What Day Does It Need To Be?
By
Leonard Zwelling
A prima facie case can be made that a true academic institution must have a certain degree of shared governance between its executive leadership team and its faculty. Those overseeing the executives (boards, e.g.) also have a role to hold the executives accountable for promoting the principles for which the university stands as well as the financial and intellectual integrity of that institution.
These concepts are clearly under attack in Texas and around the country as those who are to guide institutions of higher learning are failing entire blocs of students, Jewish and otherwise, and surely unable to strike up a dialogue between themselves and the faculty. Furthermore, boards of regents, governors, and directors are making awful choices in selecting leaders and in guiding the institutions they oversee. It should be no surprise that government is stepping in at the federal and state levels. In short, academia in America is a mess. The Texas State legislature thinks so and so does the Trump Administration.
Fortunately for myself and the BW, our alma mater at Duke and hers at Washington University seem to be holding up by all accounts. There was not turmoil on these campuses this spring nor the one before and the Jewish students from New York told us they feel safer in Durham than they do in Manhattan when we met with them at Duke.
At MD Anderson, however, things just seem to be getting worse.
I was told this very day that there are in excess of thirty departments without permanent leadership at Anderson. I had heard this elsewhere before. Even in today’s top-heavy administrative academic structures, departmental leadership is important for mentorship and career development of junior faculty and setting strategic directions in basic science and clinical research.
But the biggest matter of some urgency at MD Anderson is a projected budget shortfall that is planned to be made up by having clinics open on Saturdays. The first Saturday clinic was on June 14. The Executive Leadership, of course, declared it a success. Those serving on the frontlines have yet to be heard from. A wise faculty member characterized this push toward Saturday clinics as a “normalization” of longer work hours for the faculty in service of the institution’s bottom line.
If I got the details right, not every clinic met that Saturday. Those that did paid physicians to work over and above their faculty salaries for doing their regular jobs, something I don’t think ever happened before in the history of MD Anderson. The whole idea of R. Lee Clark was that money would never be used to incentivize the patient care objectives of the institution. All that mattered was the patient care itself. Another sacred cow has been gored from atop Pickens.
As far as I can tell, the administration believes that turning Saturday into Monday will overcome the budget shortfall and be better for patients, even if not for the faculty.
This is a very interesting approach. I have a different one. I think the faculty ought to turn Wednesday into Sunday instead. This would be as a gesture toward shared governance, which no longer exists at MD Anderson, if it ever did. If the entire clinical faculty planned a month or two in advance to treat a given Wednesday like a Sunday—emergency and in-patient care only—the negative financial consequences might catch the attention of the executive leadership.
Dr. Pisters wants Saturday to become Monday. I say turn Wednesday into Sunday as a means of attracting the attention of both the Executive Leadership Team and the Board of Regents.
I know, I know. It will never happen, but it would be something, wouldn’t it?
