I’m not giving any updates on the situation with my department because it’s so cooky I don’t think anybody will believe me. I don’t know how to narrate the story while not sounding completely barmy.
Here’s a very small part of it so that you understand what we are talking about. At the end of June, Department Chairs were saying goodbye to those who were stepping down from the position.
“What about you?” people asked. “Are you going to continue as Chair? What is going on with your department?”
“I have no idea,” I said honestly.
After July 1, I had to go into the payroll system to find out if I’m still getting paid as department Chair. Because – get this – no human appears to know. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Every two weeks, I access the payroll system to find my status from there. No human being communicates with me about it. We no longer have any idea who makes the decisions or if anybody does.
See? I told you it was nuts.
Clarissa's Blog 
The bigger the bureaucracy, the easier it is to dodge responsibility. The managerial revolution over the past few decades has perfected systems built not for leadership but for plausible deniability (when was the last time leaders of institutions actually resigned over fuckups?). Responsibility is so thoroughly diffused that no single person can ever be held accountable. Some of the most impactful decisions affecting our lives (think COVID, DEI, etc.) were made behind layers of committees and agencies, and to this day we have no idea who was actually responsible.
At least under a dictatorship or monarchy I know who to curse when things go south!
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Stringer Bell
Clarissa observed,“We no longer have any idea who makes the decisions or if anybody does.” Basically the male hierarchy has evaporated leaving the herd alone, essentially no leader with the instinctive drive to fix the problems. And sadly, cursing is not going to help ;-D
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—At least under a dictatorship or monarchy I know who to curse when things go south!
We had this associate dean who ran his area of responsibility mafia-style. Shamelessly diverting resources to his little scientific empire. Conflict of interest on top of a conflict of interest. If one made a little noise he would respond either with a meaningless political speech or, on one occasion, openly gloating about getting things done… his way. When one made more noise (me), he offered more lab space (to me personally, knowing I would not accept it given the circumstances)… Knowing whom to curse was of very little use in this situation.
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Our problem is that nobody is running anything. I can play against all sorts of opponents. But at this point there’s nobody to play against. There’s nobody there. It’s very disturbing.
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You’ve got to be careful that they don’t pay you as a chair and then come back later and want you to give money back. I would put the extra money in another account and also leave a paper trail of your queries about anything related to this. Also, are you still getting requests to approve travel and sick leave for the dept? Are they treating you implicitly as chair? Document ALL OF THIS. [Sorry for shouting]. I think a copy of Kafka’s The Castle would be a good gift for your dean.
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“come back later and want you to give money back”
Yes. I was also going to suggest this.
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Yes, I’m signing everything. It’s impossible to take me off the accounts (as I’m a fiscal officer) without a long and complicated procedure, the first step of which is to transfer the duties to another person. But since there’s no other person, I remain in place.
I could probably remain in place forever but I’m not going to because this coming academic year is the last one of my second term and I believe in the democratic transfer of power.
But yes, this is Kafkaesque. Absolute gosh-darn nuttery.
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Nobody’s in charge, and nobody knows anything. Yay faceless bureaucracies.
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–Though, since it’s an employer, this sounds like a situation where you might want to document every contact you have with them– date, time, who you talked to– in case you have to sue them later for withholding paychecks. Your union seems to be asleep at the wheel. Employment negotiation matters are their whole job.
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“I’m still getting paid as department Chair. Because – get this – no human appears to know”
Some people seem to think this is a problem of too much bureaucracy… but actually it’s more or less the opposite – the bureaucracy (that keeps the system going) has been gutted and crucial information links have been lost as a result.
Administrators come and go, mostly without any kind of major effect on daily operations — it’s the career office workers that keep the lights on and payroll checks coming.
My immediate cynical assumption (thank you, Eastern Europe!) is that someone is raking off large amounts of money hoping that the hobbled semi-system that’s left won’t catch it in time or blame for the missing funds will be placed elsewhere (probably on some hapless office worker(s) who have no inclination or ability to make such amounts disappear).
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Yes. Every service has been gutted by austerity. Everybody who was wanted elsewhere left. There are many areas in which I have nobody to ask what’s going on. For instance, classes start on August 18, and I have no idea who’ll be teaching 2 of the courses, if anybody. Are people coming to teach them? Should I cancel the courses? I have no idea. And there’s nobody to ask. And it’s like that in everything. This is a collapse that happened in the past 2 years or so. Nothing works because there are no people to make things work. I’m winging it at this point, with no idea what I’m doing and what the results are going to be.
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“what the results are going to be.”
Some likely scenarios include….
-the chaos being blamed on the lack of diversity officers (if they’re gone too)
-faculty trying to keep the system working will be blamed
-no one will be blamed and it’s just the new normal until everything implodes
-they’ll start hiring people again (very unlikely)
-administration will take credit for great achievements while whole programs die
I don’t see any way out of the situation you describe that doesn’t include collapse and/or rebuilding from scratch…
This is also why I never got on the DOGE train… a bunch of people who have no idea how anything works slashing programs and jobs right and left…. that cannot lead anywhere good no matter how fun the short term effects are.
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There’s so much fun stuff going on. The person who was checking our timesheets left the university. Now our time sheets are very impressionistic. We were told to fill out the July time sheet in advance because there wasn’t going to be a person to check them. Predictably, trying to plan in advance when people were going to need sick days wasn’t a good idea. And it’s one of many things.
I’m making do because I grew up in the post-Soviet 1990s and I’ve seen much worse but other department chairs are having nervous breakdowns, and this time I don’t blame them.
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“I’m making do because I grew up in the post-Soviet 1990s and I’ve seen much worse”
Yeah, a lot of what your write does remind me of Poland in the early 1990s…. after the immediate culture shock wore off it was actually kind of exhilarating… (esp since I didn’t have a stake in things back then… my perspective has changed a bit since….).
Despite the general…. odd feeling of no one really knowing what laws were still in effect and which weren’t and how anyone was going to be paid or who was responsible for what there were postivie aspects.
What I did like about it in positive terms was that some (not all, maybe not most) but some people substituted personal judgement instead of immediately defaulting to see what the official rules were…
“This American wants to use our university to get housing (a major, major concern then) but outside any official exchange program? Okay… we’ll ask for a nominal cash amount.”
“This guy wants to hang out here and do participant research? Okay… why not?”
Lots of other examples…
A very different reality now…
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