(My MIT 50th reunion this year, albeit likely to cancel. Anyway, thinking back. And then ran across something interesting. In January 1970, I had a 21.07 paper due, and was having trouble with it. I was also thinking about the intense fall of 1969, including the Moratorium, the November Actions, and the Information Center that arose to help MIT cope with the latter. I’d spent endless hours working in the Information Center, and that somehow seemed important. Aha! Paper topic! The result was unlike anything I’d ever written before and not quite consistent with the assignment, which Roy Lamson, my professor, remarked mildly while nevertheless giving me an A. Looking for something else, I just found the paper, slightly yellowed on its Corrasable Bond. Rereading it, I thought it might interest others–there’s lots in it, I think, that fits 2020. Looking back, it may well be this paper that gave my career its final push toward higher education policy and leadership rather than engineering… )

LISTEN use microphones not loudspeakers read don’t write take a leaflet someday “It is a dynamic…” no static.

The University exists so that there may be somewhere a place for the courageous and direct confrontation of ideas

whereas recent history has been marked by violent confrontations, which escalated out of proportion because of the failure of those academic communities to act in a responsive way

we express our contempt for this injunction by counselling and advising all mit students to participate

MIT plans a takeover of Black Community confirmed count for number of demonstrators is three hundred sixty five count for police is two hundred sixteen

the problems of these times are not simple and will not yield to simple solutions of any kind

Earth could be fair and you and I must be free.

All of which is not me, but others speaking and writing but which I put together to show that anything you read can make sense if you want it to even if it actually doesn’t.

I was, to make this an at least partially significant paper, going to devise some guidelines for the future, guidelines to prevent the recurrence of a situation where the majority of people concerned are but a mere minority of the whole. I was going to predict that, if trust did not replace assertiveness as a policy, there would be more less rational confrontations, and that reestablishment of trust was the only way to prevent these. I was going to argue, at length, that the processes by which the Institute reaches decisions must be modified to conform to the interest in and effect of the particular decision.

When I returned from Christmas vacation, where I had defended MIT’s fairness to my parents and friends, Mike Albert had been expelled. What could I do? Write an “I told you so”? My outline went by the wayside. I wrote, instead, directly from my feelings and from my documents; from my friends, and from my and their frustration. If the result is at times incoherent, it is because its subject is increasingly incoherent. If it leads no where…

well, where is it all going, anyhow?

We never really worried about it until it was time to close up and go home—and we wouldn’t have then, only we had to put something on the door to tell people why we weren’t there anymore. Kind of a loyalty to one’s fans, or listeners, or whoever. The problem was that some of us had read a significance into our existence—even the mere fact of it. For us to close meant something—it suggested that things had changed, or changed and unchanged, or something like that.

Then we started thinking up possible signs. Marv wanted it to tell people to use each other, I wanted it to tell people to continue their curiosity, Laddie wanted a peace symbol. We worked up a one page statement, about the trust that must be inherent in a community, even when it is faced with abnormal conditions. We put that one up, and then took it down. We weren’t supposed to be editorializing, just reporting. Yet we needed something.

The need for communication never ceases
You trusted us, now trust each other
The Information Center has closed. Peace.

and so it came to an end—-or we hoped a beginning. But of what? It was nothing really easily expressible—we weren’t doing just one easily identifiable thing. It wasn’t us doing anything, actually, that did any good; it was what people did because of or in spite of us.

But we must begin! First, of course, we must discover what was happening that let all this happen.

The Instrumentation Laboratory is a direct descendant of the work on gunfire control begun during World War II by Professor Draper; in fact, the Laboratory has been continuously guided, by the genius of Professor Draper, its first and current Director. It is an advanced, technology laboratory devoted primarily to vehicle guidance and control, largely for space and military applications.

The Pounds Commission Report

A central issue of the seventies for defense research is the double threat of, first, an unwholesome alienation of the university community from national defense research and, second, a diversion of essential research funds from their intended purpose.

John S. Poster Jr., DOD research director.

Second, I would like very much to see our work in basic technology related to defense continue—and I do believe that it is important to the future of this country that such work continue. I intend to ask the Department of Defense for a substantial fund for the support of basic technology related to defense.

Howard Johnson

The term “defense” is a euphemism. U.S. “defense** weapons are being used in Vietnam. 3500 U.S. “defense” bases exist in 38 countries. More than one million members of U.S. “defense” forces are scattered around the world. “Defense” research at M.I.T. supports these activities.

New University Conference pamphlet

The Helicopter project goes on. MIRV goes on. MTI goes on. ABM goes on. CAM goes on. COMCOM goes on. And the International Communism project goes on. And as the meaningless committees meet, the war in Vietnam goes on. Vietnamese die and victims of U.S. Imperialism around the world suffer in part through the effort of M.I.T.

On November we will come to M.I.T. to stop these projects. Through militant action we will start a struggle to ultimately destroy imperialism.

November Action Coalition leaflet

The threats we have been hearing recently constitute the most dangerous attack of such basic freedoms of individuals on this campus. The pluralism that is the heart of the university cannot survive for very long in such a climate…We cannot allow free access and free expression to be obstructed…! simply say that any acts by individuals or groups that coerce other individuals and groups from speaking and acting freely I consider to be fascist tactics..But if such threats continue to be made and if it appears that such action will materialize, I would feel it necessary to call uptn the civil authorities for help in advance of the carrying out of such explicit threats to burn, to break, to push, or to stop.

Howard Johnson

The demonstrations at MIT are not meant to be the violent acts of a heroic few. They are to be political attacks on the projects by large numbers of people. While we will defend ourselves, our objectives are to end these projects, not fight with cops…we will try to fight back as intelligently as possible, seeking to avoid massacres, mass injuries, or arrests. We will not attack MIT students, staff, or professors. Our goal is to stop violence…

NAC leaflet

Certain members of the respondent NAC have announced that the above actions will be carried out despite the efforts of your petitioner to prohibit them. The petitioner understands the respondents statements to mean that the respondents and those acting with them will use such force as is necessary to accomplish the actions listed above…The petitioner says that the threatened actions and occupation by the repondents a will create circumstances in which disruption,’damage, and injury are almost certain to occur, all to the irreparable harm of the petitioner, its faculty, staff, and students…

Petition for the Temporary Restraining Order.

We used to talk in the halls, greet one another—but now, for the last month, Mike hasn’t even smiled, and George doesn’t drop in anymore.

coalesced statements of various Deans and Provosts

In the meantime, until such hearing, WE COMMAND YOU, … to desist and refrain from (a) employing force or violence.. (b)damaging or defacing facilities… (c) converting without authorization, files… (d) inciting or counselling others to do any of the above-mentioned acts.

the Temporary Restraining Order

so the cards were on the table, but NAC was at the Student Center and the Administration was in 9-350 and 351, and nobody connected them, and they stood to themselves, and it was Monday, and one pm.

people talking without speaking
people hearing without listening
people writing songs that voices never shared
no one dared
disturb the sounds of silence.

To members of the MIT community:

NOTICE

Through the efforts of an ad. hoc group of members of the MIT community, a special Information Center will be established in the Bush Room…the Center, which will be maintained during the first part of the week, will be open on subsequent days from 8:00 am to 12:00 midnight. It may be reached also via Institute telephone extension 1874 during these times.

the Notice

Ah yes! 1874, and its friends 1875, 6, 7, and 8. Later, of course, they were joined by three dorm lines, and occasional walkie talkie and shouting networks. We put them all on a giant round table, with pads and leaflets and lists and statements, in front of the Board. The four television sets were distributed about the room, one on each major network for news coverage. The radios, on various stations, went continuously, and we tried to absorb it all.

