Monthly Archives: February 2013

A Postscript from Another Perspective

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I kept thinking about my earlier post after I finished it, revisiting it because something about it bothered me, and after a lot of thought I finally figured out what it was. I think my argument about how academia regards scholarly publishers and journals as signs of quality is more or less correct. What bothers me is that in my relatively dispassionate analysis I gave no clue as to how much the situation disappoints me.

Academics use publishers as status indicators without necessarily considering the quality of the publications, just as they use schools, programs, and degrees as status indicators regardless of the quality of the individual scholar. I once heard a prominent scholar mocked (not to his or her face) for having a PhD from a state university. A professor I knew once compared two academics meeting for the first time to two dogs sniffing each other’s butts. Sniff, sniff, oooh, a Harvard PhD. Sniff Sniff, a book from OUP. Granted this isn’t necessarily what happens in the scholarship itself, where superficial stereotypes might give way to consideration of merit in other’s works.

Librarians usually lack the status consideration of professors, at least about some things. As long as an MLS is accredited, few people care what university it’s from, unlike academics considering the origin of PhDs. Some librarians have institutional status anxiety, I guess. I was talking with another philosophy librarian from a university library in the south. He joked that some of his colleagues might see the “Princeton University” on my badge and think, “hey, you could probably come down here and run our jerkwater library.” Trust me, I couldn’t. But I’ve served on numerous ALA committees with librarians from all sorts of libraries, large and small, academic and public, and I’ve never noticed anyone responding to anything other than the quality of their participation, not what employer is on their badge or where they got their MLS from.

However, libraries have pretty much given up control over the quality of their collections.  It’s worst with scholarly journals, i think. As the Big Deals have squeezed out so many choices, librarians have had to give up a lot of that control. We don’t really select many journals anymore, and those we do select we don’t really own. With approval plans, especially in larger libraries, we do relatively little of the individual selection, relying upon vendors to pick and choose for us and send things to us. There are obvious reasons our selection of books and journals must be this way, but we’ve still given up so much control.

Dissatisfaction and unhappiness often come because people can’t reconcile their expectations of reality with reality itself. I try to take things as they are when nothing can be changed and avoid that fate. Thus, I might accept libraries giving up control over their collections or the fact that academics and librarians often make judgments based on superficial signs because there’s nothing I can do about it. But I don’t have to like it or try to justify it. I thought about just deleting the post and starting over. Instead, consider this a postscript.

Signs Taken for Wonders

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Reading through some of the commentary on the Mellen/Askey case, I ran across a comment from the ACRL Board of Directors’ statement of support for Askey:

I find this whole debate to be nuts. Every book is a unique product. Some are good and some are poor. The actual publisher is no indication of quality. Every book needs to be judged on its individual merits. I know of some excellent books published by EMP which have had excellent reviews in leading scholarly journals.

The person who left it obviously wanted the point more broadly known, because he left the same comment at Slaw and Annoyed Librarian. In response to a critical comment on the latter post, the person claims to be an academic who has published with Edwin Mellen, which would make his sensitivity to Askey’s criticisms and librarian support for Askey understandable.

Regardless of who this person is, we can look past the biography and examine the claim on its own merits, just as he would have us do with books. That “every book needs to be judged on its individual merits” seems so obvious as not to need defending. Just as we say one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we shouldn’t judge a book by its publisher, and in an ideal world we might not. Ideally, we wouldn’t take the signs of quality for the wonder of true quality.

However, to say that “the actual publisher is no indication of quality” requires some argument, because anyone who knows how academia and scholarly publishing work would be unlikely to agree with this immediately. The actual publisher might not be proof of quality, but it is certainly an indication of the quality we are likely to expect from the book, and everyone in academia, from graduate students to faculty to librarians, knows it. If you tell an academic you published a book, the first question is often, “which press?” It matters, and everyone knows it matters. At a university like mine, filled with top scholars in every field, the expectation is that they will publish with the top presses. We see evidence of this in the Leiter Reports post that inadvertently led to the now viral campaign to free Dale Askey. That reports the result of a survey among academic philosophers as to how they would rank scholarly presses. Oxford is the first by a wide margin. In the full survey, Edwin Mellen Press is last by a similarly wide margin. “34. Edwin Mellen Press loses to Oxford University Press by 407–1, loses to Peter Lang by 73–39.” In academic philosophy, there is no doubt that a book from Oxford or Cambridge would automatically get more respect than a book from Lang or Mellen.

