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State of the Profession: Program Discontinuance at Drake
By Martin D. Snyder
Last spring, the board of trustees of Iowa’s Drake University approved a controversial proposal to eliminate the school’s foreign-language program and effectively end classroom instruction in modern foreign languages. The proposal, which passed muster with the faculty senate, will lead to the termination of eight tenured and tenure-track faculty members and seven part-time professors. Whether Drake’s decision to close down the foreign-language department and, in essence, "contract out" language instruction to study centers abroad, to Internet chat rooms, and to multilingual internship sites makes pedagogical sense is a matter for the faculty to decide. How AAUP policy may have figured in the board’s decision, however, is of concern to the Association.
News reports surrounding the Drake controversy suggest that Association policy played a part, at least indirectly, in the final decision to eliminate the foreign-language program. John Silber, chancellor of Boston University and not a warm supporter of AAUP policies, put it this way in an April 3 op-ed piece for the Boston Herald: "If a university accepts, as Drake has, the rules of the American Association of University Professors, it is almost impossible to terminate tenured professors for anything short of a felony conviction. The one loophole is that tenure may be broken when an entire program is shut down." Silber, ignoring the mediative role that the Association often plays, seems to imply that AAUP policy is so absolutist that the only allowable solution to individual personnel problems may be the annihilation of an entire department.
Let’s be clear about what AAUP policy says (and doesn’t say) on the termination of tenured appointments when a program is discontinued. According to the Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure, termination of a tenured appointment may occur "as a result of a bona fide formal discontinuance of a program or department of instruction." In the event of such discontinuance, several standards apply. First, the discontinuance must be based essentially on educational considerations as determined primarily by the faculty. Second, the administration must make every effort to place terminated faculty members in other suitable positions and to provide time and financial support for retraining, if that is feasible. In the absence of another suitable placement, appropriate severance salary will be provided. Finally, faculty members adversely affected by the program discontinuance will have the right to a full hearing before a faculty committee. AAUP policy does not say that administrations may unilaterally close down programs for any reason they please. Faculty involvement in what must be essentially an educational decision is required. Neither are administrations free of obligations to tenured faculty members simply by virtue of discontinuing a program. Alternative placements, retooling, and, in extreme cases, severance salary are required. Program discontinuance is not and ought not to be viewed as a "loophole" in the rights of tenure, nor should it be seen as an easy solution for difficult personnel problems.
So what about Drake? Has an AAUP policy designed to protect tenure been paradoxically perverted into a weapon against the faculty? This is not the appropriate venue to enter into a discussion of the specifics of what is surely a complex situation. David Maxwell, president of Drake University, has denied adamantly that the decision to discontinue the foreign-language program was driven by anything other than educational considerations. Removal of the program from "artificial life support" came, Maxwell claims, after a continuing pattern of low enrollments, expressed dissatisfaction by other faculty and students, a critical external review, and years of concerted attempts to reform and reposition the program, including spurned offers of faculty development and an unheeded mandate to produce a departmental strategic plan. Maxwell has not offered "the AAUP made me do it" as a defense. Whatever the merits of his justification (and the perspective of the faculty of the foreign-language department is, needless to say, radically different), he has consistently argued that the board’s decision came as a response to a particular educational situation at Drake. It remains to be seen whether Association standards have been met in all regards in the Drake situation. It would be erroneous to assume, however, that the action of Drake’s board was motivated, even in part, by a perverse interpretation of AAUP policy.
Martin Snyder is AAUP program director for academic freedom and governance.
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