academy want. The first ill-fated attempt landed me as an assistant professor in something called the Department of Governmental Affairs, which sounded okay at first blush. I was sent over for an arranged meeting with the head of this small department, a meeting arranged sometime before I headed off to D.C. to help with welfare reform. The more we talked, the more I realized that accepting this position held absolutely no advantage whatsoever for me. I could not even figure out why this department existed. But I went along with the program because I am a nice guy, and I knew that my colleagues went to some trouble to set this up. It turned out to be the fiasco I anticipated it would be. I basically had no contact with the place and my association with them disappeared seamlessly in a couple of years, one of which I spent in Washington.

  The next push came while I was working on Clinton’s welfare reform bill in D.C. I ran into some UW colleagues from Social Work in an airport who told me of the push to get me a faculty position. They seemed so excited about this. Why won’t these people just go away I thought? But all I did was smile. Part of the push, according to Bill Wambach (then the associate director for administration at IRP), was coming from UW administration. The higher powers apparently argued that I had been teaching so much in Social Work that I should be a member of the faculty. I concluded that the real reason was that it would be cheaper for the university if I signed on, though the mechanics of that theory eluded me. Okay, I thought once again, whatever!

  When I returned to Madison in June 1994, I had a half-time appointment as a clinical assistant professor in Social Work and a half-time appointment as a senior scientist for the work I was performing through IRP (mostly research and consulting) including my role as associate director. I did assess one thing before letting the faculty part of this arrangement happen. I calculated when my tenure clock would expire assuming it ran at half-speed, which it did. Better still, it would stop altogether when I served as acting IRP director, which I also did for a year.

  No problem, then, I thought upon finishing my calculation. Most probably, I would retire before the tenure decision arrived, so what could be the harm in letting this happen. Tenure, after all, would never mean the same thing to me as it did to others who, upon failing to get the brass ring, would need to leave the university to seek a position elsewhere. At that point, there was no way in hell I was going anywhere else. Nothing would change, I would continue to be a policy wonk operating out of IRP and I cannot imagine Social Work would get rid of such a popular teacher. After all, by now I was fully entrenched in a rewarding career and enjoyed the status of a well-known figure on the national policy scene.

  As I now write these words, the back-forty quality of my passive acquiescence to this faculty scheme astounds me. What an idiot! I really should have been taken out and shot for allowing myself to be pushed into this position…a misbegotten adventure from the get go. For one thing, most of my fellow faculty in Social Work did not know me or what I did. This was a significant problem. Mark Courtney, a child welfare scholar now at the University of Washington, was one of the senior faculty members who was punished for some infraction and had to serve as my tenure advisor for that year. These poor schmucks turned over on an annual basis as I recall, probably because the hopelessness of my situation was obvious to all. But all I can really say is that it was obvious to me.

  I can only imagine that senior faculty must have drawn straws to determine who would get stuck with me for the upcoming year, unless the role really was doled out as punishment for a major transgression as I surmised at the time. Mark was so traumatized by this duty he left Wisconsin, though perhaps there were other reasons. When he did escape, I was instrumental in helping Mark land the head job at Chapin Hall for Children at the University of Chicago. To assist his cause, I endured the longest reference call of my life. We had to reschedule the final half of it for a second day when I ran out of time as the initial call dragged on and on. I must have been quite talented at telling lies on behalf of colleagues, he got the position.

  In any case, Mark was my only mentor who appreciated the ridiculousness of my seeking a faculty position in Social Work. Well, that is the way I remember it. He put it this way, “I know that you work with the very top poverty scholars in the country, but their names mean nothing to most of the social work faculty here. You have a helluva selling job to do.” I wanted to say that they should get out more, but I remained silent.

  Outside of Social Work, I was a player. Therefore, unsolicited job offers from other places came my way on occasion. Al Kahn (eminent Social Work faculty member at Columbia and IRP Executive Committee member) tried to get me to New York; Rebecca Maynard (economist and long-time affiliate at IRP) tried to lure me to the University of Pennsylvania; Judy Gueron offered me a position at MDRC (Manpower Development Research Corporation), a prestigious evaluation firm located in New York; Kris Moore asked if I would come to Child Trends in D.C., to name a few I can recall. It was always flattering but I never was really interested, nor did I care to exploit the time-honored game of securing an outside offer to put the squeeze on your home institution. Again, money never held any charm for me.