The Board—later expanded to three—was the thing we really took care of. Nothing went on it without double verification. We put up meeting times, places, and rules; we illustrated briefings; we noted major rumors and their validity; we tried to put a statement of NOW. We covered the walls with background: leaflets, counter-leaflets, speeches, statements, clippings, and eventually photographs. We made copies of everything we could, and soon started our own set of news releases. The external news media occasionally dropped in, but for some reason didn’t like us. Maybe the disparity between their versions and ours bothered them. Maybe it was because we didn’t like them. Who knows?

Nine or ten people sat around, the table, answering phones and doing the calling required to verify things. All sorts of people got calls from us: the ticket agent at the Orson Welles Cinema, at Central Square, a secretary in the Harvard Trust’s Kendall Square office, and many more. Anyone else in the room manned the tables that held all of our printed and Xeroxed material, mostly to explain, answer, and interpret. All sorts of people worked: rabid anti-SDSers, apathetic tools, student government people, and pro-NAC people. We did not refrain from expressing our personal views, but when asked for fact we distributed only our verified fact.

20:50 Ron Schmid, Kasser, Milloid from USL in E40 called and claimed 1) phone company is installing special bypass equipment on threatened buildings 2) Police and National Guard are mobilizing to occupy MIT at 2:00 am. Heard from phone company employee.

21:00 Harvey Baker, TECH, called. Cambridge police are to move into MIT tonight, stay all night.

21:05 called Martin Berlan, communications, re phone rumor, not home yet, left message.

21:06 Brian, TECH, called, we asked for help (go and see) back up or quash mobilization rumor

21:14 Brian called, found no basis for rumor.

21:18 Relayed above to Thursday s

21:30 Martin Berlan called, no basis to phone rumor

21:45 Ed came back from checking Cambridge Police Headquarters and State barracks and Armory. No activity. Only one police car, #204, with four cops, seen

The Log, page 22, 3 November 19&9, edited.

This is what most of the work in the passive phase was all about: hear a rumor, check it out, post and circulate the information. It was occasionally challenging, kept us sufficiently busy. A lot of rumors were flying, and we managed to get the facts to a large number of people.

But I said passive phase, which is eventually the key to the puzzle, for it was during the active phase that we worried about why we had to exist and became a bit disturbed. The active phase was when we started finding things out before they happened, when we started going to meetings, when we started, in the field of information, taking action. But we’re not ready for that part yet. We haven’t accounted 1 for the passive.

During the week of November 3, it will be important that members of the community be able to obtain both accurate and exhaustive information on events that are occurring on the campus.

the Notice

But isn’t it always important? After all, isn’t one of the things that somehow makes the MIT community special? Ease of communication has always been a feature of MIT. Pro­fessors are available for talk and consultation, there is a congenial Dean’s office, and a good set of shrinks. Even Howard Johnson walks the halls, greeting people and occasionally stopping to talk. Faculty meetings and committees have been, to varying degrees, open to observation and participation by interested people. There is usually an air of openness.

Usually. This brings us back to earth, and to a starting point for a discussion of the meaning of the Information Center. It should be noted that, with respect to the actions and. their aftermath, I am a cynic. I quote the Los Angeles Times:

A week ago at MIT, because the expected violence did not occur, both radical leaders and administrators were gradually claiming victory.

Los Angeles Times, 13 Nov 1969

This statement was partly in jest, but it was in a sense true. The point is that the NAC and the Administration were fighting two different battles, without actually ever realizing it. The result was bound to be favorable in some way for each side, but in all likelihood nothing would have been accomplished towards ending either battle. But back to the Center.

The Information Center should not have been needed. If all had been right, as in the past, there would have been no need for people to find what was, in the words of the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee on Institute-wide affairs (CJAC)”an unbiased group…to disseminate facts”. They should have been able to use their normal sources, whatever they might have been. For some reason, however, people had stopped listening to what was being said to them.

But my words like silent raindrops fell
echoed in the wells of silence
and the people bowed and prayed
to the neon gods they’d made
as the sign flashed out its warning

There is an explanation of this, that may or may not apply. People tend to listen to what concerns or interests them, and become disturbed when this information is withheld from them. The early roots of the November Actions, all the way back to the March 4 research stoppage and the Agenda Days, were listened to if not supported by most people at MIT. Gradually, those who did not agree with or care about the problems presented ceased listening to anything related to them. The groundwork of the November Actions—the presentation of them, if you will—went unheeded. As the NAC gradually evolved its plans, and as the Administration made its early warning statements, most people were unaware of anything abnormal. When action was finally imminent, and overshadowed many normal activities, these same people suddenly discovered the whole situation for the first time. They became disturbed, since they felt they had not been told of it. This disturbance produced a mistrust of the agencies they normally would have relied on for Information, and caused them to seek a new source that could tell them what was really happening.

Given such curiosity, these people were likely to look only until they found some source that they did not already mistrust. This could be anything: the media, or a friend, or anything. It is in this sort of situation that the spread of a rumor is facilitated enough for it to cause action unwarranted by the facts, and it was in this sort of situation that the Information Center was introduced as a reliable and available source.

The Center had, of course, to establish itself. We were completely independent, which was the first step. The second and more critical step was to exercise this independence and provide unbiased reliable information. This was easier than we thought it would be. We used the technique of over­kill, of massive cross-checking of facts. The volume of calls received, even the first afternoon, was large, and soon the Center seemed to be performing its assigned task well. After one briefing, we were accused of slanting facts in favor of the NAC—and, by a different person, in favor of the Administration. This was heartening.

The role of the Information Center was thus initially a passive one: given an inquiry, it investigated; given a rumor, it tried to back or quash it; given a statement, it disseminated it. There was no effort to go beyond this role, no active seeking of information, no attempt to prevent the origin of rumors. This role lasted until Monday night, when events caused a change, but a few further words first.

Work at the Information Center was on an entirely open and voluntary basis. There was a core of about ten people who worked consistently, a few of these actually working an average of eighteen or twenty hours a day. The work was often frustrating, for we with some regularity were placed in the position of spokesmen for everyone at once. At the same time, we began to feel the effects of passivity: we got behind the action; we were often unable to answer questions about what was supposed or going to happen; our “over the table” discussions were increasingly unable to answer the “why?” questions we were getting. Finally, despite claims to the contrary, we felt that we were not being given much of the information that we should have been getting, both from the Administration and the NAC. The event that finally changed this was the release of the police policies for the I-Lab confrontation. The CJAC report:

Late in the afternoon of November 5 (the day before the NAC/police confrontations at I-Lab) a statement was released by Cambridge City Manager Sullivan as to the police guidelines which would be used in the event that police were needed.

This would have been perfect, if it were the truth. This statement was formulated, but not released, that afternoon. We became aware of its existence and contents through a member of the Student Advisory Group. Several of us felt that its release could considerably help to prevent undue violence the next day, since it suggested quite a departure from the police action that was expected on the basis of past experience. We therefore wrote it up and released it to the NAC, THE TECH, Thursday, and WTBS about 10 pm. Several members of the administration, when apprised of this fact, were angry and attempted to limit its spread. After some negotiation, a slightly edited version was released to anyone who wanted it. The actual Public Relations release is dated November 5 (and is, interestingly enough, the unedited version).

Sow, and ye shall reap
Seek, and ye shall find.

Galatians 6:7 (paraphrased)

The person who took a copy of the release to the NAC meeting stayed at the meeting and, through periodic reports, made it possible for us to predict what would occur. The NAC did not object to our discussing their objectives and reasons publicly; in fact, they felt that it aided them. The Administration, who had been excluded from the meetings, were also able to know what to expect. They also began to tell us—for release—what their feelings were as to what administration response would be to this or that eventuality. The Board was soon covered with statements of intent and policy from both sides, random facts being relegated to two new boards. More and more people who came in to inquire about something were encouraged to go participate or observe as a better means of informing themselves. We set up what almost amounted to an intelligence system, which kept us truly up to date. We had gone active.