There are numerous reasons for this expectation, perhaps not all of them fair. Over time one can see that the recognized top scholars in that field tend to publish at the top-ranked presses. Also over time, the quality of the books generally coming out of the presses builds the expectation that if a book comes from OUP, it’s probably good of its kind. That could be an unfair assumption, and I can think of one recent philosophy book from OUP that has come in for some serious criticism from numerous reviewers. That book, though, is published by someone who is outstanding in his field and has published numerous high-quality works in the past, so even if it isn’t good (and I haven’t read it so have no opinion), people would expect it to be of high quality.

Which brings us to another sign of possible quality, the reputation of the scholar in addition to the reputation of the press. The top scholars and researchers in any field generally gravitate to the top-ranked presses and journals for their field, but they might very well publish with a less respected or even unknown publisher and their name would still be an indicator of what to expect. What’s more, there are good reasons sometimes for scholars to do this. An argument I’ve read regarding publishers like Mellen, and that I have no reason to disbelieve, is that they might be more willing to accept work that is pushing the boundaries of the discipline in ways that make mainstream scholars uncomfortable, and thus make the likelihood of publication with the top publishers in their field less likely.

The reputation of a press or journal or scholar developed over time are signs of quality, and it might be unfair to consider them as wonders of genuine worth. That reputations are indeed developed over time is a good reason to take the signs for wonders, though, even if it turns out the signs sometime mislead. We see the process at work very concretely with scientific journals as well, where instead of informal polls or blog posts, we have things like impact factors that are supposed to judge the relative impact of the journals, and which are judgments that librarians and researchers take seriously when deciding what to purchase, where to publish, or what counts for tenure. How often things are cited is another sign of their relative quality, and one that it makes sense to take seriously, even if “high impact” journals might occasionally publish awful articles and even if journals no one reads or cites publish the occasional gem. And the researchers who publish lots of articles in high-impact journals are more likely to get tenure than the ones that publish in low-impact ones.

That’s the argument for why it makes sense to take signs for wonders, even if the signs are sometimes wrong. It’s not perfect, and it’s not always fair, but generally it works.

However, it doesn’t really matter if it works, because it’s what all academics do anyway. Academia fetishizes signs and takes them for wonders. We’ve seen how it works with presses and journals, but it works with everything. Consider the rankings of universities and colleges, or the academic programs within those colleges. The US News and World Report rankings are notoriously used as signs of relative quality among schools, with thousands of students applying to schools merely because of their high rank. The lower-ranked schools sometimes complain about the rankings and their flaws, and they’re right. But that’s the way it works.

The same philosopher who conducted the survey for philosophy publishers also surveys philosophers on philosophical graduate programs for the Philosophical Gourmet. If you got a PhD from the programs at the top of that list, you’d be more likely to get a tenure track job at a good college or university than from programs at the bottom, or that didn’t make the list at all. Why? For one thing, when search committees are looking through huge stacks of applications, where candidates got their graduate degrees is going to be a way of weeding them. Is that fair to the brilliant candidate from the University of Nebraska who is competing against candidates from NYU, Rutgers, Princeton, and Harvard? For that matter, is it fair that New York investment bankers would rather have graduates from Princeton than the College of New Jersey? No. But that’s the way it works, and everyone knows it.

Or consider the very existence of the PhD. The PhD is a research degree that over the decades has become a prerequisite for academic positions for which little to no research is expected, from teaching at small colleges to academic administration positions. PhDs usually aren’t required for librarian positions, but they’re often still considered a sign of some kind of quality, and candidates with them will have a leg up even if they are otherwise thoroughly mediocre. For the non-research positions, the reputation of the graduate program often doesn’t even matter. The PhD from anywhere is a sign.

So there are good reasons why we might take signs for wonders and the practical reality that we do in fact do this all the time in academia. For libraries in particular, there might not be anything else we can do. Tenure and search committees might be able to read all the publications of a candidate up for review, even though they might also just rely on the reputations of the publishers and journals as a sign of quality. But librarians can’t read all books they buy, especially in larger libraries. I might firm order several hundred philosophy and religion books a year, with hundreds or even thousands more coming in on approval. Other than by direct request, there’s no way other than signs of possible quality for me to set up approval profiles or firm order books en masse. To say that presses can’t be judged on their reputations or that each book should be judged on its own merits, is, from the standpoint of library collection development, naive, just as it is from the standpoint of who gets hired, promoted, and tenured.

