Northwestern Professor Emeritus Irwin Weil knows conflict resolution. Nearly 20 years ago, he watched the Soviet Union collapse while teaching abroad there. At that time, he said, he engaged himself in an effort to bring American and Russian students together to dialogue and learn from one another.
Weil, who taught in the Slavic languages and literatures department, will now have the opportunity to facilitate conflict resolution closer to home as one of three faculty members recently appointed to the University’s new ombudsman program.
Neena Schwartz and Al Farbman, both Professor Emeriti of neurbiology and physiology, will serve as the other two ombuds.
An ombudsman, generally speaking, is an official appointed as a third-party to investigate individuals’ complaints. Corporations, local governments, newspapers and universities alike utilize ombuds for some sort of mediation. NU’s faculty ombuds will act as intermediaries between faculty members and the administration.
The ombuds program is the result of a recommendation by the University’s General Faculty Committee, an arm of the University Senate, composed of elected representatives from all the University schools. The program is one way NU is working to adopt a shared governance model, which will allocate more power to the faculty, said Feinberg Prof. Laurie Zoloth, a past chair of the General Faculty Committee who was integral in pushing the initiative through.
“We looked at sister universities to see how faculty and administrators work together to create great universities,” Zoloth said.
Provost Daniel Linzer, who was among the senior administrators that approved the General Faculty Committee’s recommendation for the program, said the ombuds will provide a discreet outlet for the vetting of faculty concerns.
“(It will) give faculty an opportunity to speak to someone who is wise in the ways of the University without it being a threatening conversation in any way,” Linzer said.
The ombuds officially took up their new roles last week and are already fielding a variety of faculty issues, Farbman said. One situation they dealt with involved a faculty member who was having issues getting another employee fired for inadequate job performance, while another was a sexual harassment complaint.
Ombuds, Farbman made clear, cannot deal directly with all issues, including sexual harrassment and tenure.
“The role is very limited,” he said, “to help the person who has the problem find an answer.”
Linzer also emphasized the University can’t do anything about a problem unless the ombudsman deliberately seeks out the proper official after receiving a faculty complaint.
“One of the things you have to be careful with,” he said, “is that you are not bringing it to the administration, so the University doesn’t hear about it because it is a safe conversation.”
Despite the involvement of an ombudsman, many of these conflicts will still take significant amounts of time to work out, according to Weil.
There will more than likely be rights and wrongs on both sides, he said.
“I’m not trying to indicate I have a kind of magic wand,” Weil said. “I don’t. I’ve seen the results of revolution and, believe me, they’re not pleasing.”