  In addition, several headhunters inquired about my possible interest in foundation positions. I recall two contacts that did command some of my attention, one for a spot with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and one with the Ford Foundation. I did not think very seriously about the Casey position, but the Ford possibility was the one that, in truth, strongly captured my interest. You know what they say about philanthropic positions…everyone laughs at your jokes and you never have a bad meal. I wound up flying out to New York three times for extensive interviews. But in the end, Mary (my spouse) made that decision for me. She repeatedly told me to have a good time in the Big Apple. There was no way she was going, and we had already done one long-term commute during my year in D.C.

  My appointment in Social Work was only as a clinical assistant professor. This is some junior league faculty member position and it was only half-time, I cannot imagine being lower on the faculty prestige ladder. To be honest, it held no prestige whatsoever in my eyes. It would be the equivalent to Tom Brady, perhaps the top NFL quarterback of our era, hooking on wit
h a local semipro team named the Hoboken Steamrollers. From outside the academy, it looked ridiculous next to my senior scientist title and associate director status. Inside the hierarchical world of the academy, however, even the lowest faculty position rises well above any other professional title. The scientist and faculty positions are supposed to have a rough equivalency (with distinct duties) but they do not in reality.

  I spite of all this, a clinical position was perfect for me, at least that would be true in any rational world. Being a good clinical faculty member involved doing outreach, translating research for broader audiences, and looking for useful applications for what the academy produced. It is what I did every day. I still could not estimate the expected duration of the boat captain’s lunch break, but I could do these other things better than virtually anyone else. Interpretation, translation, and communication were my strengths. Few did these things better or with more flair. Moreover, given the pace at which my clock was running, my tenure decision would hit about three or four hours before my anticipated retirement date, not the three or four decades typically remaining in the career of a senior faculty member. As it turned out, I never did hit the end of my tenure clock. It was still running when I nominally retired, even though I continued to maintain a robust research and consulting schedule for years after that.

  Now, the truth is that I would not vote to give someone like me tenure as a real faculty member. I had never been acculturated properly for that role despite my decades-long dalliance in the academic fold. At the same time, this half-time clinical thing they cooked up should have been a no-brainer. From my biased perspective, there would have been zero risk in just giving me tenure for a clinical position. I had earned it long before this position was created for me. There were two issues, however. First, all my prior work did not count, weird but true. An entire career within the academy was irrelevant. More importantly, the tenure decision would be made by the senior faculty in Social Work. Now that second point was a real problem.

  First, the small issues! It is possible that I had alienated one Social Work colleague. She indicated to me that she wanted to become an IRP affiliate. When I approached Bobbi Wolfe, who was director at that time, she displayed no interest in extending such to the faculty member in question. In fact, Bobbi was rather against it, though the reasons were not terribly clear to me. I could always tell when Bobbi really didn’t like something, she would give me her look…the “you are nuts” look. For a moment, I hesitated, realizing that not extending affiliate status to this person would likely come back to bite me in the ass. Just for that one moment, I considered asking Bobbi to bend on this one and telling her why. Then I stopped, reminding myself that my tenure vulnerability should play no part in any IRP decisions. All I can say is that I was told later that this woman was in the anti-Corbett camp though I never bothered to gather intelligence on what specific faculty thought of me.

  For some senior Social Work faculty, I suspect I was thought of as one of those poverty boys from IRP. Worse, I was one of Irv Piliavin’s boys; and Irv did leave a few burned bridges in his wake. Again, this is mere speculation on my part since I never asked. I had long heard that some faculty felt they had been forced to accept these poverty-types onto the faculty in the past even though they were not real social workers. Resentments had lingered. Technically speaking, I was not a social worker either since I never did bother to get an M.S.W. on the way to my doctorate, though I took most of the required courses. For sure, I did not take the Interpersonal Skills course, an omission reflected in my current paucity of friends. This tiny omission should have prevented me from teaching the policy practicum courses in the school. Only bona fide social workers were permitted to teach these practice courses. Chalk up another ethical lapse for me though there were many co-conspirators in this transgression. We always prepared a song and dance routine when accreditation time came around but never had to use it.