The active phase, which lasted until we closed, was an attempt to, in various ways, reestablish channels of information independent of us. The Information Center, in the passive phase, filled a void, but it did nothing to prevent the recurrence of the void when it might close. We advocated, in the active phase, interest in what was going on, and not support for either side. At various times we were visited by representatives of NAC, SACC, or the Administration, which usually produced discussion in the room. This was good.

The Information Center may or may not have helped make the November Actions what they were. Its effect, however, was supposed to transcend the particular moment and perhaps reestablish trust.

Fools, said I, you cannot know
silence like a cancer grows
heed my words and I might teach you

You trusted us
now trust one another.

It didn’t work. Why is hard if not impossible to say. Perhaps we should have had one after the actions, an Information Center about information. God only knows, and he ain’t saying. The point is, when people look back at the Actions now they see them as an isolated event, with nothing before them and nothing after. The CJAC report spends much of its time on the question of “enfranchising” everyone, of giving them the opportunity and knowledge to “plugin” to the system where they feel they can do the most. It asks

How do you begin to establish trust among different people an campus? Is there a “credibility gap”? Will actions have to precede words?

Such questions, just before the Actions, produced the Information Center. The fact that they are still being asked, and that they are equally as far from an answer, indicates that perhaps nothing has changed. The report says

That the November Actions passed without a major rift in the MIT Community has allayed many of these con­cerns …

but this is not reassuring. There is no more of a rift now than there was before the actions, but that speaks for itself. Undoubtedly there will be many more reports, evaluations, and analyses of the Actions. The facts remain—for a while, there was effective interaction of students and faculty, but it has gone. There was immediacy about many issues, but it has gone. There was communication and trust, but it, too, has gone.

We need them back.

One suggestion is to have another set of Actions of a similar sort, e.g., addressed to a very broad set of issues. The suggestion is not a facetious one; something like the Moratoria would qualify. Of course, the crisis effect, which is what is needed, is lost if the action is too popular and unthreatening. There is, on the other hand, the alienation effect which works against us.

We must dispense, therefore, with the idea of using actions and confrontation to produce the effects we want. The action approach, however, when analyzed, yields a lesson: that of immediacy. The opposite, the feeling of change and reaction taking forever, is well known: it was the chief way the leaders of NAC were able to make sure they had truly dedicated people voting, since everyone else would leave if the meeting dragged on too long. The endless commission and committee approach produces similar reduction of interest. This effect, whether intended or not, works against our desires. It must be replaced by a sense of immediacy.

ONE: Immediacy

We then proceed to the question of polarization.

Everyone at MIT likes to feel that he matters, that he is part of things, that the policies which affect him have in some way been affected by him. It is for this reason that so many things are brought before the faculty for decision; it is for this reason there are students on committees. If one is not in either of these two cate­gories, however, there are but two choices: he can ignore (or “not care about”) the places where he has no voice, or he can make or join an organization which offers him such a voice. The first of these produces the famous MIT apathy; the second produces radical action from outside the normal system structure or, in short, polarization. The lesson is again clear (and this is not a novel idea): broaden the base of the decision process so as to, at the proper time, include all of those affected by the policy or act in question.                   .

ONE: immediacy
TWO: involvement

And then there is the question of integrity, of con­sistency, of respect. The NAC and the administration both were consistent throughout the actions, and thus each was listened to to a fair degree. Had the NAC not stood by its intentions, but instead gone, say, lab-smashing, it would have lost much of its support from outside itself and, more im­portant, its respect from the administration. In the same way, the administration had to stick to its intentions, or it could not have faulted the NAC for smashing. This admirable behavior has ceased, with the ignoring of the report of the Inside Action committee on disciplinary recommendations by the Administration and the irrational response of the RLSDS and their supporters.

ONE: immediacy
TWO: involvement
THREE: Integrity

The Information Center, given the first condition, added the latter two. There is no reason that it has to exist for this to occur.

I was going to make a case for following the suggestions actively so as to channel activity into constructive means for solving problems. I wanted this to be taken as more than a purely academic exercise.

But it is one. The case has gone moot on me, rejected before its presentation.

frus.tra.tion, n.2: a deep chronic sense or state of insecurity and dissatisfaction arising from unresolved problems.

Fresh eyes are important: they see differently, uncover issues, broaden perspective, clarify thinking, suggest alternatives. This is why cross-cutting teams are so important to successful IT management and innovation. It’s also one reason to use consultants. But not the only one.

By “consultants” I don’t mean outsiders who are contracted to operate a service, implement a system, or otherwise do regular IT work; those I think of as “contractors”. (The language is imperfect, to be sure: those we contract with to do regular IT work often call themselves consultants, and those I think of as consultants often work technically as contractors. But this distinction between “consultant” and “contractor” seems reasonably clear, so I’ll stick with it.)

Purposes

In my experience, in or around higher-education IT we use consultants  for several purposes. It’s important not to confuse them, because arguably different purposes call for different kinds of consultants and engagements. I suggest there are at least five distinct categories: Implementation, Advice, Evaluation, Scrutiny, and Leadership.

Implementation. Consultants can play roles at various points as projects or services are conceived, developed, and implemented. They can assist with design, either of entire projects or of key elements: for example, if a campus is implementing a new parking system that authenticates electronic parking cards, collects parking fees, and interconnects its kiosks and gateways over the campus network, a consultant might help design the entire system, or might focus on a particularly vexing component such as ensuring that the system’s network use is PCI compliant (that is, encrypts credit-card information appropriately). Or they can critique how campus staff have designed an entire system or any of its components. They can help IT staff and their campus partners identify appropriate vendors, screen them, and make a good choice. Finally, they can provide oversight as a project goes forward or a service is implemented.

Advice. In this domain consultants bring expertise and experience to bear on various dimensions of campus IT, its organization, or the challenges it faces. I include hiring advice in this category, including both general guidance as to how positions should be specified and filled and more specific guidance such as that provided by search consultants. The category includes advice on how to organize IT, on how to describe and advocate its financing, or on other structural matters. And it also includes advice on campus IT policy, including both exogenously-driven policies ensuring campus compliance with federal and state law and endogenously-driven policies ensuring, for example, that IT is treated consistently with other campus resources insofar as acceptable use, disciplinary processes, and penalties are concerned.

Evaluation. Consultants can help IT organizations evaluate various dimensions of their activity internally (evaluation of IT organizations, staff, or function by outsiders is the next category, Scrutiny). Consultants can appraise the overall catalog of IT services and functions, or they can appraise individual services. Consultants can evaluate specific individuals, or the overall entity’s organization or effectiveness. Finally, consultants can provide benchmarks for IT staffing, spending, or service levels.

Scrutiny. As my friend and colleague Brian Voss has written with some passion, senior campus leaders often don’t understand IT. (I’ve written a followup to his piece.) Yet they know it’s important, and that it consumes substantial campus resources, and so sometimes seek external help to evaluate campus IT, usually from consultants. These engagements generally start with analysis of how campus IT functions, including the array, effectiveness, and cost of IT services. They usually go on to examine the organization of IT on campus, and especially the balance among central, departmental, and other IT providers. And quite frequently the engagement ends up focusing on IT leadership, specifically whether the CIO (whatever his or her title) is well aligned with what the campus needs.

Leadership. Finally, and importantly if rarely, consultants sometimes provide leadership for campus IT. This can take three overlapping forms: consultants can outsource leadership through long-term arrangements, such as Collegis does for many campuses; they can provide temporary leadership while a campus searches for a permanent candidate, as the aforementioned Voss did for Case Western Reserve; or they can provide supplementary leadership for a CIO who has become overloaded, undertaken a temporary assignment elsewhere on campus,  faces an unexpected set of challenges, or otherwise needs extra hands, heads, and help to get through a taxing time, transition, or project.

