Command of Your Faculties - University Succession

By Alinestra Covelia, with input from Buster's Uncle



Zakharov hand-picked his entourage for the Summit, assembling the best minds on Chiron. His thinking was simple: diplomacy was merely problem-solving dressed as a zero-sum game. His solution was to bring his most accomplished academicians to identify solutions that would result in maximal net gain to all involved and win the University the respect of the rest of the factions. That done, he and his faction could then retire to their ivory towers undisturbed for continued peaceful research.

The news of the attacks brought a profound sense of crisis to the faculty left behind at University Base. Their Provost was gone. The cream of mankind's thinkers was dead. Centuries' of man-hours of research was irretrievably lost.

More important was the issue of tenure. There were numerous important chairs vacated, and suddenly every last published academician realized a tidal wave was on them. A mad scramble to the top, to fill one of the still-warm hoverchairs of the dearly departed. To win a place free of cares or worries about the next meal, the next paytab, the access to limited laboratory resources and assistants.

The higher one got, the safer one's seat and the broader one's powers. An assistant professor might have a research assistant or two and receive time on high-level equipment. Higher up, you got other accredited thinkers working under you, and you spent less time grubbing in the labs for your living and more time pondering and pontificating... and then happily claiming partial credit for the work of your subordinates.

The first contender to the Provost's throne was Helmut Voss, widely acknowledged as overdue for a high-ranking tenure position. A brilliant theoretical quantum physicist, Voss had fallen from favor after his keystone publications happened to lock horns with those of Zhu Linwei, a protege of one of Zakharov's proteges. Although spared the savagery of hostile peer-reviews, Voss' findings languished in the limbo of obscurity, suppressed by a powerful academic board which stood to lose status otherwise.

Voss had worked patiently on his brainchild in the interim, perfecting and innovating. Remaining top in his field was easy - few others wanted to touch a politically tainted field like that anyway. Currently, Voss had honed his work product into something that ought to glide through the confirmation process as it bedazzled the peer review committee.

The committee seemed politely welcoming. There were handshakes, smiles. A few jokes. Voss fielded the questions confidently, finding them well-crafted to the subject matter. But there was one reviewer, a woman named Vadima, who asked nothing but off-topic questions.

"How many gathering teams did you supervise in a managerial capacity?"

"Please describe for us your experience with lectures and seminars - especially in dealing with student attrition."

"Have you had any dealings with the campus police or direct dealings with the support staff?" By this, she meant the workers - the University's underclass of those unable to make the exacting grades in the hierarchical education system.

Voss answered as best he could. Afterwards, the review board members gave him a warm farewell and withdrew to discuss his application in confidence.

Two hours later, by holopode, Vadima informed him he had been overlooked for promotion this round. However, she stressed, they were very impressed by the caliber of the work he had performed, and in the next round he would be a strong candidate. She did not have the dates before her, but she expected them to be starting in a month's time.

Voss sat back, thoroughly nonplussed. Rejection was nothing new. But previous rebuffs meant years in the wilderness. Why would they be revisiting the lists in a mere month? What were they looking for now that he had failed? What were they looking for a month from now that he might succeed?

Voss considered contacting a few distant friends. It had been years since they'd talked, but he wondered if anybody else had gotten this odd brush-off too. Then he sighed. Hardly worth it. If they were scrambling to defend their articles as well, they'd hardly have time to waste on him.

He did run a search on the woman, though. Where had he seen her before? The interface returned the identity but little information. Iskra Ivanovna Vadima. University staff. Apart from that, her face remained grainy onscreen, bland as a cipher.

He sat up as his commlink warbled. Well, fancy that. It was Wussowski. What could he possibly want to talk about, after all these years?

* ~ * ~ *

"Who the hell does she think she is?" Wussowski demanded. "Asking all these inanities about bloody logistics. Hours spent arguing before budgetary meetings. Coordinating cross-departmental data sharing."

Wussowski downed his glass and slammed it down angrily. "Bollocks. Is all I have to say to that."

"I know, the datalinks don't say much about her. I did some digging," Voss said. Arulkumaran had joined them too, and his glass had caused a dent in the verroplast top of the table when he'd sounded off earlier.

"If you ask me, she's some sort of jumped-up secretary. What sort of ninny bothers to do budget negotiations these days? You just leave that up to your delegates," he said unsteadily.

"What did you say her name was? Vaghima?"

"Vadima," Voss corrected. "Iskra Ivanovna Vadima. She's not published in any of the journals I searched, and she wasn't on any public committee. Nothing in physics, chemistry, biology or mathematics- none of the databases I checked. All I found about her came from a manual trawl of the Provost's effects. Apparently, youre right; she's a secretary or something."

Arulkumaran choked on his bulb of vodka. "They put a secretary in charge of the selection committee?"

"Hey, it's important," countered Wussowski sagely. "Caffeine pills make the faction run; they've gotta have somebody up top to keep the dispensers working."

Voss tapped his teeth. No record of academics, no record of publications, no record of peer reviews. Who was Vadima and what was she doing?

