Last year, Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson made national news when he went public with his department's attempt to sabotage his tenure case. Johnson was a prolific and respected scholar, a fine teacher, and a dedicated departmental citizen--but he also dared to question the procedural ethics of certain senior colleagues, most notably those of Philip Gallagher, the department chair.

Johnson fell afoul of Gallagher when he questioned his conduct during a hiring search. Instead of urging the committee to recruit the best candidate for the job, Gallagher had written that the search committee should concentrate on hiring a woman, ideally one of those rare women "we can live with, who are not whiners from the word go or who need therapy as much as they need a job." When Johnson this objected to this doubly discriminatory logic (which managed both to suggest that male applicants should be ignored because they are male and that most female applicants are likely to be emotionally incompetent), he alienated Gallagher so thoroughly that he launched a campaign to sink Johnson's bid for tenure and so to fire him.

Since Johnson's teaching, service, and publication records were impeccable (Gallagher himself had written, in a formal review, that Johnson was "exemplary," "impressive," "little short of electrifying," and that he "has helped the department to create a new definition of scholarly collegiality"), Gallagher determined--in consultation with a college lawyer no less--to pursue Johnson for lack of collegiality, a foggy category that essentially enables a department to villify and oust people for all the wrong reasons. (Johnson has published a detailed summary of his case here.)

Gallagher failed famously in his attempt. And when CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein overturned Brooklyn College's negative decision and awarded Johnson tenure, I wrote that we should not be willing to let the affair end there: Gallagher was still in the position of authority that he had so egregiously abused; the individual who had engineered the vindictive and immoral attempt to destroy Johnson's career was still sitting pretty his chairmanship. He ought to have been fired, but it looked as though he was not even going to get a slap on the wrist.

Last week, however, things changed. Gallagher was removed from his position as the chair of Brooklyn College's history department. But don't imagine that he was fired, or even simply demoted to the daily round of teaching and committee work that is the lot of those professors who do not enjoy the power and the perquisites of an administrative post. No, Gallagher was promoted to a new administrative post. In the words of BC provost Roberta Matthews, who sent out a memo to CUNY faculty announcing Gallagher's new appointment,

As many of you know, I have spent the past year working with the Office of Graduate Studies, the Office of Graduate Admissions, and through them the Graduate Deputies. Together we have begun to: identify those procedures in the Graduate Division that should be reviewed; assess the quality and viability of existing programs; and examine areas where there may be opportunities for the introduction or growth of programs with high interest that are consistent with our academic mission. It has become clear that this is a critical area, especially as the University begins to develop its new master plan, and we lay the groundwork for a new Brooklyn College Strategic Plan.

I am pleased to announce that Professor Philip F. Gallagher has agreed to take on a new assignment leading this initiative. He is uniquely qualified to conduct a review designed to strengthen the academic curricula and programs of our Graduate Division. As our budget becomes more dependent on tuition, it is vital for us to achieve healthy enrollments in all our graduate programs. Professor Gallagher has been a long-time chairperson, a Graduate Deputy, and, most importantly for this assignment, the former chairperson of the joint Administration-Faculty Council Task Force on Rules and Regulations in the Graduate Division, whose report in 1994 was the blueprint for a number of important procedural and governance changes in the Graduate Division.

Matthews casts Gallagher's new appointment as a great responsibility, and as a step up for Gallagher professionally. Citing his work as history department chair, she suggests that Gallagher earned the new appointment at least in part by his stellar performance as the leader of his department.

Gallagher is not the only person Brooklyn College has appeared to reward for his atrocious conduct during the KC Johnson case. But there are some cracks in the celebratory veneer here that suggest that the new appointment is motivated at least in part by the need to do damage control without seeming to do it, as well as by the desire to retain the services of an experienced administrator who has shown himself to be receptive to Matthews' controversial and potentially destructive plans to revamp the school's curriculum. Since when, for example, does a department chair step down one week into a semester? And what does it mean when that chair steps into a job that was never publicly announced, but whose existence was declared in the memo that named him to it?

I'll post more as more becomes available.

UPDATE: Reader Brian O. has this to say about Gallagher's tactical promotion: "It's called "kicking him upstairs," a classic military move. You declare the rout a victory, pin a medal on the losing general, and promote him!" That sounds about right.