  There may have been one final impediment. The number of clinical faculty had been trimmed over the past decade or so. This meant letting people go, which always creates hard feelings. I am sure those who might have seen their beloved comrades being put out to pasture were a bit angered by the creation of a new clinical position for this Corbett character. It wasn’t my idea I wanted to say, but I suspect that would have been a futile gesture. Ah, yes, there is nothing like academic politics.

  All these might have been valid points. However, I suspect my ultimate challenge, and the real issue, lay elsewhere. I will describe it by example. One day, a small issue arose during a Social Work faculty meeting early in my tenure-seeking era. I have long since forgotten what it was. Still being relatively new to the faculty governance process, I was stunned at how long the discussion went on. Not only did everyone get a say but everyone got the opportunity to repeat what everyone else already had said. As I sat there, contemplating the different ways I might take my own life, the following hit me. My tenure prospects were absolute toast. At the time, I was the acting director of IRP and had use of the director’s office just down from the associate director for administration, Bill Wambach. In my head I calculated that if I threw out this small issue being discussed that day as I passed Bill’s office, he might throw something back for me to ponder. Still, we would have resolved the thing before I arrived at my office some seven seconds later.

  Now, I entertained the following horrific possibility. Consider what likely would happen when the Social Work faculty confronted my fate even if it only meant that I would be made a half-time associate clinical professor, not even a real professor, for maybe a couple of hours before retiring. They would get all tangled up in what a clinical position meant, whether it justified considering factors other than pure rigorous research published in peer reviewed journals (which I had done on numerous occasions but always jointly with others), and what their bending of time honored tradition would mean to the future of all tenure decisions, the integrity of the academy, and to the very fate of Western civilization.

  Such conundrums, I feared, would paralyze them. They would have to be secluded in that walled up Sistine Chapel vault where the cardinals are sealed until they choose a new pope. In this case, however, they would never reach a decision, their bones to be retrieved at some point in the distant future. I could never have that on my conscience. After all, many had spouses and children. So, right from the start I knew I would retire from Social Work before my tenure clock would run out. No problem there, I could keep on working at IRP as long as I wished and even after formal retirement. Moreover, I would do my IRP work, as it happened, at a significantly higher pay level. Oh yes, my pay rate began to deviate between my two appointments with my compensation as a scientist increasingly outstripping my pay as a faculty member.

  Yes, I am such a numb-nuts that, in the end, it cost me money to walk into a classroom, to do committee work, and (worst of all) to attend faculty meetings. It is hard to imagine a more deadening experience than faculty meetings. Henry Kissinger was right that faculty disputes are so “vitriolic because the issues are so trivial and the egos so massive.” Social workers are, I admit, nice to each other but that also could present a problem. Everyone was so nice that they danced around issues forever rather than make decisions that might disappoint someone. I spent much time looking about the faculty meeting rooms for a beam that might support my hefty body as it swung from the end of a rope.

  I am not totally sure why I had such difficulty with my social work colleagues. The economists I worked with seemed to like me and respect me, even the tough ones who generally were considered difficult, which is putting it mildly. Earlier, I mentioned the dean from the School of Human Ecology looking over my curriculum vita in his office. I sensed he was concerned by my prominent position on the governor’s hit list. At one point, he stopped and said, “I am sure we can get you tenure here in the school.” Once, upon meeting a university dean as acting director of IRP, the man shook my hand vigorously. “I am so happy to meet you. I have heard so
much about you.” His enthusiasm seemed very genuine. Once again, I was stunned. Everyone seemed to respect me except those in my so-called home department. What was with that? My initial response to that puzzle is that they knew me better, to know me is to realize I am a fraud. The thing is, though, they didn’t know me very well at all.

  To be fair, I do think the Social Work faculty quite strong today. And they do a good job of educating the students. In the end, the students were worth all the aggravation of being a pretend academic though I started my teaching career long before this ill-considered effort. I yet send the school a decent annual contribution to support their work with students. Still, the fact that they knew me less than others in the university, and in the broader policy and academic communities, remains a nagging conundrum. That puzzle, in the end, likely is mostly my fault. I could have done much more to reach out to them, but those were such busy times and I was reluctant to market myself. By instinct, I was always more comfortable working behind the scenes, the guy who made things happen without taking much upfront credit. But success in the academy demands selfishness and self-promotion. In retrospect, I might have attached my name to various products and projects in which I played a significant role but doing so would have made me very uncomfortable. Sad but true!