[CTcard]

... When the situation doesn't absolutely demand courage and vision, we're not going to get it.  He has the numbers to defend not making a change,  so why go out on a limb?  And he won't. 

... Bowlsby arriving and firing Wlat was like a superhero in a cartoon, the ground shaking when he landed with both feet.

I have to say I don't believe that it's an accurate use of language to label firing Dawkins and Wlat as the courageous choice and extending them as safe.

Mostly those terms just seem to be off-point, but to the extent you can use them I would say courage would have to be defined as opting for the choice that will bring you the most grief from supporters and safe as opting for the most approval - possibly modified by the wallet size of those on either side.

By Christmas 2006 I really think that Wlat had NO support in the Stanford community, and if Bowlsby had ended up keeping him he would have received a $%#$ storm of criticism, complaints, and donors withholding money. It would seem that at that time, the courageous (and stupid) course of action would have been to keep Wlat.

That is not at all so clear right now with Dawkins, primarily because Dawkins' record (on all counts) is much more mixed than Wlat's. Just in this thread his ability is being debated.  Wlat on the other hand was just complained about, not debated, by the end of 2006. My rough feeling is that the grief for Muir would be roughly equal in either firing or keeping Dawkins [though maybe others here know more about what larger donors to Stanford feel about Dawkins?]. That would seem to take courage out of the equation, leaving the much more murky situation of actually trying to figure out what would lead to a better Stanford program X years in the future - and how big X should be.

[CTcard]

... When the situation doesn't absolutely demand courage and vision, we're not going to get it.  He has the numbers to defend not making a change,  so why go out on a limb?  And he won't. 

... Bowlsby arriving and firing Wlat was like a superhero in a cartoon, the ground shaking when he landed with both feet.

I have to say I don't believe that it's an accurate use of language to label firing Dawkins and Wlat as the courageous choice and extending them as safe.

Mostly those terms just seem to be off-point, but to the extent you can use them I would say courage would have to be defined as opting for the choice that will bring you the most grief from supporters and safe as opting for the most approval - possibly modified by the wallet size of those on either side.

By Christmas 2006 I really think that Wlat had NO support in the Stanford community, and if Bowlsby had ended up keeping him he would have received a $%#$ storm of criticism, complaints, and donors withholding money. It would seem that at that time, the courageous (and stupid) course of action would have been to keep Wlat.

That is not at all so clear right now with Dawkins, primarily because Dawkins' record (on all counts) is much more mixed than Wlat's. Just in this thread his ability is being debated.  Wlat on the other hand was just complained about, not debated, by the end of 2006. My rough feeling is that the grief for Muir would be roughly equal in either firing or keeping Dawkins [though maybe others here know more about what larger donors to Stanford feel about Dawkins?]. That would seem to take courage out of the equation, leaving the much more murky situation of actually trying to figure out what would lead to a better Stanford program X years in the future - and how big X should be.