Thank you to all the Faculty Senate committees for their reports and their hard work. And a special thank you to Eric [Feldman], Vivian [Gadsden], and Patrick [Walsh]. They are models of dedication and hard work and have always acted in good faith to serve and protect faculty interests and those of the University. I have learned a lot from them this past year and I know I have big shoes to fill.

There is no implied criticism of my fellow tri-chairs in the fact that I bring a different vision to my term as chair of the Faculty Senate. My vision is informed by personal experience that includes 30 years at Penn and 40 years as an educator. It is also informed by my research into the history of this Faculty Senate and my strong desire to strengthen its voice in shared governance at Penn—not just despite the current existential challenges to higher education but also because of those challenges.

My overarching goal for the coming year is to revitalize the Faculty Senate and make it more robust and more democratic. Here’s how I think we can approach this:

1. We should review Faculty Senate governance capacity, past, present, and future, perhaps with some consideration of how shared governance works at other institutions. This will entail discussing how best to democratize all processes and procedures for selection to SEC, Faculty Senate committees, and the tri-chairs. It will mean reviewing exactly how we communicate with constituencies and how they communicate with us. This might also mean considering whether we should have elections for SEC and the tri-chairs as was past practice at Penn. Even if we reject the option of elections, a thorough review of our democratic practice will serve to make us stronger by making us more intentional in our practices and commitment to our governance structure.

2. We need more space during SEC meetings as well as outside these meetings to learn about the faculty’s different stakes in this University depending on school, discipline, dependence on federal funding, reliance on grad students to fulfill our teaching or research missions, and our status as Standing Faculty or as Associated Faculty or Academic Support Staff. This is both an educational and political project that will serve many purposes. It will also help us to identify common ground from which to speak with one voice when necessary. Right now, the main common ground I hear is fear, both from those who are frustrated that SEC has not spoken out about developments since January and wary of the consequences of silence; and those who want to speak out but fear that doing so will simply serve to make a dire situation worse. I am calling out this common element of fear in hopes of diminishing its role in informing our deliberations, but also in the hopes that we can move through it.

I want to affirm that I will be instructed by you and that I am committed to learning from you in order to better represent the faculty’s interests. Here is what this means in practical terms:

• The incoming chair of the Faculty Senate normally begins the summer of her term with a series of meetings with Deans and administrators. I prefer to devote my time and energy to talking with you, the faculty. If you tell me that you want me to meet with your Dean, I will do so. But I also want to meet with you and anyone else in your constituency who you tell me to meet.
• I have cleared my summer to hear from you directly. Email me to arrange a phone call, Zoom, or in-person meeting. If you wish to convey sensitive content over electronic media, please contact me on Signal. I will begin these meetings on June 12 for the duration of my term as chair.
• I need you—all of you. Give me your best thinking about how SEC can become more robust, how it can expand its practices from its main modes of communication: Tri-chair meetings with the President and Provost, committee reports published annually in Almanac, and Senate resolutions. Some other possible actions to consider:
  • Writing a faculty impact statement testifying to how the political attacks and funding freezes and cuts have affected our core missions;
  • Writing op-eds as individuals or small groups;
  • Holding Quaker-style meetings to share testimony about our experiences over the last several months so that we feel less siloed in our particular circumstances;
  • Soliciting an SEC report on how shared governance works at other institutions; and/or
  • Crafting a new resolution or open letter to the Penn community.

I am open to many possibilities going forward. My commitments are to process and the goals of strengthening the faculty arm of shared governance, not to any one proposed action. I do insist that we discuss our decisions openly, with a collective commitment to the process, rather than resort to back channels or opting out.

I am honored to serve the Faculty Senate alongside my fellow tri-chairs, Eric and Roy [Hamilton], and I am ready to do so.

—Kathleen Brown, David Boies Professor of History