Chapter 10: (Re-)Working The System From Within Through Faculty Governance

This chapter, contextualized in the broader concern about the corporatization of the academy, focuses on the author’s experiences as a faculty leader in higher education who extended her work as an instructor for social justice to her engagement in faculty governance. The chapter addresses facets of organizational life that are typically hidden from awareness, even among supporters faculty governance. These include the manner in which structures for faculty voice and leadership listening are facilitated at the multiple levels of the organization (department, college and university) and how challenges and resistance to such efforts, both from faculty and administrators, are addressed. Specific examples of how challenges to corporatization (the naming of a football stadium after a private prison company) and advocacy for academic freedom were effectively engaged in through existing governance systems are discussed. The discussion will reveal the need for leaders to be skilled communicators in the arenas of consciousness raising (or conscientization), coalition building, dialogue across divergent perspectives and strategizing among multiple constituencies. These micropolitics will be discussed from the perspective of a professor of education who adopts a Freirean perspective of social justice.