Types

As I suggested above, different uses of consultants call for different types of consultants. Here again there are usefully distinct categories to think about:

• Firms that market an extensive array of consulting, implementation, and other services across general markets, such as majors like Accenture, PwC Consulting, McKinsey, and Bain.
• Firms that offer similarly extensive services but focus on higher education, such as Collegis and Moran.
• Firms that focus in a limited area, such as Bruns-Pak for data-center design or Kroll for security, across general markets.
• Firms that focus on a limited area and on higher education, such as Unicon for Web portals on campuses.
• Individuals who consult freelance, usually with limited focus, in higher education–often retired CIOs.
• Individuals working  in limited areas for general markets or in higher education through formal or informal consulting groups.

An early (if unsuccessful) example of that last in higher education was the Educom Consulting Group.  A current general-market example (promo alert!) is Fortium Partners, which consists largely of consultants with years of experience as CIOs in diverse industries, like me in higher education. More on that below.

The classification works better as a table than a list:

I’ve seen the campus-consultant relationship personally from at least three perspectives. First, I (or more precisely my IT organization) was a frequent consumer of consultant services, mostly of the General/Limited type for the Implementation purpose. Second, on many occasions I served as a consultant to other campuses, of the Limited/Higher Education type (as a peer) usually for the Advice or Evaluation purposes. Third, at various points my IT organizations were the focus for consultant engagements of the General/Extensive type (McKinsey, PwC, CSC) for the Scrutiny purpose.

So What?

Looking across this landscape, it seems to me that some campus consulting needs are reasonably well served, and some aren’t.

Implementation. This purpose seems reasonably well served, with examples from all four consultant categories. I think this is because campuses are especially likely to seek implementation advice in areas where campuses resemble other entities (for example, parking systems), in which case general consultants can be helpful, or where they resemble other campuses (for example, instructional systems), in which case they prefer higher-education consultants. In either case consultants’ expertise tends to align well with campus circumstances.

Advice. This purpose is a bit less well served. Where campuses resemble other entities or other campuses consultants can be effective. But when advice is needed with regard to policy, or with regard to processes or problems that are more peculiar to higher education, advice from consultants unfamiliar with higher education can be problematic–for example, around security or procurement, where consultants often assume campuses have greater central control over their community and resources than is the case.

Evaluation. The situation here is similar to that for Advice. When the focus of evaluation is generic (that is, has no peculiarly higher-education attributes) and/or the consultant understands a campus’s circumstances outcomes can be good. Otherwise their usefulness can be constrained.

Scrutiny. Most campuses undertake Scrutiny without engaging consultants, relying on administrators and faculty outside the IT organization. This tends to highlight problems and to underrepresent success, since IT tends to be invisible when it’s successful. When campuses seek external help, sometimes they rely on CIOs from other campuses. More typically, they engage General/Extensive firms, use trustee visiting committees, or rely on IT members of accrediting teams. The first two rarely yield useful information, since the firms and committees often do not understand the campus context in which IT operates. This is the same problem that arises when generic outsiders provide Advice or Evaluation. Scrutiny by IT-savvy members of accreditation teams is much the same as relying on CIOs from other campuses ad hoc, and it can produce useful feedback.

Leadership. Campuses can find themselves shorthanded at the CIO level at least four different ways. A CIO may leave abruptly, and so the campus needs interim leadership until he or she is replaced. Similarly, a CIO may be temporarily assigned to other duties on or off campus, yielding a similar need for temporary leadership. A CIO may be temporarily swamped, for example by having to handle a major security breach, a system failure, or a major project. Or a CIO may face problems which he or she is ill equipped to handle, and so require senior-level help. The General/Higher Education firms I mentioned above both provide consulting in this domain, and sometimes campuses draw on particular individuals such as CIOs who have recently retired elsewhere. But overall it’s rare for campuses to use consultants for Leadership purposes, preferring instead to rely on temporary internal promotions or reassignments.

The lacunae I see are three: it appears hard for campuses to find consulting to provide Advice and Evaluation for campus IT overall, to provide productive Scrutiny of IT organization and resources, and to address temporary Leadership needs.

The Personal Note

People like me can fill some of these lacunae. I’ve done that freelance for years, as have many CIO peers from other campuses, often after “retiring”. Most of my own consulting has served Advice, Evaluation, and Scrutiny purposes.

But it’s hard for senior campus leaders to find people like me. And it’s hard for people like me to organize ourselves, especially in collaboration with complementary peers, to ensure that we stay in touch with current IT and campus thinking, that we market ourselves effectively, and that we draw on additional resources and colleagues as necessary. The Educom Consulting Group attempted to do this, but was unable to sustain itself. Collegis, Moran, and other firms that operate within higher-education IT have been more successful, but much of their success has been with smaller institutions. The lacuna remains.

And so to Fortium Partners, which I was recently invited and agreed to join as a partner. Fortium describes itself as “…an IT turnaround and technology services firm providing world-class IT leadership to clients focused on finding solutions to complex IT infrastructure issues or difficult-to–solve operational challenges.” Fortium Partners is modeled on Tatum Partners, a CFO-focused enterprise. In effect, it’s a co-op comprising people like me, except not just from higher education. I hope for two outcomes from this new venture: Interesting projects for me to work on, including some that take me into new domains, and a new resource for those work within and oversee IT on college and university campuses.

If, having read this, you’re thinking “hey, maybe Greg could be helpful,” drop me a line: greg.jackson@fortiumpartners.com

 

 

It’s 2006, and we’re at Duke, for a meeting of the Common Solutions Group.

On the formal agenda, Paul Courant seeks to resurrect an old idea of Ira Fuch‘s, for a collective higher-education IT development-and-procurement entity provisionally called Educore.

On the informal agenda, a bunch of us work behind the scenes trying to persuade two existing higher-education IT entities–Internet2 and National LambdaRail–that they would better serve their constituencies, which overlap but do not coincide, by consolidating into a single organization.

The merged organization would both lease capacity with some restrictions (the I2 model) and “own” it free and clear (the NLR model, the quotes because in many cases NLR owns 20-year “rights to use”–RTUs–rather than actual infrastructure.) The merged organization would find appropriate ways to serve the sometimes divergent interests of IT managers and IT researchers in higher education.

Most everyone appears to agree that having two competing national networking organizations for higher education wastes scarce resources and constrains progress. But both NLR and Internet2 want to run the consolidated entity. Also, there are some personalities involved. Our work behind the scenes is mostly shuttle diplomacy involving successively more complex drafts of charter and bylaws for a merged networking entity.

Throughout the process I have a vague feeling of déjà vu.

Partly I’m wistfully remembering the long and somewhat similar courtship between CAUSE and Educom, which eventually yielded today’s merged EDUCAUSE. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to achieve something similar for national higher-education networking.

And partly I’m remembering a counterexample, the demise of the American Association for Higher Education, which for years held its annual meeting at the Hilton adjacent to Grant Park in Chicago (almost always overlapping my birthday, for some reason). AAHE was an umbrella organization aimed comprehensively at leaders and middle managers throughout higher education, rather than at specific subgroups such as registrars, CFOs, admissions directors, housing managers, CIOs, and so forth. It also attracted higher-education researchers, which is how I started attending, since that’s what I was.

AAHE collapsed, many think, because of the broad middle-management organization’s gradual splintering into a panoply of “caucuses” that eventually went their own ways, and to a certain extent its leaders aligning AAHE with too many faddish bandwagons. (To this day I wince when I hear the otherwise laudable word “assessment”.) It was also affected by the growing importance of discipline-specific organizations such as NACUBO, AACRAO, and NASPA–not to mention Educom and CAUSE–and it always vied for leadership attention with the so-called “presidential” organizations such as ACE, AAU, APLU, NAICU, and ACC.