"Have we gotten a look at the Provost's will yet?" he asked.

"Still in probate," Arulkumaran said. "They won't release the details till they're done valuating everything. Not that it matters - Provost said he'd leave all his personal possessions for the common welfare."

Voss thought about this.

"I think she's Security," he said. "I think Zakharov might have appointed a former intelligence operative to screen these positions. It's the only reason I can think of why there's nothing to her name. Why would a security woman ever publish anything?"

Arulkumaran and Wussowski thought about this in silence.

"Not publishing?" Arulkumaran asked eventually. That was hard to imagine. "What the hell's wrong with her?"

Arulkumaran shook his head. That was how it worked in the University. You put together your first report, researched to exacting standards. And once you have that first, damned good report, you got the attention of the leaders in the fields. They graced you with work time on their budgets, and you got to learn at the feet of the masters. Later, you'd be further insulated from the vicissitudes of funding, personnel, and equipment time disputes, able to focus primarily on churning out papers, theses, and dissertations - each a fundamental distillate of your corner of the human corpus of knowledge. Each a fitting tribute to your own brilliance and your contribution to the University.

Wussowski smiled. "Yeah, it's like she's got some sort of inadequacy - the type you only talk about behind closed doors," he said drunkenly. "Hope she gets it all out there before it's too late."

* ~ * ~ *

They were not the only skeptics. Vadima found herself talking to four members of the review board in chambers later. One, like her, was named by the Provost to the review board in his will - Bent Jorenson. Like her, Jorenson was a mid-level administrator.

The others were high-ranking academicians, known to Vadima only through reputation. Now, they were making that reputation obnoxiously clear.

"What I don't understand is, why appoint a review board at all and then give executive authority to one chairperson?" asked Tove Sigmundsdottir.

"You voted the same as I did each time, remember," said Vadima. "Having second thoughts, Tovarish Tove?"

Sigmundsdottir's eyes crinkled slightly - the Soviet-era pun had evidently struck a chord. "Not about the votes, but my question still stands," she said. "If the Provost appointed you as the executive override vote, why have the rest of us? Im too old to have been appointed for my looks, arresting as they may still be."

"I still don't understand why you blocked Voss," Petrovich blurted out. He was head of the weapons research wing, with a special ethical waiver- something he saw fit to underline at any opportunity. "Voss is eminently qualified to a top-tier post. He deserved it ten years ago. If not the most advanced physicist alive, we might just as well put mindworms and chiropractors in charge. 

Were not going to, are we?"

"And what about Arulkumaran?" blustered Koesterbrueck, before he was motioned aside by his colleagues. "Turning him down after all his advances in xenobiology is nothing short of criminal. Are we the University or the Mediocracy?"

Vadima sat down at her desk and steepled her fingers. "Last month, shortly before his final checks for the departure, Zakharov confided to me his fears about the faction's progress," she said.

"In short, he feared academic ossification."

"What the hell do you mean?" demanded Filvin.

"It means to convert or harden, as with a bone," interjected Jorenson helpfully. Filvin rounded on him and seemed about to say something indelicate, when Vadima's voice cut through the hubbub again.

"We have become a nation of ivory tower intellectuals - we must consider taking a step downwards, closer to the ground we sit on. The Provost's very words, conversation of 10-09-22." Vadima brought the relevant document up on the datapad. "The Provost feared we were losing touch with our own underlings. That we had distanced ourselves too far from the servitors who support our labs, our experiments, and provide us the sampling universe for human talent."

"...and dumbing down the admissions process is the answer?" demanded Filvin. "Appoint a janitor Provost to placate the drooling masses?"

"It seems to me that I am not a janitor," Vadima said quietly. "And it appears your hypothetical has been realized. I hold the executive veto, after all."

There was a moment of silence.

"As I see it, our current round of promotions is to be purely administrative. We need people who have experience overseeing subordinates - and not as a mere step to the next promotion, but who can do so as a regular career, to maximal efficiency," Vadima said. "That rules out many of the academics who would followed the cloistered promotion models - I need people who have represented and fought for causes in meetings against other worthies.

"Second, our current round of promotions must restore our ability to control the faction psyche situation. It must not have escaped your attention that drone activity has steadily grown as we found new bases and expand. We can no longer insulate ourselves with a scramble to the top. We are reaching saturation point with the ratio of tenured positions that our workforce can support. Any more, and the top-heavy structure starts crumbling.

"Finally, our current round of promotions must bring in an outwards-facing leadership. One that acknowledges the realities of the Meet: that other factions survived the Unity fragmentation, and that among them are extremist who could do us harm. That realizes we must deal with other factions sharing different values and who is conscious of the image we project among them."

Jorenson sat down in his chair and leaned back a trifle jauntily, eating from a tray of food.

"The Provost said largely the same to me," he said, his mouth full of nougat.

Koesterbrueck got up. "I will not stand for this," he said. "The University has lost its top talent and you're proposing to replace them with a circle of pen-pushers. The Provost has vested in you the powers, for who-knows-what reason... but I shan't sit here and watch as you tear this place apart. Consider the reputational damage my resignation would cause you."