The unpleasant truth is that the phenomenon I’ve been describing isn’t just how academia works, it’s how everything works. People want themselves and their publications to be judged on their inherent qualities, but the overwhelming amount of judgment people receive is based on external factors. Where you live, where you work, what you do, where or if you went to school, how you dress, how you talk, what kind of car you drive, and where or if you publish: the majority of people judge you by these signs regardless of what they reveal about your “true” self and its quality. Sometimes that’s the only thing they can do.

[Update: a Postscript to this post.

Edwin Mellen Press Suing a Librarian?

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[Update from Leiter: a statement from McMaster and a petition for Mellen to drop the lawsuit.]

Edwin Mellen Press is suing Dale Askey–a McMaster University librarian–and McMaster University for “$3.0 million dollars as damages for defamation arising from continuous publication on the World Wide web by the defendant Askey.” The alleged defamation occurred in a 2010 blog post Askey–an American citizen–wrote when he was a librarian at Kansas State University. The contents of the action (including the original blog post) are available here. Regardless of the outcome of the case, academic librarians should consider the implications of this lawsuit and its potential attack on academic freedom and the public expression of professional opinions on relevant subjects. Information about previous and potential Mellen lawsuits are below.

[Note: the above is the latest update. Normally I don’t revise posts, but as I want to publicize this case and this is the post getting the traffic, I wanted to be clearer and put to rest the questions I had when writing the original post below. The questions were answered very quickly.

[Update, more coverage from Inside Higher Education. The notice of action is dated June 7, 2012. After 8 months of silence, it’s good this is finally being publicized. And a discussion of the IHE article on Gawker. And from the Chronicle of Higher Education. And from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.]

[Update: the lawsuit seems to be real. Here is the notice of action by Mellen Press against Askey and McMaster, sent to me by Les Green of Oxford U.]

I put the title in question marks because I have no details of any such lawsuit, but allegedly Mellen Press is suing an academic librarian at McMaster University for giving a low professional opinion of Mellen’s offerings. The claim came in comment on this Leiter Reports post reporting on a survey of philosophers about the best philosophy publishers (where, incidentally, Mellen finished 34th out of 34). Leiter brought the comment up to the top in this post: Shocking attack on academic freedom at McMaster by Edwin Mellen Press? (Note the question mark.)  Here’s the comment in full, from a philosopher at Oxford:

The Edwin Mellen Press may well, as this survey suggests, have the worst quality philosophy list but it tops the league in disgraceful conduct in defense of its dismal reputation.

A professional librarian at McMaster University’s library complained, in a 2010 blog-post, that Mellen was a poor publisher with a weak list of low-quality books, scarcely edited, cheaply produced, but at exorbitant prices. Librarians are expert at making such judgments; that’s what universities pay them to do. And the post made a key point about the public interest: ‘in a time when libraries cannot purchase so much of the first-class scholarship, there is simply no reason to support such ventures.’

No one likes bad reviews; but Mellen’s approach is not to disprove the assessment, pledge to improve its quality, or reconsider its business-model. It is to slam McMaster University and its librarian with a three million dollar lawsuit in the Ontario Superior Court, alleging libel and claiming massive aggravated and exemplary damages. The matter is pending.

The lawsuit is threadbare. With respect to the parts of Mellen’s list with which I am familiar, the librarian’s statements noted above are all true and the quality judgments are correct. (And this survey suggests that would be a common assessment.) Moreover, on the facts in this situation, it is obviously fair comment, and public policy considerations strongly suggest that university librarians enjoy a qualified privilege with respect to their assessments of the quality of the books they consider buying for their universities. It would be a disaster for universities, students, researchers and the taxpayer if aggrieved publishers were permitted to silence discussions of the quality of their publications by threats of lawsuit.

McMaster University’s response to this appalling tactic has been surprising. Public silence. No one at McMaster has spoken in defense of the librarian or the University; no University administrator has pushed back against the crude threat to academic freedom that this represents. (But then the President of McMaster’s list of the seven ‘McMaster Principles’ omits mention of academic freedom.) Are the McMaster faculty, administration, and faculty associations already so cowed by libel-chill that they are afraid to speak up? Or are they unaware of Mellen’s attack? Or—and this is just as worrying—is it that McMaster values its professional librarians so little that it is willing to let them bear the brunt of such harassment, so long as the University itself can avoid vicarious liability?

