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Professor’s Plans to Teach Abroad Fall Through
Carroll McKibbin, a senior professor at California Polytechnic State University, was looking forward to teaching in another country. In summer and early fall 1999, he corresponded with the Texas International Education Consortium about a visiting appointment for fall 2000 to teach political science at the American University in Baku (AUB), Azerbaijan. The consortium, whose board of directors is composed of the presidents of public universities in Texas, helps to recruit faculty and administrators for the AUB.
In July 1999 the consortium informed McKibbin that the AUB could pay him $35,000; the AUB confirmed this offer in writing in early September, promising to issue McKibbin a contract in April 2000. McKibbin heard nothing further from the AUB until he received an offer from the university’s executive vice president dated May 29, 2000, at a salary of $19,000. The vice president wrote that "changes in the financial status" of the AUB accounted for the lower figure. The consortium reports having tried without success to persuade the AUB to honor the September 1999 figure.
McKibbin protested the reduced salary, as did the AAUP’s staff. "The terms of the offer of appointment," says Jonathan Knight, AAUP associate secretary, "should have been consistent with statements made to Carroll McKibbin by officers of the consortium and of the AUB. And the May 29 date was well past when he could reasonably hope to secure a comparable teaching assignment or appointment elsewhere for fall 2000. The reference to the AUB’s financial status doesn’t offset the injury to him."
Unwilling to rely on the AUB to pay even the $19,000 salary, McKibbin declined the May 29 offer. He had already informed his home institution that he would not teach there in the fall in order to accept the appointment at the AUB. After declining that appointment, he told the consortium of his willingness to accept a teaching position in a Texas university for the fall semester, but nothing was found. On his own initiative, he obtained a last-minute appointment at a university in the Midwest at a salary less than what the AUB had offered in May.
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