Governance Conference Draws Faculty and Administrators

This year, the conference began with a day devoted to governance issues at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In the opening session, AAUP president Jane Buck stressed the need for faculty inclusion in one of the most important tasks facing HBCUs today: the search for a way to maintain a historical tradition of serving the African American community while welcoming the diverse mix of students and faculty now present on HBCU campuses. Buck taught at Delaware State University, an HBCU, for twenty nine years. The only way to solve this challenge and others, argued Richard Wright, chair of the Howard University Faculty Senate, is for faculty members and administrators to work cooperatively. Historically, he said, faculty at some HBCUs have had to struggle to ensure broad-based participation in governing their institutions. He urged them to continue, stating, "shared governance isn’t the best way; it’s the only way."

In other sessions, participants considered differences between HBCUs and traditionally white colleges and universities, the mission of HBCUs in an era in which African American students have access to many kinds of institutions, the legacy of scholarship at HBCUs, and ways in which the status and goals of HBCUs relate to those of other specialized institutions, such as women’s and religiously affiliated colleges. Participants also discussed conditions on specific campuses and methods of addressing them.

Subsequent conference sessions explored shared governance at colleges and universities generally. Speakers at a session on faculty participation in institutional budgeting described why faculty should get involved with what can be a tedious and time consuming process. Participants in other sessions discussed the effects of collective bargaining on faculty governance, issues raised by distance education, the role of trustees in academic affairs, the importance of faculty involvement in governance at community colleges, and faculty handbooks and grievance procedures.

Historian Joan Wallach Scott, chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, delivered the first annual Neil Rappaport Lecture on Academic Freedom and Shared Governance, in which she stressed the continuing importance of faculty control over academic matters. High-handed presidents and isolated attacks on faculty control are nothing new, Scott said. What is novel today, she argued, is that historic shifts in higher education are resulting in the devaluation of faculty expertise, the restructuring of universities according to corporate models, and the redefinition of education as a commodity sold to clients. Scott noted that faculty members have resisted such changes on individual campuses, and she urged them to continue to do so. She cited the struggle of Neil Rappaport, one of more than two dozen faculty members subjected to dismissal at Bennington College following a sweeping reorganization by the college’s board of trustees and president, which led to an AAUP investigation and censure. Most of the dismissed faculty, including Rappaport, filed suit, which resulted in a financial settlement with the college in December 2000. Rappaport, a leader in the dispute with the college, died before the settlement was reached, as did two other plaintiffs. The surviving plaintiffs designated a portion of the settlement money to a memorial fund administered by the AAUP and used to sponsor the Rappaport Lecture.

The conference concluded with a plenary session on cultivating faculty leadership. For feature articles based on the 2000 governance conference, see the May–June 2001 issue of Academe. The Ford Foundation generously contributed funds to support this year’s conference.

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