Let’s hope someone at McMaster forcefully says ‘enough’ to this sort of bullying. Universities have a negative duty not to abridge the academic freedom of their members; they also have a positive duty to see to it that others do not do it either.

I vaguely remember reading a blog post like that and thinking it uncontroversial, if perhaps a bit sweeping. Librarians have opinions about various presses based on long exposure to their publications. Most academic collection development librarians have opinions on way or the other about numerous publishers, and if pressed they could probably present evidence to support those opinions, because professional opinions don’t form in a vacuum. Regardless, suing a librarian for expressing such a professional opinion seems like an unusual tactic for a scholarly publisher, and the kind of thing that librarians, who probably buy the most Mellen Press books, probably won’t like.

There is a history of this kind of thing. In 1993 Mellen Press sued the greatest magazine of academic intellectual life that ever existed, Lingua Franca, over an article that “referred to the Edwin Mellen Press as “a quasi-vanity press cunningly disguised as an academic publishing house.” (St. John, Warren. 1993. “Vanity’s Fare: How One Tiny Press Made $2.5 Million Selling Opuscules to Your University Library.” Lingua Franca, September/October, p. 1ff. See note 8 here.) They lost. As a mirror site for some old LF content states:

OFFENDED VANITY
Warren St. John deems Edwin Mellen Press a vanity publisher capitalizing on the desperation of credential-hungry academics. St. John also finds that the Press’s offshore adjunct, Mellen University,* is little more than a diploma mill. After the exposé, Mellen chief Herbert Richardson, a former University of Toronto religion professor, accuses LF of libel and sues for $15 million. He loses. In September 1994, St. Michael’s College, where Richardson holds tenure, dismisses him for “gross misconduct.”
There is a book about the case. I haven’t looked at the book, but was actually impressed by the publisher: Reid, Paul H., Jr. 2006. The Edwin Mellen Press Versus Lingua Franca: A Case Study in the Law of Libel. Queenston, Ontario: Edwin Mellen Press. [Update: I skimmed through the book, which is by the lawyer who tried and lost the case in a United States court. Near the end, the author acknowledges that American libel laws are very stringent, and that if they had this to do over again, they would have sued Lingua Franca in British court, as British libel laws are much looser than American. I don’t know whether Canadian laws are closer to British or American models.]
More lawsuits might be on the way. This is from a discussion forum at the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Re: Edward [sic] Mellen Press–Any insights?
« Reply #16 on: January 21, 2011, 02:04:48 PM »
I wasn’t sure which of the Mellen threads to use for this post, but this seemed like a decent option. I just received a letter from Edwin Mellen in relation to a conference I attended several years ago. Apparently, there was a session on academic publishing at this conference, and one of the panelists (according to this letter) discussed publishers, mentioning Mellen as one publisher to avoid because their books won’t count towards tenure. (Note that I didn’t actually attend this session or appear on the panel.) This letter is asking for “memories” of what this individual said on this panel about Mellen so that they can “seek adjudication” – I’m assuming that means legal action? I’m rather horrified by this.
If these reports are true, the Mellen Press is suing a librarian for claiming the press has a “weak list of low quality books” and trying to sue (presumably) a professor for opining that Mellen books wouldn’t count towards tenure. But are they true? I don’t know what to say. If the reports are true, it does seem that there’s a lawsuit designed to repress the academic freedom of a librarian expressing a professional opinion. And if so, it’s one of the rare cases that illustrate why even academic librarians need their academic freedom protected. If anyone can give more details one way or the other, please do so in the comments.
*The “offshore adjunct, Mellen University” apparently used to exist. Here’s about all I could find online about it. It’s worth a read.

How to Chair an ALA Committee Meeting

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Although I haven’t the decades of experience of some librarians, I have recently returned from my 26th ALA Midwinter or Annual in a row and have been a member or chair of one or more committees since my first ALA attendance. I’ve been a member of committees at the ALA level and the ACRL section level, and a chair and member of committees at the RUSA division and section level. In that time, I’ve been to a lot of bad meetings and many good ones. I think I can say without too much immodesty that most of the meetings that I’ve chaired have been better than average, at least if the goal is to get the most amount of work with the least amount of time spent. And if that’s not the goal of meetings, then why have them? Below are some tips that I offer freely to anyone who will be chairing a committee meeting at ALA, especially any meeting I’ll be attending.

