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Mary Burgan Retires as AAUP General Secretary
There's a crown in Mary Burgan's office—not gold or jewel encrusted, just a paper affair from the local party store. The cheapness of the material, however, does not detract from its symbolic value. After Mary took the fight for tenure and academic freedom to the very doorstep of Bennington College in 2000, the staff threw a party to honor her, and the party crown remains as a memento. The Bennington teach-in was important both for what it accomplished (a settlement for aggrieved faculty members) and for what it said about the AAUP's general secretary. There were Mary's special talents and virtues concentrated in a single episode—the courage to stand up for principle, the intelligence to argue a position forcefully, the wit and nimbleness to engage in a public debate even on the opposition's own turf, the instinct to move decisively when others advised caution, the empathetic understanding of the plight of an abused faculty, and finally, the ability to savor, even in exhaustion, a battle well fought and well won. During her decade of leadership, Mary Burgan has led the AAUP in many battles: the tenure wars at the University of Minnesota, the attack on affirmative action at the University of California, the post-September 11 threats to academic freedom, the exploitation of contingent faculty, and so many more. However, her gusto, her vigor, and her uncanny sense of what is right about and right for higher education were never more evident than on that electric afternoon at Bennington College. In June, Mary Burgan will retire after ten years as the AAUP's general secretary, and she will indeed be a hard act to follow.
After retiring, Mary will complete a manuscript for a book entitled Reconstructing Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: A Faculty View, forthcoming from the Johns Hopkins University Press. She has received a Rockefeller Institute residency and will spend mid-September to mid-October in Bellagio, Italy. After the residency, Mary and her husband, Bill, will travel in Europe for several months, and in December Mary will lead a tour to Moscow and St. Petersburg. After attending the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in Philadelphia, the Burgans will move to Berkeley, where Mary will be a visitor at the University of California Center for Studies in Higher Education. They will come back home to Washington in May 2005. Mary will be a visitor at the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston for a month in fall 2005. Then, who knows?
The statements that follow express the sentiments of those who have worked closely with Mary over the years.
—AAUP staff
Mary Burgan's career enacts the belief that faculty members as faculty members can be consequential in academic policy decisions. As a longtime colleague of Mary's at Indiana University, I knew and felt the impact of her views on teaching writing to first-year students, the fair (and appropriate) use of teaching assistants and adjuncts, the procedures governing faculty status, the professional life of women—everything we care about. My point is that she didn't have to become a dean to do it; she gained a hearing and made institutional policy precisely as a concerned faculty member, working outward from the center of her own professional competence.
Some faculty members delude themselves into thinking that everything important can happen within the four walls of "their" classrooms, minimizing the downside effects of a flawed institutional milieu. Some go to the other extreme, shirking classroom encounters for more bureaucratic enticements. Mary Burgan has demonstrated the fruits of a balanced career, in which the old triad of teaching, research, and service really meant something. This is not an encoded way of saying "skimpy research"—she has published first-rate research in her field, in the best presses and journals. But she has constantly resisted any imputation that teaching and service are expendable categories of accomplishment.
I write this little memoir in exhilaration and sorrow, the sorrow since Mary Burgan's kind of career is harder to have nowadays. So many obstacles now unsettle the very balance that Mary achieved: the degeneration of full-time faculty status, the disparagement of teaching and service as promotion criteria, lopsided reward systems geared to the "outside offer" . . . only a word-limit prevents me from extending this list.
Even Mary Burgan would say that it's harder now for a younger faculty member to be "Mary Burgan." But not, I hope, impossible. And I salute her for working through the AAUP to transmit the vision of a balanced and unalienated career to those coming after.
—Paul Strohm
(English)
Columbia University
Leading the AAUP requires the diplomatic skills of Kofi Annan, the intellect of Martha Nussbaum, and the altruism of Mother Teresa. One, first of all, must be passionately committed to the defining values of American higher education—transformative teaching, creative research continually reconfiguring the intellectual landscape, a mission of service, and a commitment to access. One also needs to see the academy as a context for unalienated labor—a place where those who perform the primary work, members of the faculty, are honored and supported in their efforts. One needs to be able to bridge gaps and bring (sometimes contentious) people together. Finally, one needs to see beyond the conventional and capitalize upon overlooked opportunities. Mary Burgan possesses all these qualities in abundance. In her term as general secretary, in both her writing and her many presentations, she has displayed the insight and intellectual honesty of a true scholar—one who has helped us confront difficult and defining questions facing today's academic world. She has affirmed the power of dialogue, as when she joined with me to bring together the AAUP and the American Conference of Academic Deans in a national conversation about shared governance. And she has championed the rights of individual faculty members where those rights were imperiled. In short, she has been the ideal leader for the AAUP. To say that it will be difficult to fill Mary Burgan's shoes is akin to saying that academic freedom is a pretty good idea.
—Philip A. Glotzbach
President
Skidmore College
The Burgan decade began for me when, as a member of Council, I was privileged to vote to engage Mary as the new general secretary. And it's been an exhilarating ride ever since, both literally and figuratively. Mary has been untiring in her efforts to further the Association's principles, unflinching in the face of daunting challenges, and gracious in her dealings with her colleagues. Her eloquent voice has enhanced our reputation in our own country and in the international higher education community as she has spoken on some of the most contentious issues facing us. She has been a great general secretary and a great friend. I take solace in the fact that she and Bill will remain in D.C. so that we shall not lose contact.