Together the split into caucuses and over-trendiness left AAHE with no viable general constituency or finances to continue its annual meetings, its support for Change magazine, or its other crosscutting efforts. AAHE shut down in 2005, and disappeared so thoroughly that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page; its only online organizational existence is at the Hoover Institution’s archives, which hold its papers.

At the Duke CSG meeting I’m hoping, as we work on I2 and NLR leaders to encourage convergence, that NLR v. I2 won’t turn out like AAHE, and that instead the two organizations will agree to a collaborative process leading to synergy and merger like that of CAUSE and Educom.

We fail.

Following the Duke CSG meeting, NLR and I2 continue to compete. They manage to collaborate briefly on a joint proposal for federal funding, a project called “U.S. UCAN“, but then that collaboration falls apart as NLR’s finances weaken. Internet2 commits to cover NLR’s share of U.S. UCAN, an unexpected burden. NLR hires a new CEO to turn things around; he leaves after less than a year. NLR looks to the private sector for funding, and finds some, but it’s not enough: its network shuts down abruptly in 2014.

In the event, Internet2 survives, especially by extending its mission beyond higher education, and by expanding its collective-procurement activities to include a diversity of third-party products and services under the Net+ umbrella. It also builds some cooperative ventures with EDUCAUSE, such as occasional joint conferences and a few advocacy efforts.

Meanwhile, despite some false starts and missed opportunities, the EDUCAUSE merger succeeds. The organization grows and modernizes. It tackles a broad array of services to and advocacy on behalf of higher-education IT interests, organizations, and staff.

But now I’m having a vague feeling of déjà vu all over again. As was the case for I2/NLR, I sense, there’s little to be gained and some to be lost from Internet2 and EDUCAUSE continuing as separate organizations.

Partly the issue is simple organizational management efficiency: in these times of tight resources for colleges, universities, and state systems, does higher education IT really need two financial staffs, two membership-service desks, two marketing/communications groups, two senior leadership teams, two Boards, and for that matter two CEOs? (Throw ACUTA, Unizin, Apereo, and other entities into the mix, and the question becomes even more pressing.)

But partly the issue is deeper. EDUCAUSE and Internet2 are beginning to compete with one another for scarce resources in subtle ways: dues and memberships, certainly, but also member allegiance, outside funding, and national roles. That competition, if it grows, seems perilous. More worrisome still, some of the competition is of the non-salutary I’m OK/You’re Not OK variety, whereby each organization thinks the other should be subservient.

We don’t quite have a Timson/Molloy situation, I’m glad to say. But with little productive interaction at the organizations’ senior levels to build effective, equitable collaboration, there’s unnecessary risk that competitive tensions will evolve into feudal isolation.

If EDUCAUSE and Internet2 can work together on the basis of mutual respect, then we can minimize that risk, and maybe even move toward a success like CAUSE/Educom becoming EDUCAUSE. If they can’t–well, if they can’t, then I think about AAHE, and NLR’s high-and-dry stakeholders, and I worry.

A while back I wrote here about hyphens, and some related usage issues. Since then I’ve taken that line of commentary over into my LinkedIn posts, and I’ll update this post periodically with the relevant links. Here’s what they are so far:

• Carrots, Pigs, Hyphens, Style, & Boston Red Lights
• Writers who care about commas are neurotic
• Co-Criteria

The so-called “star wars” campuses of the mid-1980s (Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, and MIT) invented (or at least believe they invented–IT folklore runs rampant) much of what we take for granted and appreciate today in daily electronic life: single signon, secure authentication, instant messaging, cloud storage, interactive online help, automatic updates, group policy, and on and on.

They also invented things we appreciate less. One of those is online harassment, which takes many forms.

Early in my time as MIT’s academic-computing head, harassment seemed to be getting worse. Partly this was because the then-new Athena computing environment interconnected students in unprecedentedly extensive ways, and partly because the Institute approached harassment purely as a disciplinary matter–that is, trying to identify and punish offenders.

Those cases rarely satisfied disciplinary requirements, so few complaints resulted in disciplinary proceedings. Fewer still led to disciplinary action, and of course all of that was confidential.

Stopit

Working with Mary Rowe, who was then the MIT “Ombuds“, we developed a different approach. Rather than focus on evidence and punishment, we focused on two more general goals: making it as simple as possible for victims of harassment to make themselves known, and persuading offenders to change their behavior.

The former required a reporting and handling mechanism that would work discreetly and quickly. The latter required something other than threats.

Satisfying the first requirement was relatively simple. We created an email alias (stopit@mit.edu) to receive and handle harassment (and, in due course, other) complaints.  Email sent to that address went to a small number of senior IT and Ombuds staff, collectively known as the Stopits. The duty Stopit–often me–responded promptly to each complaint, saying that we would do what we could to end the harassment.

We publicized Stopit widely online, in person, and with posters. In the poster and other materials, we gave three criteria for harassment:

• Did the incident cause stress that affected your ability, or the ability of others, to work or study?
• Was it unwelcome behavior?
• Would a reasonable person of your gender/race/religion subjected to this find it unacceptable?”

Anyone who felt in danger, we noted, should immediately communicate with campus police or the dean on call, and we also gave contact information for other hotlines and resources. Otherwise, we asked that complainants share whatever specifics they could with us, and promised discretion under most circumstances.

To satisfy the second requirement, we had to persuade offenders to stop–a very different goal, and this is the key point, from bringing them to justice. MIT is a laissez-faire, almost libertarian place, where much that would be problematic elsewhere is tolerated, and where there is a high bar to formal action.

As I wrote in an MIT Faculty Newsletter article at the time, we knew that directly accusing offenders would trigger demands for proof and long, futile arguments about the subtle difference between criticism and negative comments–which are common and expected at the Institute–and harassment. Prosecution wouldn’t address the problem.

UYA

And so we came up with the so-called “UYA” note.

“Someone using your account…”, the note began, and then went on to describe the alleged behavior. “If you did not do this,” the note went on, “…then quite possibly someone has managed to access your account without permission, and you should take immediate steps to change your password and not share it with anyone.” The note then concluded by saying “If the incident described was indeed your doing, we ask that you avoid such incidents in the future, since they can have serious disciplinary or legal consequences”.

Almost all recipients of UYA notes wrote back to say that their accounts had indeed been compromised, and that they had changed their passwords to make sure their accounts would not be used this way again. In virtually all such cases, the harassment then ceased.

Did we believe that most harassment involved compromised accounts, and that the alleged offenders were innocent? Of course not. In many cases we could see, in logs, that the offender was logged in and doing academic work at the very workstation and time whence the offending messages originated. But the UYA note gave offenders a way to back off without confession or concession. Most offenders took advantage of that. Our goal was to stop the harassment, and mostly the UYA note achieved that.

There was occasional pushback, usually the offender arguing that the incident was described accurately but did not constitute harassment. Here again, though, the offending behavior almost always ceased. And in a few cases there was pushback of the “yeah, it’s me, and you can’t make me stop” variety. In those, the Stopits referred the incident into MIT’s disciplinary process. And usually, regardless of whether the offender was punished, the harassment stopped.

So Stopit and UYA notes worked.

Looking back, though, they neglected some important issues, and those remain problematic. In fact, the two teaching cases I mentioned in the Faculty Newsletter article and have used in myriad class discussions since–Judy and Michael–reflect two such issues: the difference between harassment and a hostile work environment, and jurisdictional ambiguity.

Work Environment

Judy Hamilton complains that images displayed on monitors in a public computing facility make it impossible for her to work comfortably. This really isn’t harassment, since the offending behavior isn’t directed at her. Rather, the offender’s behavior made it uncomfortable for Judy to work even though the offender was unaware of Judy or her reaction.

