There's a very particular feeling in your emails
One of the English department’s truly pointless conflicts concerned a legal question. Was the process of mediation voluntary or compulsory?
The conflict started when I wrote a short note to announce to my colleagues that they would soon receive an email from the department’s mediator.
Subject: Mediation for the English department
Hello everyone
I just met with [. . .,] the mediator who will work with the English department. She will be contacting you soon to set up individual meetings, so please be on the lookout for an email from her. She asked me to let you know that the process is completely voluntary; your participation is entirely up to you.
Best wishes
Aaron
I relayed the announcement that participation in mediation was “completely voluntary” with compunction, because it seemed to me that I had been aggressively promoting mediation for the past few weeks. When people came to me with new problems, my standard reply was that I did not want to have a discussion without a mediator present. I begged Professor Jane, who was on sabbatical, and the department secretary, who really did not want to increase the amount of time that she spent in the company of the faculty, to meet with the mediator at least once. At every opportunity, I encouraged my colleagues to participate in mediation. If they had gotten the impression that mediation was compulsory, I thought, it might be my fault.
Professor Herman was suspicious of the statement that participation in mediation was voluntary. To her this sounded like “spurious process,” as she later wrote to the dean. To the department she wrote:
I’d confirm that with a dean first before deciding that was actually the case.
[Herman]
Professor Toni chimed in:
This needs to be verified. Not at all the case according to what the dean has said concerning mediation.
[Toni]
In my reply, I used irony.
The phrase “completely voluntary” is quoted verbatim from [the mediator]. Since she is mediating for us, I’m taking her word for it.
Here is [the diversity officer’s] endorsement of [the mediator]: “[The mediator] has worked with the college on a couple of similar departmental concerns, and she is OUTSTANDING!”
It is of course possible that I have misunderstood the phrase “completely voluntary.” If you wish, please feel free to confirm with the dean’s office and with [the mediator] (when you hear from her).
Aaron
When I invited my colleagues to talk with the dean, I mainly intended to convey that I was not going to do it myself. I was satisfied with what the mediator had told me, and I saw no reason to ask the dean about it. When I suggested that I might have made a mistake about the meaning of the phrase “completely voluntary,” I was being sarcastic. The meaning of those words seemed clear to me.
Toni felt that my reply was unprofessional. I’m not sure whether the offending feature of my reply was the sarcastic tone or the fact that I contradicted her. She replied by asserting her rank as the “senior faculty person in the department”:
First of all (again), nobody needs your permission to speak with the dean, and [the mediator] works for the dean so I assume the dean will clear this up.
A reminder: I’m your senior faculty person in this department and you will address me in these public emails as though you have some sense of appropriate professional boundaries.
[Toni]
Toni was indeed the senior professor in the department. She was a full professor, whereas I was an associate professor. When I went up for promotion, she would be one of the four members of the department who voted on my case and represented it to the Faculty Personnel Committee. She was now reminding me of her rank in order to “indicate how she wanted to be addressed,” as the associate dean might put it, and pressure me to address her that way (although exactly what she wanted to hear was uncertain).
Toni’s reply sent some ripples through the department. Everyone understood that she was using her rank to intimidate. No one replied directly to her email, but I immediately received sympathetic emails and texts from four of my colleagues, two of whom encouraged me to file a complaint with HR. Nothing remarkable was said in these exchanges. I am reproducing two of them here because they are a representative sample of the tone of private conversations in an atmosphere of self-censorship.
Professor Mary: Hi Aaron. It’s [Mary]. Just dropping in to see how you are. I have other thoughts, too, better shared in person. I have some experience with HR, just FYI.
Aaron: Thanks. I’m fine. Maybe we can talk after the shaping dialogue thing tomorrow.
Mary: Indeed. Shaping dialogue.
Professor Edmund: I am thinking of replying to the most recent emails with the request that the mediator be cc’d on all subsequent group emails to the department. Is that okay with you, though?