—Jane Buck
(Psychology)
Delaware State University
AAUP President
Each of us who has had the privilege of working closely with Mary Burgan during the past decade will cite different dimensions of the exemplary leadership she has provided for the AAUP. Such encomia may occasion less surprise for me than for others, since Mary and I were colleagues and neighbors three decades ago, and have remained close friends ever since.
Two qualities seem to me especially admirable. One is Mary's uniquely sensitive appreciation of the myriad ways in which the case for academic freedom may be advanced. At times, a strong statement by the general secretary to the media may best serve that purpose. At other times, a campus visit may be welcome—and no other AAUP leader has been as willing as she to make such visits, nor as effective in garnering support in the field. Other situations may warrant investigation (which she has sparingly and wisely authorized numerous times), while litigation may sometimes best serve the needs of academic freedom, as Mary has realized in approving some of our most important court filings. She has not only appreciated the potential of such an array of weapons, but has been singularly skillful in choosing among them.
The other quality I would commend is Mary's readiness to make common cause with congenial administrators and governing boards (and their national organizations). While no general secretary has been more critical of those who disrespect or defile academic freedom, she has invited the collaboration of presidents and trustees who share our values. Having earlier served with distinction as both professor and administrator, she brought to Washington an optimal blend of both roles.
—Robert O'Neil
(Law)
University of Virginia
Mary Burgan has provided critical, courageous leadership for the AAUP during her years as general secretary. She's identified important issues for the Association generally (her columns in Academe provide a good historical record of this) and for Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in particular, pushing us to come up with reports and revisions of existing policy statements even when we were not so sure we needed to. She was usually right; the questions did indeed need to be considered and the materials we produced apply Association principles to new areas of concern (among them post-tenure review). Her decision to create special committees or task forces also yielded important results, allowing the Association to comment publicly in an informed way on urgent matters such as affirmative action or academic freedom in a time of national emergency.
But it is not Mary's prescience or her strategic sense that are her most original qualities, in my view; it is her feistiness. My dictionary defines feisty as excitable, spirited, and frisky. That seems to me to capture the character of the woman who led the troops to protest the firings of the Bennington College faculty in 2000; who had little patience for arbitrary academic bureaucrats or, for that matter, pompous, self-righteous faculty; who took AAUP principles to heart and defended them tenaciously. Mary's feistiness gave exactly the right edge to her work and to ours; it made her a provocative and attractive leader and it gave her the energy to carry on in the face of demanding and difficult challenges. I hope we haven't exhausted that store of energy and that she will continue to bring her spirited intelligence to the AAUP, as well as to whatever new endeavors she undertakes.
—Joan W. Scott
(History)
Institute for Advanced Study
Chair, Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Mary has brought to the AAUP a warm and generous spirit that fuels a style of leadership notable especially for outreach. She has traveled extensively, communicated effectively, and worked closely with AAUP leaders and members, higher education colleagues, and staff.
Even more important, Mary has given genuine substance, as well as greater visibility, to the AAUP's outreach, not only by her widely presented and well-regarded presentations but also by her unusual readiness to recruit individual colleagues across the country to contribute to our efforts. She led the AAUP's academic freedom and tenure battles at Bennington, at Minnesota, and in policy forums around the nation; increased AAUP campus involvement through expanded conferences on governance and on religion and academic freedom; and established programmatic efforts and foundation support for the AAUP's work in behalf of the advancement of minorities and women.
These programmatic contributions demonstrate both that Mary has been ready and able to innovate where innovation could contribute to the AAUP's aims and that she has steadfastly recurred to the AAUP's central focus on the advancement of academic freedom and professional standards. The AAUP, the profession, and those of us who worked with her have all benefited from her ten years of hard work and able leadership.
—Ernst Benjamin
(Political Science)
Washington, D.C.
Former general secretary, AAUP
Mary Burgan hired me—and many others—into the English department at Indiana University, where she served as chair in the 1980s. When she recruited faculty, she looked not just to shape the future of the department. She looked to shape our future, to teach us how to be in the profession.
She was a remarkable chair in a department known for outstanding administrators. With respect for the minutiae of human relations, she also understood how to realize the impossible. Colleagues are fond of recalling a Modern Language Association convention in Washington, D.C., when Mary secured the fabulous Pearl Mesta suite at the Sheraton (with grand piano, chandeliers, and full-length portrait of the famous hostess). Having determined that the hotel reservations clerk was a basketball fan, Mary had bribed him with an autographed videotape of Indiana's notorious basketball coach. We enjoyed a spectacular recruiting season that year, thanks in part to Ms. Mesta's interior decorating; thanks too to Mary's last minute phone call to our dean, insisting that he double our authorized lines from two to four. He did, miraculously.
I recall a less dramatic moment. Anxious and uptight, I went to Mary's office once to complain—who knows why. Perhaps it was my first bout with the common academic malady, feeling ignored. Mary listened, kindly. Then she offered advice. You and your cohort, she noted, all your lives you've brought home the A+. Now it's time to forget the A+. What do you want to do?
A teacher's question. And a simple lesson in academic freedom. Beyond the grades, requirements, and myriad forms of evaluation was the possibility that anyone can learn what she needs and wants to do.
Introduced to the professoriate by Mary Burgan, one should be forgiven for believing in the impossible: that the university can be a human community, that education can re-create individuals, and that learning demands an atmosphere of freedom.
—Mary Favre
(English)
Indiana University-Bloomington
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