Faculty Senate approves committee to examine use of honorific titles
The Faculty Senate last week unanimously agreed to form an ad hoc committee that will examine non-Academic Council appointment processes at Stanford, including the use of honorific titles, and report back to the senate with results and recommendations.
Speaking at Thursday's meeting, David Spiegel, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, said the resolution was an outgrowth of faculty concern over the appointment of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. The one-year appointment was announced last September.
Spiegel said the controversial appointment had raised questions about the vetting process and the use of honorific titles for non-Academic Council appointments throughout the university.
Debra Satz, Philosophy, said the number of temporary appointments at Stanford seemed to be growing, due to the creation of new institutes, initiatives and projects. She described the committee as an "information-gathering operation" that could shed some light on the situation.
"If you're making appointments and if you're not going to vet them in any way centrally, then you want to know what's going on with the use of these titles in a decentralized fashion," Satz said.
