Word: conflict
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When word of the outrage at Summers’ comments last January on women in science made it onto the pages of the Boston Globe, the national media jumped at the chance to cover the conflict. It was perfect fodder for conservative commentators. Here was an example of an overly liberal faculty attacking some poor academic who dared to speak the truth. It didn’t matter that no one knew exactly what Summers said. The issue could be easily and, unfortunately, inaccurately framed as radical liberals versus straight-talking conservatives. Nuance had no place in this argument...
This solution is based on the view that Harvard’s institutional structure is the problem—that it fundamentally creates strife between the faculty and the central administration and that a forum is required for them to settle their differences. But conflict between Summers and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) stemmed from interpersonal problems in their working relationship, not from the way the University was structured...
Were institutional structures to blame, then the president would be fighting his faculty most of the time. Yet, a cursory examination of the last three decades shows that conflict has been the exception—nowhere near a rule. Instead, Harvard history reveals that faculty-administration and inter-faculty dialogue has been conducted on an informal and ad hoc basis. This system has been both flexible and effective when there has been a high level of trust between the faculty and administration. There is no reason to change this paradigm because we had one unusual crisis...
...claims to fame is his ability to minimize conflict,” Schlesinger said of Bok, “As Harvard president, he was a peacemaker and a crisis-solver. He doesn’t like to rock the boat...
...things many of their own fathers didn't." The story noted that as men's goals got softer, their lives got harder: it cited a study from the Families and Work Institute that found that women over the past generation experienced about the same amount of conflict juggling work and family, while men's sense of frustration rose sharply. "In 1977, about one-third of men reported tension about the juggling act; in 2002, more than half said they...