"It is true, you serve at will, and may withdraw from the panel at any time," Vadima reminded him. "Bear in mind that I retain my executive veto over all considerations for your replacement. If you want to retain any influence at all over the proceedings, it is objectively in your best interests to remain with the panel and perform your duty."

"...with you obstructing me at every turn," finished Koesterbrueck.

Vadima held an open hand, in a gesture of indifference. "We are appointing the top echelons only. And they must be filled as I have indicated. Fewer abstract academicians, more experienced managers. But do not fret, Koesterbrueck - the second-tier postings remain to be filled, and I expect we'll get round to those next month. Assuming we stick with our schedule, of course."

She stood up. "It has been a tiring day, and tensions are high," she said. "I proposed we adjourn today's meeting and reconvene tomorrow as arranged. Think on what I have said, and let me know if you think we can be compatible. I shall be here at my holopode if you wish to contact me in private over the next few hours."

* ~ * ~ *

Jorenson, unsurprisingly, was the first to dial through.

"I think it went rather well, don't you?" he asked happily. Seeing Koesterbrueck and Filvin disconcerted pleased him greatly. Under the old system, as a manager of people, Jorenson had merely been a mid-tier citizen. But now, with the promise of a reshuffle in the social deck of cards, he was looking at new vistas of influence.

"Why's that? Because they've put us janitors in charge of the faculty?" asked Vadima archly. "We're not here to make sport of them, Bent. I was deadly serious when I said we'd be appointing the pure academicians to tenure next round."

"Yes, yes, I know," Jorenson said, with a flicker of irritation. "But permit me this minor show of insouciant glee, won't you? And if you want me on the board as your loyal middle classman voting buddy, you'll be seeing more of it."

Vadima sighed. Jorenson had been the Provost's primary aide. He was smart, no doubt about that, but there was the clear skew to his personality that showed he had no place in the rigid competition of academia. Perhaps the Provost had noted it too when he appointed him his personal secretary.

"Just remember, we two are the examples they see of the new ranks of leadership. There's an image we must sell them."

Jorenson smiled and gave a mock bow, and signed off.

Vadima answered a waiting call, and this time the blonde, frazzled hair and prematurely lined face of Tove Sigmundsdottir filled her holopode.

"Is this a bad time?" she asked anxiously.

Vadima tilted her head back. "No, not at all. How can I help you?"

Tove's wrinkled forehead smoothed slightly. "I wanted to make sure I understood you correctly. The rejections you gave today were based on... administrative unsuitabilities?"

Vadima nodded. "If you wish to put it like that."

"But tenure generally goes to theoreticians," Tove said. "Should we be giving out tenures to management types?" She frowned. "All due respect to you, of course."

"...of course," murmured Vadima. "What is tenure if not a public office, appointed from above? Tenure does not make a citizen a satrap ruler, Tove," she said. "They have responsibilities beyond pure research. If we allow ourselves to pursue nothing but airy abstractions while the campus burns, we will soon find ourselves rooting amid the ashes."

"But that's what the workers are for - that's their compact, their social agreement, their place in the system," Tove said. "Academia relies on freeing the mind from the logistics of discovery, and allowing it to pursue its inspirations uninhibited."

"Two months," Vadima said. "That's how long the security forces give us at our current rate of psyche allocation. Once news of the Provost's death becomes fully known to our workers, they'll be calling for greater representation at the top. Otherwise the factories close down, the power goes off, and weapons become the new currency. They'll need skilled negotiators, managers, middlemen to help them make the transition. And that's not even counting the threat from other factions. Who knows what they might do in the aftermath."

Vadima sighed. "I never said this would be easy. But we inherit a faction that is quickly dividing into two unequal demographics, with nobody in between. We have the hands. We have the brains. But there can be no understanding between them without the heart as mediator."

She held the other woman's gaze for a few moments.

"Do you understand?" she asked.

Tove looked back at her and nodded. Then she cut the line.

* ~ * ~ *

The first wave of positions went to a strange crop of people, all told. Like Vadima, few had published in the usual science journals and none had prior recommendations in the usual Collegiums. For a while, the academicians stewed in their collective umbrage, irked at their replacement by an arriviste class of facilitators rather than faculty. Behind the scenes, psyche agents worked to quiet the drones, intelligence agents enjoyed unprecedented funding for their extraterritorial actions, and a new tier of civil servants entered the workforce to reconcile the efforts of the elite with the laborers.

The second wave of tenures, however, came quickly afterwards and satisfied most expectations. A reassuring new crop of researchers ascended to the empyrean heights of government funding.

"Our function," said Provost Vadima to the first cohort of civil servants, "is to free up the thinkers to do just that. They must continue undisturbed, in their quest to be knowledgeable in all things and all subjects.

For too long the University has emphasized the physical sciences to the exclusion of all else. As we demonstrate the value of the soft sciences weve mastered in application, this will change.

I can speak only for myself, but I did not struggle and sacrifice for so many years to obtain my PhD in Operations Management to be dismissed as a mere janitor... so do your jobs well. 