The UYA note worked: the offender claimed that he’d done nothing wrong, and that he had every right to display whatever images he chose so long as they weren’t illegal, but nevertheless he chose to stop.

But it was not correct to suggest that he was harassing Judy, as we did at the time. Most groups that have discussed this case over the years come to that conclusion, and instead say this should have been handled as a hostile-work-environment case. It’s an important distinction to keep in mind.

Jurisdiction

Michael Zareny, on the other hand, is interacting directly with Jack Oiler, and there’s really no work environment involved. Jack feels harassed, but it’s not clear Michael’s behavior satisfies the harassment criteria. Jack appears to be annoyed, rather than impaired, by Michael’s comments. In any case the interaction between the two would be deemed unfortunate, rather than unacceptable, by many of Jack’s peers.

Or, and this is a key point, the interaction would be seen that way by Jack’s peers at MIT. There’s an old Cambridge joke: At Harvard people are nice to you and don’t mean it, and MIT people aren’t nice to you and don’t mean it. The cultural norms are different. What is unacceptable to someone at Harvard might not be to someone at MIT. So arises the first jurisdictional ambiguity.

In the event, the Michael situation turned out to be even more complicated. When Kim tried to send a UYA note to Michael, it turned out that there was no Michael Zareny at MIT. Rather, it turned out that Michael Zareny was a student elsewhere, and his sole MIT connection was interacting with Jack Oiler in an the newsgroup.

There thus wasn’t much Kim could do, especially since Michael’s own college declined to take any action because the problematic behavior hadn’t involved its campus or IT.

Looking Ahead

The point to all this is straightforward, and it’s relevant beyond the issue of harassment. In today’s interconnected world, it’s rare for problematic online behavior to occur within the confines of a single institution. As a result, taking effective action generally requires various entities to act consistently and collaboratively to gather data from complainants and dissuade offenders.

Yet the relevant policies are rarely consistent from campus to campus, let alone between campuses and ISPs, corporations, or other outside entities. And although campuses are generally willing to collaborate, this often proves difficult for FERPA, privacy, and other reasons.

It’s clear, especially with all the recent attention to online bullying and intimidation, that harassment and similarly antisocial behavior remain a problem for online communities. It’s hard to see how this will improve unless campuses and other institutions work together. If they don’t do that, then external rules–which most of us would prefer to avoid–may well make it a legal requirement.

“It’s one of the real black marks on the history of higher education, ” Leon Botstein, the long-time President of Bard College, recently told The New Yorker’s Alice Gregory, “that an entire industry that’s supposedly populated by the best minds in the country … is bamboozled by a third-rate news magazine.” He was objecting, of course, to the often criticized but widely influential rankings of colleges and universities by US News & World Reports.

Two stories, and a cautionary note.

Wired

Seeing Wired magazine‘s annual “wired campus” rankings in the same way Botstein viewed those from US News, some years ago several of us college and university CIOs conspired to disrupt Wired‘s efforts. As I later wrote, the issue wasn’t that some campuses had different (and perhaps better or worse) IT than others. Rather, for the most part these differences bore little relevance to the quality of those campuses’ education or the value they provided to students.

We persuaded almost 100 key campuses to withhold IT data from Wired. After meeting with us to see whether compromise was possible (it wasn’t) and an abortive attempt to bypass campus officials and gather data directly from students, the magazine discontinued its ratings. Success.

But, as any good pessimist knows, every silver lining has a cloud. Wired had published not only summary ratings, but also, to its credit, the data (if not the calculations) upon which the ratings were based. Although the ratings were questionable, and some of the data seemed suspect, the latter nevertheless had some value. Rather than look at ratings, someone at Campus A could look and see how A’s reported specific activity compared to its peer Campus B’s.

Partly to replace the data Wired had gathered and made available, and so extend A’s ability to see what B was doing, EDUCAUSE started the Core Data Survey (now the Core Data Service, CDS). This gathered much of the same information Wired had, and more. (Disclosure: I served on the committee that helped EDUCAUSE design the initial CDS, and revised it a couple of years later, and have long been a supporter of the effort.)

Unlike Wired, EDUCAUSE does not make individual campus data publicly available. Rather, participating campuses can compare their own data to those of all or subsets of other campuses, using whatever data and comparison algorithm they think appropriate. I can report from personal experience that this is immensely useful, if only because it stimulates and focuses discussions among campuses that appear to have made different choices.

But back to Botstein. EDUCAUSE doesn’t just make CDS data available to participating campuses. It also uses CDS data to develop and publish “Free IT Performance Metrics,” which it describes as “Staffing, financials, and services data [campuses] can use for modifications, enhancements, and strategic planning.” The heart of Botstein’s complaint about US News & World Reports  isn’t that the magazine is third rate–that’s simply Botstein being Botstein–but rather that US News believes the same rating algorithm can be validly used to compare campuses.

Which raises the obvious question: Might EDUCAUSE-developed “performance metrics” fall into that same trap? Are there valid performance metrics for IT that are uniformly applicable across higher education?

Many campuses have been bedeviled and burned by McKinseys, BCGs, Accentures, Bains, PWCs, and other management consultants. These firms often give CFOs, Provosts, and Presidents detailed “norms” and “standards” for things like number of users per help-desk staffer, the fraction of operating budgets devoted to IT, or laptop-computer life expectancy. These can then become targets for IT organizations, CIOs, or staff in budget negotiations or performance appraisal.

Some of those “norms” are valid. But many of them involve inappropriate extrapolation from corporate or other different environments, or implicitly equate all campus types. Language is important: “norms,” “metrics,” “benchmarks,” “averages,” “common”, “typical,” and “standards” don’t mean the same thing. So far EDUCAUSE has skirted the problem, but it needs to be careful to avoid asserting uniform validity when there’s no evidence for it.

US News

A second story illustrates a different, more serious risk. A few years ago a major research university–I’ll call it Lake Desert University or LDU–was distressed about its US News ranking. To LDU’s leaders, faculty, and students the ranking seemed much too low: Lake Desert generally ranked higher elsewhere.

A member of the provost’s staff–Pat, let’s say–was directed to figure out what was wrong. Pat spent considerable time looking at US News data and talking to its analysts. An important component of the US News ranking algorithm, Pat learned, was class size. The key metric was the fraction of campus-based classes with enrollments smaller than 20.

Pat, a graduate of LDU, knew that there were lots of small classes at Lake Desert–the university’s undergraduate experience was organized around tutorials with 4-5 students–and so it seemed puzzling that LDU wasn’t being credited for that. Delving more deeply, Pat found the problem. Whoever had completed LDU’s US News questionnaire had read the instructions very literally, decided that “tutorials” weren’t “classes”, and so excluded them from the reporting counts. Result: few small classes, and a poor US News ranking.

US News analysts told Pat that tutorials should have been counted as classes. The following year, Lake Desert included them. Its fraction-of-small-classes metric went up substantially. Its ranking jumped way up. The Provost sent Pat a case of excellent French wine.

In LDU’s case, understanding the algorithm and looking at the survey responses unearthed a misunderstanding. Correcting this involved no dishonesty (although some of LDU’s public claims about the “improvement” in its ranking neglected to say that the improvement had resulted from data reclassification rather than substantive progress).

Caution

But not all cases are as benign as LDU’s . As I wrote above, there were questions not only about Wired‘s ranking algorithm, but about some of the data campuses provided. Lake Desert correcting its survey responses in consultation with analysts is one thing; a campus misrepresenting its IT services to get a higher ranking is another. But it can be hard to distinguish the two.