Remember the Chair is in Charge

The committee chair is in charge, period. Everyone should participate and have a say. Decisions should be the result of group deliberation. But if something derails the meeting, it’s the chair’s job to get it back on track, even if that means being blunt or forceful. The committee is there to get work done, and anything that takes away from that needs to be dealt with. When disorder reigns, people look to the chair to bring things back to order. Don’t let them down. The chair can keep charge of the meeting while still being polite, considerate, and even amusing. While it might seem rude to stop timewasters and squeaky wheels, it’s actually rude to everyone else not to. Members can get away with just showing up, but chairs have to work, and if you can’t do the work, don’t take on the job.

Do Everything Virtually That You Can

This might seem obvious, but the pattern of work of some librarians hasn’t progressed along with the technological capacity for virtual work. Based on my experience, the old norm was for long, multiple face to face meetings, because it was much harder to do group work at a distance. Email has modified that considerably, and tools like ALA Connect and Blackboard Collaborate finish the job. If it doesn’t need some extended discussion, then it can be handled virtually. I once took over a committee that had been meeting twice for a total of 4.5 hours over the course of a conference. I streamlined it to 1 meeting of 1.5 hours and got just as much work done, because everything that could be handled virtually was, and by the time we got face to face we had to deal only with the stuff that required a meeting.

Give the Committee a Structure

Again, it seems like an obvious point, but it’s not. Librarians tend to be nice, democratic people. They want to solicit opinions, gather viewpoints, and then consider acting at some time in the future. But as a volunteer organization, most librarians don’t want or have time to think a lot about the work of a committee until they absolutely have to. They typically won’t respond to general questions like, “tell me what you think.” Instead, don’t ask them what they think; give them something to think about. If the committee needs to come up with a plan, give the committee a plan. If it needs to review a document, review it and submit your suggested revisions. If it needs to create a document, then provide a possible outline. If the committee is between projects, don’t just ask people what the committee should do next. Give them concrete suggestions to consider along with a request for further suggestions.  Then give people the options: adopt this, critique it so that it can be improved, or ignore it and propose your own alternative. Make it clear that you have no personal investment either way. Chances are, they’ll choose the middle option, which will give the committee something detailed to work on. Sometimes it’s just adopted. And then every once in a while someone actually proposes an improved alternative. So much the better. Everyone gets a say, but people are more likely to speak if they have something in front of them to critique.

Give the Committee a Deadline

Again, because of the volunteer nature, librarians are prone to procrastination regarding committee work. So, along with the structure, provide a deadline. Something like this usually works (although fleshed out more to sound less brusque): “Here is a possible plan/revision/document that moves us along on the project we’re working on. Please adopt it, critique it, or provide an alternative by one month from today. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you approve.” That last bit is crucial. Always take their silence for assent. If they know this, those who care will respond, and those who don’t care won’t feel bad for not responding, and you won’t feel bad for ignoring them later if 6 months down the line they don’t like something. People will usually respond, often enough with good criticisms of the proposal. Those who don’t respond had their chance, and everyone knows it.

Call for Agenda Items

Agenda items should require in-person discussion and action. Calling for them includes everyone in the discussion. This is important both to be courteous of the committee members as well as to give teeth to the agenda later if you need to deal with timewasters (see below).

Create an Agenda

Regardless of whether anyone submits anything, create an agenda. If you can’t come up with any agenda items that require in-person discussion or action, then you should cancel the meeting. Avoid announcements or anything that could just as easily be handled in an email.

Send out Documentation Well in Advance 

Any documentation that’s necessary to understand the agenda items or prepare people for action should be sent out well in advance. A month is a good lead time, because it lets you wait to set the agenda, but gives people ample time to read the documentation. Announce that the documentation needs to be read in advance of the meeting. There are two typical failures here. Sometimes the chair sends out documentation at the last minute, and by last minute I really mean anytime in the week leading up to the meeting. The week before a conference is almost busier than the conference itself. If you send it out that close to the meeting, there’s a good chance it won’t be read, and it’ll be your fault. The other failure is people not reading things even if sent a month in advance. That’s too bad for them, because the meeting isn’t the place to be reading or going over background documentation. Don’t let it devolve into that. The absolute worst thing to do is to bring documentation to the meeting that no one has seen before and then ask people to read and react to it. Save that discussion for another meeting unless it’s an emergency, and really, how many ALA emergencies are there.

