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From the President-Should We Abandon All Hope?
By Cary Nelson
Let’s begin with an instructional riddle for higher education’s new millennium. What would a university president do if many existing institutional rules and regulations, including the checks and balances structured into shared governance, along with many moral and professional values, were suddenly to be removed? The president in question is not likely to be a philosopher king. He or she is probably not among the most eloquent defenders of academic freedom on campus. The president admires faculty who keep their mouths shut and bring in revenue, but does not admire faculty who are the source of inconvenient ethical and professional challenges. You do not look to such a president for intellectual leadership. You may live in fear that such a person would actually acquire a vision of the university’s mission. Of course, many fine administrators who believe in shared governance remain in office throughout the country, but many others no longer share those values.
So how would such an administrator behave given complete freedom of operation? How would one restructure a college or university if it could be done without any meaningful faculty consultation? What if nineteenth-century-style at-will faculty employment returned and swept aside faculty control not only over hiring, but also over the curriculum and institutional mission?
What if a whole region separated itself from fifty years of shared governance? In New Orleans, such a perfect educational storm followed Hurricane Katrina. Organized in different ways by a series of university presidents and other administrators, this educational hurricane swept aside many elements of shared governance, due process, and tenure. And it has established a precedent that other presidents will apply in comparable and lesser disasters—not only in freak storms, earthquakes, fires, and terrorist attacks, but also in declarations of financial exigency or in reorganization projects. There is already evidence of New Orleans–style administrative behavior in both lesser categories elsewhere. We have seen one future, and the faculty is not there. As the AAUP report on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans universities (printed in the May–June 2007 issue of Academe) made clear, the various institutions acted differently, but the aggregate regional effect—which is what I am addressing—was bleak indeed.
Many tenured faculty were fired with scant notice, no meaningful due process, no stated reasons, and no appeal save to the very administrators who released them. Some found out they had already been taken off payroll and health care. Departments and programs were closed down without appropriate review. The administrators used the excuse of Hurricane Katrina, but it is clear no level of emergency existed that required the elimination of due process. One university’s faculty offered successive votes of no confidence in the administration, but the board of trustees has continued to provide the administration with full support.
One other key fact should give us all fair warning: most of these universities had adequate governance procedures and due process regulations and appropriate financial crisis guidelines on the books. Many of these procedures—stated in faculty handbooks—were dismissed out of hand. One might say the levees shoring up shared governance and tenure needed to be reinforced before the storm hit.
What can the faculty do? We all know faculty act in concert most energetically in a crisis, but in New Orleans that was too late. Clearly faculty who can organize under the law for collective bargaining—or who have the level of solidarity necessary to force administrators to negotiate—should mirror shared governance practice, tenure regulations, and due process guarantees in a legally enforceable contract. A binding contract is also the most reliable way to limit the inappropriate use of contingent faculty. That advice is fundamental to AAUP-style unionization. A strong AAUP chapter, with a tradition of activism and a high percentage of faculty participation, is equally necessary. It is not too late for many of us to prepare for bad weather.
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