Aaron: It’s up to you. The mediator isn’t a judge; she’s really just there to help us talk to one another. Anyway, thanks.
Edmund: Ugh.
Aaron: But I like the mediator! She’s a lawyer and a former law professor. I think she might help.
Aaron: But she isn’t going to drop the hammer on someone’s disrespectful emails.
Edmund: Oh good! I hope so. It’s more like I want her looped in. Also: print out this particular email thread. It’s one for the records!
Aaron: Yeah.
It was now my job to inform the mediator that the rollout of mediation had been bumpy. I forwarded the email thread with the following comment:
My announcement yesterday was not well received. A fair sample of communication within the English department this past month.
Best wishes
Aaron
The mediator’s response surprised me. She seemed to think there was something wrong with my initial email in which I announced to my colleagues that she would be contacting them. Or maybe she didn’t think there was anything wrong with my email, exactly, but she thought that a bad response could have been avoided if I had chosen my words more carefully. Or maybe she thought that it would be useful for me to approach writing emails with this question in mind: how can I write this email so as to avoid a bad response? In any case, she composed a new email on my behalf and asked if I wanted to send it to the department.
Hello Aaron,
I should have had you send me a draft first. Mediation as a process is voluntary and I cannot compel anyone to speak with me.
I think as Chair, it may read like you don’t support it. Some may infer “do what you want” which I know is not your intention.
You had mentioned you would really encourage people to attend, but you may have just been referring to those on leave.
I know you are in a tough spot so I want to provide some options.
1. I can draft an email and you can send it to the department.
2. As a path forward, you can send a follow up email. It can read like this.
Dear all,
I want to send this note as a follow up to my email yesterday. My goal was to notify you that [the mediator] was the mediator the Dean’s Office assigned to assist our department in moving forward. I did not want you to receive an email from her without letting everyone know first.
I understand no one needs my permission to speak with [the mediator]. In speaking with [the mediator] she shared mediation is a voluntary process. She cannot compel people to speak with her, nor govern what they share. The success is based on everyone’s desire to improve their experience in the workplace.
I see that my email may have read as a lack of support, which is not true. On the contrary, I highly encourage everyone to participate and see this opportunity as a path forward.
Sincerely,
Aaron
Does this feel ok to you? If not, just let me know.
[Mediator]
I thanked the mediator and asked her to write the note on her own behalf.
Thanks [Mediator]. I think it might be better for you to write an email and I’ll forward it to the department. Most communications from me are going to be met with some hostility. And I’m feeling a bit defensive.
Aaron
The mediator rewrote the email in her own voice and sent it to the department, patiently explaining what it meant to say that participation in mediation was voluntary. She also tried to make the process sound appealing.
I believe there may be a need for clarification so this note is written in that regard. In speaking with Aaron I shared mediation is a voluntary process. I cannot compel people to speak with me, nor govern what they share. The success is based on everyone’s desire to improve their experience in the workplace.
The mediator’s offer to write my email gave me pause. I didn’t like the idea of putting my name on a text written by someone else.
There was something else that I didn’t like, but at first I didn’t know what it was. Only after working with the mediator for five months did I start to see it clearly. During that time, she composed several emails that she encouraged me to send to the department in my own name, and offered numerous suggestions for revisions in my drafts (some of which I incorporated into actual emails). Finally I asked her to stop. The problem wasn’t just that I wanted to speak for myself (although that was part of it). The problem was that I didn’t want to inspect my own emails for the cause of the deranged responses of my colleagues. That was a pathological tendency I wanted to avoid. I saw that I could derange myself that way.
When I asked the mediator to stop trying to write my emails, she said something interesting. “There’s a very particular feeling in your emails.” She didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I kind of took it as one. Her tone sounded wistful.