Start on Time

Time is increasingly precious at ALA. Also, anyone who is late to a meeting (barring some sort of emergency or alternate commitments) is being discourteous to those who showed up on time. Don’t do a further discourtesy to those people by saying, “let’s wait another ten minutes to see if more people show up.” Unless you have rules about quorums for votes, then who shows up shows up, and start on time. Since you never know why people are late, don’t draw attention to them when they come in after you’ve started. At a minimum, you could just announce, “we’re on agenda item X and the question under discussion is Y,” and then proceed as if they’d been there all along. Given the tightness of the schedule, they probably had to attend another meeting simultaneously anyway.

Stick to the Agenda

After you start, stick to the agenda. You might move things around depending on events, you might even drop something, but don’t add anything or allow for irrelevant discussions until you get through the agenda. People know the time and plan in advance, and respect them enough to stick to it. Focus, focus, focus.

Don’t Talk Too Much

By the time the meeting has started, you’ve sent out documentation well in advance, called for agenda items, sent out the completed agenda, and prepared everyone to discuss and act on the agenda items. You’ve done the bulk of your communicating. The meeting is the time for the members to communicate with each other regarding the agenda items. After introductions, move to the first agenda item and ask an appropriate leading question. Don’t give long speeches about it. Don’t try to fill up dead air if no one speaks immediately. The longer you talk, the less they will. So state the question, ask for discussion, then shut up. Your job now is to guide the group through the agenda and make sure action is taken.

Deter or Defer the Timewasters

Timewasting is relative. In this case, it’s anything that’s not on the agenda or relevant to the discussion at hand. Whether you deter or defer depends on the importance of the timewaster’s point. Committees need to get the work of the agenda done. That’s what meetings are for. Some people like to spend time whining or complaining about the organization, or its members, or something else. That’s what bars are for. Don’t confuse the two. If someone brings up an irrelevant and unimportant issue, acknowledge it but then say we have to move on and we can possibly discuss that after we’ve completed the business at hand, by which time everyone will have forgotten about it.

However, sometimes people bring up important issues that just aren’t relevant to the business at hand. They should be deferred, not deterred. For example, I recall a meeting where the discussion went something like this:

“But I thought Important but Currently Irrelevant Question A was decided in Manner B by Organization C.”

“No, it wasn’t,” reply multiple respondents.

“But I thought it was.”

And so on for several rounds, frustrating everyone. Instead of letting that kind of thing take away from meeting time, a good response might be: “No, I don’t think it was, but that’s an important question, even though it’s not directly relevant to the work we need to do right now. However, because it’s an important issue, after the meeting I will consult with Organization C to make sure what actually happened and will communicate the results to the committee. Perhaps that is something we can take up at a later time.” With this response, the agitated timewaster is recognized as a person with a worthwhile point, is provided an explanation of why that point won’t be addressed at the moment, and is promised further action to follow up and to possibly address the point in more detail later on. (And do the following up; don’t be lazy.) Recognition, explanation, promise of activity. Reasonable people will stop there.

If the timewasters persist, then it’s appropriate to be more blunt and say, “we have to move on now,” and then go to the next item on the agenda. Don’t seem angry or annoyed. Just calmly announce that it’s time to move on. The agenda has strength as a guide because everyone has been invited to contribute and everyone has approved it. Furthermore, not deviating from the agenda shows everyone else the courtesy of not wasting their time. Committee members are reluctant to stop the ramblings of timewasters. That’s okay, because it’s the committee chair’s job. The only person who might be upset will be the person who unreasonably expects to take up everyone else’s time. Everyone else will be silently thanking the chair, just as they were silently cursing the timewaster.

End on Time, or Early

Time is tight and people have other commitments. If they don’t they’ll still be tired of sitting in the same chair for an hour or two. End the meeting on time. If you run out of time, postpone the business. If you go way over time, that means that you planned badly or let things go awry during the meeting. Don’t make everyone suffer because of your errors. There’s rarely anything so crucial that it can’t wait. And if you’re focused and get done early, everyone will be pleased. It’s an example of what Edmund Burke called “the unbought grace of life.” Add a little bit of that to someone’s day and they’ll appreciate it.

An important consideration for all these points is that they show courtesy to the committee members, all of them and not just the squeaky wheels. Members of the committee who want a say in the agenda have it. Members who want to propose alternatives to the chair’s suggestions are free to do so. Everyone has a say at the meeting, and everyone has some control, but that control is regulated to ensure fairness and productivity.