Annual Meeting Assesses Academy’s Transformation

Keynote speaker David Kirp, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, addressed the assembly about the rise of market ethics in academia and how they connect, and sometimes collide, with traditional academic values. Kirp explored two case studies of institutions that have, in different ways, adopted market values. In one case, the business school at a large public institution runs lucrative programs tailored to specific companies and is increasingly independent of the larger institution, to which it pays a small percentage of its income as a "franchise fee." In another, a small liberal arts college salvaged its declining reputation and revenues by calling attention to a few outstanding programs and developing a financial-aid formula designed to attract highly qualified students rather than the neediest applicants.

Market strategies allowed both institutions to realize important gains, ranging from increased reputation to better facilities and more focused missions. But the primacy of market values also undermines some traditional academic values, such as a commitment to educating all students, not just middle-class students and academic high achievers; a belief that the fruits of university research should be shared with the public, not controlled by corporate patrons; and the conviction that it is not just market demand that determines the worth of an academic discipline. Academics, Kirp concluded, must do a better and more forceful job of articulating how and why academic values matter.

In her address, keynote speaker Mary Ann Mason, dean of the graduate division at Berkeley, presented results from a research project titled "Do Babies Matter?" The answer, Mason said, is that babies do matter, but in ways that are sometimes surprising. Women who have babies early in their careers (within five years of earning a Ph.D.) are less likely than their male colleagues to earn tenure in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Conversely, men who have "early babies" are more likely than all other groups to earn tenure. The majority of women who have tenure have no children in the household, and women in general tend to be concentrated in lower-status and lower-paying academic positions, such as staff or adjunct appointments and positions at two-year institutions. Mason made several recommendations about how to ameliorate the problem, including advising graduate students about the "realities" of academic life; providing support for graduate students who have children; stopping the tenure clock for one year for each child for assistant professors; and encouraging re-entry tracks for those who leave academia for a few years.

At a banquet on June 8, the Association honored Stephen Finner, who is retiring from the staff after twenty-three years. AAUP president Jane Buck reminded the assembly of Finner’s achievements, particularly in the area of collective bargaining and on behalf of historically black colleges and universities.

The annual meeting included updates on some recent events. Indiana conference president Joseph Losco made a brief presentation about a controversial production of the play Corpus Christi at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne. Barbara Clark Smith and Paul Forman, both curators at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, discussed the continuing controversy over the extent to which it is appropriate for donors to be involved in decision making at the institution. Robert Quinn, director of Scholars at Risk, discussed worldwide threats to academic freedom and the efforts of his organization to rescue threatened scholars.

Capitol Hill Day

Honors and Awards

The Ralph S. Brown Award for Shared Governance was presented to Luther F. Carter, president of Francis Marion University, for his accomplishments in making governance at that institution a genuinely collaborative endeavor. In 1997 the AAUP placed Francis Marion University on its list of sanctioned institutions, following an investigation that found that the administration then in office had established a pattern of bypassing faculty committees, ignoring faculty senate proposals, and disregarding approved procedures. The investigating committee concluded that a "highly polarized state of affairs" had developed between the faculty and the administration.

But welcome changes came in 1999, when a newly reconstituted board of trustees replaced the president who had held office when the Association’s sanction was imposed. Carter, the new president, publicly expressed his embarrassment over the university’s presence on the AAUP’s sanction list and announced his commitment to reestablishing a system of shared governance at the institution. The resulting changes in the structures of governance, endorsed by the university’s board of trustees, now ensure meaningful faculty participation in institutional decision-making processes.

The Georgina Smith Award, given each year to a person who has provided exceptional leadership in improving the status of women or advancing collective bargaining, was presented to Keith Hoeller, professor of philosophy at Green River and Tacoma Community Colleges, for his exceptional achievements in advancing the interests of contingent faculty—a large proportion of whom are women—through legislative lobbying and collective bargaining.

At the meeting to collect a certificate of appreciation was fifty-year member William F. Railing, professor of economics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. (See list of all the fifty-year members recognized at the annual meeting.)

The University of Central Arkansas chapter of the AAUP received the 2002 Beatrice G. Konheim Award, which recognizes a chapter for "outstanding achievement in advancing the Association’s objectives in academic freedom, student rights and freedoms, the status of academic women, the elimination of discrimination against minorities, or the establishment of equal opportunity for members of college and university faculties." The AAUP censured the university’s administration in 2000, after the institution’s president violated principles of academic freedom and tenure. The AAUP chapter led the faculty in opposing the president’s actions and called public attention to the situation. Last December, following the AAUP censure and related developments exposing the president’s disregard for academic standards, he departed from office. With his successor still to be selected, the chapter is currently active in the formulation of improved policies that will be needed for censure to be removed.

Mark Clayton of the Christian Science Monitor attended the meeting to receive the Iris Molotsky Award for Excellence in Coverage of Higher Education for his two-part series, "The Gender Equation," which appeared in May 2001. The series explores the practices that some colleges and universities use to increase the number of men in their student populations.

Assembly of State Conferences

The ASC gives awards each year to recognize exceptional service to the AAUP and the profession and to help AAUP members travel to the annual meeting. The ASC’s Tacey Awards went to Maita Levine, a mathematics professor emerita at the University of Cincinnati, and Jane Dineen Panek, a professor of education at Molloy College, for outstanding service to their AAUP conferences. Marshall King, a professor of political science at Maryville University of St. Louis, received a John Hopper Scholarship, which is awarded to individuals attending their first annual meeting.

Konheim Travel Grants help AAUP chapters send delegates to the annual meeting. This year, grants were awarded to AAUP chapters at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, which sent Edward Gogol to the meeting; at the University of Central Oklahoma, which sent Sandra Mayfield, Amy Carrell, and Siegfried Heit; and at Calvin College, which sent Christiana DeGroot.

This year, the Rider University AAUP chapter won the ASC Award for the Outstanding Chapter Newsletter; the New Jersey conference won the ASC Award for the Outstanding Conference Newsletter; and the Arizona conference won the ASC Award for Outstanding Conference Web page.

Collective Bargaining Congress

Estelle Gellman, past chair of the CBC, received the Marilyn Sternberg Award, which is given annually to the AAUP member who best demonstrates a concern for human rights, courage, political foresight, and collective bargaining skills.

Censure Actions

The annual meeting accepted a statement from Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure making no recommendation for action in a case at the University of Virginia. The committee will report back to the annual meeting in 2003 about developments in the case. For further information, see the investigating committee’s report in the November–December 2001 issue of Academe.

Interim Statement on University of South Florida

On June 8, Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure released an interim statement on the investigation, still in process, of the issues posed by the case of Sami Al-Arian, a tenured professor of computer science at the University of South Florida. The statement is available.

Resolutions

Members approved two resolutions of appreciation during the annual meeting. They are reprinted in their entirety below.

Kerry E. Grant

Evelyn D. Miller.

Fifty-Year AAUP Members Honored

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