Did she mean that she detected irony in my emails? I don’t think so. I think she was responding to something that wasn’t there. Not a feature but an absence. There’s a list of words that everyone at my school knows to use in official communications. It’s a language that is supposed to sound aspirational and moralistic, and, since everyone uses it, one might credibly call it a language of professionalism. It has nothing to do with morality -- to call it by that name would be a mistake. I despise that language, and, where possible, I consciously avoid saying the words.
After the mediator wrote to the department to confirm, gently, that mediation was voluntary, Herman and Toni complained to the dean’s office. They demanded a different mediator. “Still time for a new mediator,” Toni suggested cheerily. They demanded that I be replaced (Toni: “I need you to replace Aaron Kunin”) by an outside chair.
(In other words, no conceivable replacement could come from within the department. Although she was the senior professor, and although she had never chaired, Toni was not offering to take on the task of chairing herself, and she knew that no one else in the department would be foolish enough to try it.)
Herman complained that the process of mediation was “spurious”: “Given my complete lack of confidence in the current chair, including his chair’s propensity for using fictional niceties of made-up process to undermine and attack both myself and [Toni], I’d like to be assured that something spurious isn’t going on.”
My favorite colleague is Herman (of course), but Toni writes the best emails. Here is one of her emails to the dean’s office from the summer of 2019, in which she complains that I was coopting the mediator to “chastise” her and Herman.
Good morning [Associate Dean] and [Herman],
Thanks for writing, [Herman]; I agree. I haven’t had a single word from [the mediator] other than having the chair use her emails to him to chastise [Herman] and myself. I have no confidence in the chair’s ability to reasonably lead the English Department. At this point I want transparency around the mediation, a timeline, and to know there will be a detailed action plan and accountability going forward. I want an outside chair appointed so the department has a chair and actual rules that apply to everyone equally instead of an autocratic viper in charge who is using ad hoc policy to attack me. I also don’t care if the chair knows what his managerial style feels like to me or others -- it’s way past what he understands or doesn’t. He is blocking me from doing my job and this interferes directly with my work both as a faculty member and as a scholar who is entitled to be supported by the college and its officers and resources. It is also a source of constant stress and conflict, and I will not be complicit with having the situation he has created damage my health. I want to simply be permitted to do my work without being hyperscrutinized, prodded, dissected and otherwise harassed.
Considering that Dr. [Mediator] (she does have a PhD, right?) is being brought on to facilitate communication this is not inspiring me to trust her going forward. The “process” looks like windowdressing at this point. What even is the goal of the mediation? I have no idea what she’s doing or why. Why are we having to signal for her to be asked to do her job when presumably she’s the one getting paid to know how to do this and has done it already?
I am now and will be for the foreseeable future walking into a hostile workplace. As far as I can tell the chair is being allowed to continue his malice masked as policy and has coopted the mediation to serve his agenda.
Bests,
[Toni]
In the dean’s office during this period, they were putting their heads together to figure out how to support the unreasonable demand from Herman and Toni that mediation be made compulsory for the English department. The associate deans had some sympathy for this demand. They really wanted the English faculty to meet with the mediator, and, if force had been an option, they would have been happy to use force to make it happen. “My sense,” wrote the diversity officer, “is that we really mean to make it mandatory (without using that specific language of course).”
In the email they sent to the English department to clarify the mediator’s clarification of my original email, they settled on using words like “expect” and “encourage.” Mediation was voluntary, but nonetheless “it is our expectation that all members of the department will participate with good will and agree to meet with [the mediator],” and “we encourage you to respond to [the mediator’s] email and make plans to talk to her.”
Despite these attempts at clarification, people who worked in the English department consulted their own interests when the mediator invited them to meet. Professor Jane and the department secretary never met with the mediator, in spite of my begging, and in spite of the encouragement of the associate deans. Herman and Toni stopped attending department meetings for a while after September 11, when I said “please” to Herman, and we have barely spoken since then. Later, when the mediator tried to set up a meeting for me to discuss some issues with Herman and Toni, they declined. We never used a process of mediation to work through our conflicts.