July-August 2006

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AAUP Special Committee to Examine Deepening Post-Katrina Concerns

By Jordan E. Kurland

The March–April issue of Academe surveyed the issues of concern, as of the start of spring, at the universities in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (“AAUP Responds to Katrina’s Impact on New Orleans Universities,” pages 10–14). At institutions where large numbers of faculty had already been placed on furlough or notified of layoff (including Tulane University, the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, and Southern University at New Orleans), procedures for contesting the actions were reported as inadequate under AAUP-supported standards or simply unavailable. Also reported was a draft restructuring plan being circulated at the University of New Orleans that called for multiple faculty layoffs and a similar plan said to be in preparation at  Loyola University.

On April 21, the governing board for the University of New Orleans declared a state of financial exigency, and four days later a final restructuring plan was issued. In the face of warnings to the administration from the AAUP staff about the inadequacy of criteria and procedures provided in the plan, the administration in mid-May issued to an estimated thirty-five to forty tenured professors notice that they would be placed on furlough this summer. The local AAUP chapter reports unexpectedly large numbers of resignations and retirements during the spring, however, and by early June a smaller number of involuntary furloughs was expected.

Financial exigency has not been declared at Loyola University, where it is generally acknowledged that the institution’s current financial health provides no basis for doing so. In April, however, the administration circulated a draft restructuring plan calling for termination of faculty appointments on grounds of program discontinuance based primarily on educational considerations. The AAUP staff, in a detailed letter to the president, identified severe problems in the plan. The University Senate and the faculty of the university’s largest college, each by an overwhelming margin, voted in favor of postponing adoption of the plan pending further study and indeed voted no confidence in the administrative officers perceived as having formulated the plan. Nonetheless, on May 19 Loyola’s board of trustees voted unanimously to adopt the plan, and the administration announced its intent to issue notices of layoff to seventeen tenured professors.

Reacting to the array of AAUP concerns that were emerging at the various New Orleans universities in Katrina’s aftermath, the chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, David A. Hollinger (History, University of California, Berkeley), with the concurrence of general secretary Roger Bowen, authorized the appointment of a special committee to inquire into and report on these concerns. In early May, the staff informed the chief administrative officers of the New Orleans universities, the officers of the relevant AAUP chapters, and the AAUP’s Louisiana conference of the special committee’s composition and purpose.

The Special Committee on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans Universities is chaired by Robert M. O’Neil (Law, University of Virginia). Its other members are Norma C. Cook (Speech Communication, University of Tennessee), Matthew W. Finkin (Law, University of Illinois), Myron S. Henry (Mathematics, University of Southern Mississippi), Hirschel Kasper (Economics, Oberlin College), Lorenzo Morris (Political Science, Howard  University), Lawrence S. Poston (English, University of Illinois, Chicago), Linda Ray Pratt (English, University of Nebraska at Lincoln), and Peter O. Steiner (Economics and Law, University of Michigan).

O’Neil’s service to higher education over the decades includes presidencies of the University of Wisconsin System and the University of Virginia. Four other special committee members have held significant university administrative offices during the course of their careers. The members of the special committee have been particularly prominent in the AAUP’s leadership. Included among them are former Association presidents, officers and Council members; a general counsel; and chairs and members not only of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and its ad hoc investigating committees but also of the Committee on College and University Governance and the Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession.

Convening for a preliminary meeting in the Association’s Washington office on May 24, the special committee discussed its charge and worked out plans for compiling and evaluating documentation in the weeks immediately ahead and for its members to conduct site visits and interviews in New Orleans beginning in early August. The group plans to convene again as a full committee at the end of August in New Orleans.