Auditing is one way to address this problem, but audits are expensive and difficult. Publishing individual responses is another–both Wired and US News have done this, and EDUCAUSE shares them with survey respondents–but that only corrects the problem if respondents spend time looking at other responses, and are willing to become whistleblowers when they find misrepresentation. Most campuses don’t have the time to look at other campuses’ responses, or the willingness to call out their peers.

If survey responses are used to create ratings, and those ratings become measures of performance, then those whose performance is being measured have incentive to tailor their survey responses accordingly. If the tailoring involves just care within the rules, that’s fine. But if it involves stretching or misrepresenting the truth, it’s not.

More generally, it’s important to closely connect the collection of data to their evaluative use. Who reports, should decide.

 

 

 

(…with apologies to Susan Sontag, of course.)

Visiting the trade show at the EDUCAUSE conference requires strategy. At one time it was simple: collect every pen being given away (having some conversations with vendors in the process), so that back home the kid could give them to his friends at school. Kid grew up, though, and there came “No more pens, Dad, please.”

After that I usually walked around with Ira Fuchs, who had an excellent eye for the interestingly novel product. But Ira hasn’t been attending, so I’ve taken to observing two things: how vendors staff their booths, and what they give away–the swag.

Who

The interesting thing about staffing is what it tells us vendors assume about higher-education IT, and especially what they assume about our procurement decisions. I track two variables: whether booths are staffed by people who know something about the product and higher education, and whether they’re chosen for reasons other than expertise.

This year the booth staff seem reasonably attuned to product and customer, and, with the exception of some game barkers, two people dressed up as giant blue bears, and two women dressed like 1950s flight attendants, most of them pretty much looked like the attendees, except with logos on their shirts.

To be be more precise, the place wasn’t full of what are sometimes called Demo Dollies, attractive young women with no product knowledge deployed on the assumption that they will attract men to their booths (and therefore on the assumption that men are making the key decisions). That there aren’t many of them is good, since a few years back things were quite different, reaching a nadir with the infamous catwomen. We don’t want industry thinking of higher education as a market easily influenced by Demo Dollies.

What

The interesting thing about swag–the stuff that vendors give away–is that it tells us something about the resources vendors are committing to higher education, the resources they think are available from higher education, or both. There are two dimensions to swag: how swanky it is, and how creative it is.

I spent some time on this year’s tradeshow floor looking for swag that rose above the commonplace, and here’s what struck me: there wasn’t much. There were lots of pens (which I’m still not allowed to bring home), lots of candy, and lots of small USB thumb drives, all of course bearing vendor logos. I count those as neither swanky nor creative.

The growing swag sector is stuff made out of foam or soft plastic. This includes baseballs, footballs, various kinds of phone-propper-uppers, can holders, and a few creatures and cartoon characters. Some of this related in some way to the vendor’s product or slogan or brand, but most of it didn’t. The foam stuff was mildly creative, except it’s less and less so each year; there was lots more of that this year than last.

There were also various items that weren’t intrinsically creative, and also not swanky, but were distinctive, if only because few vendors offered them.

There were keychain carabiners (which I always look for, since I keep leaving them in rental cars–and this year only two vendors had them), earphones, t-shirts (remarkably few of those compared to previous years, when they were ubiquitous), USB chargers, corkscrews, can openers, pens that light up, baseball caps, and kitchen utensils (my personal favorite, I think). Several vendors told me the one to get was a jump rope with blinking handles, but I couldn’t find it. Next year.

(I’ve uploaded photos of the distinctive swag to an album on my Facebook account.)

So…

…here’s the thing. That most of the available swag was low-end and uncreative may disappoint those who take lots home for friends or family or colleagues or whomever. It also may mean that vendors selling to higher education aren’t as flush as they once were, or think we aren’t; both of those are probably somewhat true, and neither is especially good news.

Combined with the dearth of Demo Dollies, though, I see the situation somewhat more positively. It seems to me that even though they may be less flush, this year’s vendors are taking the higher-education market seriously, using knowledgeable staff rather than artifice to engage customers, who may also be less flush, and sell product wisely.

That, as Martha Stewart would say, is a good thing!

Kim reread the message from Jack Oiler:

My concern is about one Michael Zareny, who is using his University identity to post comments in Reddit and elsewhere and to send messages with extremely derogatory claims about gay men. Normally I would be most solidly against censorship, but if similar remarks about the immorality of Jews or Blacks were made, they would probably be illegal. I have tried at great length to reason with MZ, but his prejudices seem to be beyond reason. He was previously using an account elsewhere before he moved to the University. I am disappointed to see Zareny’s trash emanating from the University. I also think that if the hate laws covered gender orientation, he would be in violation of the law.

Could you please respond to my plea? As I said, I am very uncomfortable with censorship of any form, but MZ has been going on for more than three years now, and his views are quite beyond rational comment. I have suggested that we take the debate to philosophical journals instead of the Internet (he suggested the same thing, but shows no signs of doing so, despite my having published papers on issues underlying the topic), since there are some established standards there. He has made unsubstantiated remarks about my character and relations with my students, that if I might consider taking legal action over.

This, Kim thought, was going to be a tough one. Kim went to the keyboard computer, fired up Reddit, and went looking for Oiler and Zareny.

© 2013 Gregory A Jackson

This case is to promote discussion, not to document good or poor handling of a situation. All names have been changed.

Is there a computer cluster somewhere where someone can be safe from pornography and harassment? I’m sick of this.

Kim, the University’s Director of Academic Computing, knew from a conversation with the University Ombudswoman what Judy Hamilton was complaining about: she had gone into a public computing cluster and sat down next to a male student whose screen was displaying a graphic image of a sexual act. Judy had asked the student to remove the image, since it was interfering with her ability to work comfortably, and he’d refused—loudly and contentiously. After a shouting match, Judy left to find someplace else to work. She complained to friends, and to the Ombudswoman, who sent her to Kim.

Kim knew that hard-core displays such as had offended Judy were relatively rare, but that other offending images—nudes, for example, and even animal-experiment photos from a server maintained by an outspoken faculty member. Many students would quietly remove offending images when someone else complained, but others would refuse, citing free speech. “I like this stuff and it helps me keep working,” a male student had written Kim in another instance. “Why,” the student had concluded, “is my work less important than hers?”

The University’s policies forbade harassment, but not pornography. The harassment policy probably applied to Judy’s case, Kim thought, but its remedies fell short of what Judy wanted: for Kim and the University to forbid the display of pornographic images, and perhaps to enforce the ban technologically. Kim would need to define “pornographic,” which was not necessary under the University’s current policy. Then again, Kim needed a definition “harassment,” which didn’t appear any easier.

Kim perceived two tasks: to respond to Judy’s message, and to decide whether the University needed better or different policies to deal with her situation.

© 2013 Gregory A Jackson

This case is to promote discussion, not to document good or poor handling of a situation. All names have been changed.

I’m at loose ends after graduating. The Dean for Student Affairs, whom I’ve gotten to know through a year of complicated political and educational advocacy, wants to know more about MIT‘s nascent pass/fail experiment, under which first-year students receive written rather than graded evaluations of their work.

MIT being MIT, “know more” means data: the Dean wants quantitative analysis of patterns in the evaluations. I’m hired to read a semester’s worth, assign each a “Usefulness” score and a “Positiveness” score, and then summarize the results statistically.

Two surprises. First, Usefulness turns out to be much higher than anyone had expected–mostly because evaluations contain lots of “here’s what you can do to improve” advice, rather than lots of terse “you would have gotten a B+” comments, as had been predicted. Second, Positiveness distributes remarkably as grades had for the pre-pass/fail cohort, rather than skewing higher, as had been predicted. Even so, many faculty continue to believe both predictions (that is, they think written evaluations are both generally useless and inappropriately positive).

