1. A colleague who is currently chair of his department remarked [on the current structure of meetings for department chairs]
2. This interested me because I would say the same about the current structure of meetings for [my committee]
3. Both this colleague’s observation and mine bespeak the situation described in [JL’s piece], on the erosion not just of faculty rights but of the definition of faculty
4. A friend who works in business, to whom I explained [1 and 2] came to the same conclusion [3], without knowing of JL’s piece
5. It is en este sentido that, here, I comment upon some events in AY 2012-2013 on [the committee referenced in (2)] — a committee whose charge it is to voice faculty views but which is in my view being molded into an organ to echo [a certain set of views] and ultimately delegitimize professional opinion of faculty (and even discount the possibility that faculty could hold a professional opinion)
6. What happened were attempts to remove powerful faculty from certain decision making processes and also remove decision making itself as a charge of certain faculty bodies — so as to repurpose these bodies as a kind of focus group to be trained in, and then echo a particular management message
7. These are the moves and the language used; when pieces of them are floated at your institution, recognize them for what they are.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
The other lead-in: I have been involved with committees like this for a long time but still did not realize until more recently how essential they are. I write this in the hope that people like the person I was will realize and will help to revitalize.
Another tack: trends in faculty senates nationwide.