A byproduct of the assignment is my first exposure to MIT’s glass-house computer facility, an IBM 360 located in the then-new Building 39. In due course I learn that Jay Forrester, an MIT faculty member, had patented the use of 3-D arrays of magnetic cores for computer memory (the read-before-write use of cores, which enabled Forrester’s breakthrough, had been patented by An Wang, another faculty member, of the eponymous calculators and word processors). IBM bought Wang’s patent, but not Forrester’s, and after protracted legal action eventually settled with Forrester in 1964 for $13-million.

According to MIT mythology, under the Institute’s intellectual-property policy half of the settlement came to the Institute, and that money built Building 39. Only later do I wonder whether the Forrester/IBM/39 mythology is true. But not for long: never let truth stand in the way of a good story.

Not just because mythology often involves memorable, simple stories, belief in mythology is durable. This is important because belief so heavily drives behavior. That belief resists even data-driven contradiction–data analysis rarely yields memorable, simple stories–is one reason analytics so often prove curiously ineffective in modifying institutional behavior.

Two examples, both involving the messy question of copyright infringement by students and what, if anything, campuses should do about it.

44%

I’m having lunch with a very smart, experienced, and impressive senior officer from an entertainment-industry association, whom I’ll call Stan. The only reason universities invest heavily in campus networks, Stan tells me, is to enable students to download and share ever more copyright-infringing movies, TV shows, and music. That’s why campuses remain major distributors of “pirated” entertainment, he says, and therefore why it’s appropriate to subject higher education generally to regulations and sanctions such as the “peer to peer” regulations from the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act.

That Stan believes this results partly from a rhetorical problem with high-performance networks, such as the research networks within and interconnecting colleges and universities. High-performance networks–even those used by broadcasters–usually are engineered to cope with peak loads. Since peaks are occasional, most of the time most network capacity goes unused. If one doesn’t understand this–as Stan doesn’t–then one assumes that the “unused” capacity is in fact being used, but for purposes not being disclosed.

And, as it happens, there’s mythology to fill in the gap: According to a 2005 MPAA study, Stan tells me, higher education accounts for almost half of all copyright infringement. So MPAA, and therefore Stan, knows what campuses aren’t telling us: they’re upgrading campus networks to enable infringement.

But Stan is wrong. There are two big problems with his belief.

First, shortly after MPAA asserted, both publicly and in letters to campus presidents, that 44% of all copyright infringement emanates from college campuses, which is where Stan’s “almost half” comes from, MPAA learned that its data contractor had made a huge arithmetic error. The correct estimate should have been more like 10-15%. But the corrected estimate was never publicized as extensively as the erroneous one: the errors that statisticians make live after them; the corrections are oft interred with their bones.

Second, if Stan’s belief is correct, then there should be little difference among campuses in the incidence of copyright infringement, at least among campuses with research-capable networking. Yet this isn’t the case. As I’ve found researching three years of data on the question, the distribution of detected infringement is highly skewed. Most campuses are responsible for little or no distribution of infringing material, presumably because they’re using Packetlogic, Palo Alto firewalls, or similar technologies to manage traffic. Conversely, a few campuses account for the lion’s share of detected infringement.

So there are ample data and analytics contradicting Stan’s belief, and none supporting it. But his belief persists, and colors how he engages the issues.

Targeting

I’m having dinner with the CIO from an eminent research university; I’ll call her Samantha, and her campus Helium (the same name it has in the infringement-data post I cited above). We’re having dinner just as I’m completing my 2013 study, in which Helium has surpassed Hydrogen as the largest campus distributor of copyright-infringing movies, TV shows, and music.

In fact, Helium accounts for 7% of all detected infringement from the 5,000 degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States. I’m thinking that Samantha will want to know this, that she will try to figure out what Helium is doing–or not doing–to stand out as such a sore thumb among peer campuses, and perhaps make some policy or practice changes to bring Helium into closer alignment.

But no: Samantha explains to me that the data are entirely inaccurate. Most of the infringement notices Helium receives are duplicates, she tells me, and in any case the only reason Helium receives so many is that the entertainment industry intentionally targets Helium in its detection and notification processes. Since the data are wrong, she says, there’s no need to change anything at Helium.

I offer to share detailed data with Helium’s network-security staff so that they can look more closely at the issue, but Samantha declines the offer. Nothing changes, and in 2014 Helium is again one of the top recipients of infringement notices (although Hydrogen regains the lead it had held in 2012).

The data Samantha declines to see tell an interesting story, though. The vast majority of Helium’s notices, it turns out, are associated with eight IP addresses. That is, each of those eight IP addresses is cited in hundreds of notices, which may account for Samantha’s comment about “duplicates”. Here’s what’s interesting: the eight addresses are consecutive, and they each account for about the same number of notices. That suggests technology at work, not individuals.

As in Stan’s case, it helps to know something about how campus networks work. Lots of traffic distributed evenly across a small number of IP addresses sounds an awful lot like load balancing, so perhaps those addresses are the front end to some large group of users. “Front end to some large group of users” sounds like an internal network using Network Address Translation (NAT) for its external connections.

NAT issues numerous internal IP addresses to users, and then technologically translates those internal addresses traceably into a much smaller set of external addresses. Most campuses use NAT to conserve their limited allocation of external IP addresses, especially for their campus wireless networks. NAT logs, if kept properly, enable campuses to trace connections from insiders to outside and vice versa, and so to resolve those apparent “duplicates”.

So although it’s true that there are lots of duplicate IP addresses among the notices Helium receives, this probably stems from Helium’s use of NAT on its campus wireless. Helium’s data are not incorrect. If Helium were to manage NAT properly, it could figure out where the infringement is coming from, and address it.

Samantha’s belief that copyright holders target specific campuses, like Stan’s that campuses expand networks to encourage infringement, has a source–in this case, a presentation some years back from an industry association to a group of IT staff from a score of research universities. (I attended this session.) Back then, we learned, the association did target campuses, not out of animus, but simply as a data-collection mechanism. The association would choose a campus, look for infringing material being published from the campus’s network, send notices, and then move on to another campus.

Since then, however, the industry had changed its methodology, in large part because the BitTorrent protocol replaced earlier ones as the principal medium for download-based infringement. Because of how BitTorrent works, the industry’s methodology shifted from searching particular networks to searching BitTorrent indexes for particularly popular titles and then seeing which networks were making those titles available.

I spent lots of time recently with the industry’s contractors looking closely at that methodology. It appears to treat campus networks equivalently to each other and to commercial networks, and so it’s unlikely that Helium was being targeted as Samantha asserted.

If Samantha had taken the infringement data to her security staff, they probably would have discovered the same thing I did, and either used NAT data to identify offenders, or perhaps to justify policy changes for the wireless network. Same goes for exploring the methodology. But instead Samantha relied on her belief that the data were incorrect and/or targeted

Promoting Analytic Effectiveness

Because of Stan’s and Samantha’s belief in mythology, their organizations’ behavior remains largely uninformed by analytics and data.

A key tenet in decision analysis holds that information has no value (other than the intrinsic value of knowledge) unless the decisions an individual or an institution have before them will turn out differently depending on the information. That is, unless decisions depend on the results of data analysis, it’s not worth collecting or analyzing data.

Colleges, universities, and other academic institutions have difficulty accepting this, since the intrinsic value of information is central to their existence. But what’s valuable intrinsically isn’t necessarily valuable operationally.

Generic praise for “data-based decision making” or “analytics” won’t change this. Neither will post-hoc documentation that decisions are consistent with data. Rather, what we need are good, simple stories that will help mythology evolve: case studies of how colleges and universities have successfully and prospectively used data analysis to change their behavior for the better. Simply using data analysis doesn’t suffice, and neither does better behavior: we need stories that vividly connect the two.

Ironically, the best way to combat mythology is with–wait for it–mythology…