Threat of Privatization of
UMKC, by Patricia Brodsky
Who is Warren K. Erdman?, by Alfred Esser
What is Privatization?, by David Brodsky
UM President's Meeting with AAUP Chapter Unprecedented
Chancellor Search, by Patricia Brodsky
Chancellor Search Committee Members
Statement on the Chancellor's Search
Process Presented to the Faculty Senate, April 5, 2005,
by Patricia Brodsky
MO AAUP Conference Annual Meeting Discusses
State Defunding
Political Show Trial of Ward Churchill, by David Brodsky
MO AAUP Conference Resolution on Ward Churchill
Open Letter from Academics Supporting Ward
Churchill
Hamilton College Alumna Amy McAninch
Defends
Academic
Freedom
Tent State University, by Patricia Brodsky
AAUP Summer Institute 2005
News of the Chapter
Corrections of print version of
Faculty Advocate
Copyright Notice
Dues
Information
Back Issues
Public Higher Education
Again Under Fire: Privatization of UMKC may be in the Works
by Patricia Brodsky
As a public university UMKC
exists to educate the citizens of Missouri and to further human
knowledge. The University--its faculty, staff and
administration--welcome creative suggestions about how we can better
work together to strengthen the University
and the city.
UMKC is already involved in dozens of cooperative projects in the
community. These include, for example, the annual Foreign
Language Fair for area high schools sponsored by the Foreign
Language Department; the School of Education's Institute of Urban
Education,
and its Empowerment Program, funded by the Jackson County Mental Health
Levy; the Composers in the Schools program of the Conservatory of
Music;
the cooperative agreement between Miller Nichols and Linda Hall
libraries;
students in the Geosciences Department working in internships in the
Kansas
City Planning Department; free clinics offered by the Dental School and
the Law School; and SBS collaborative projects with KU Medical Center.
That said, it's clear that
not every suggestion is offered in a spirit of good will and
cooperation. Some have strings attached, and some are stealth
campaigns that it would be foolish and dangerous to ignore. Such
a project is the "Blue
Ribbon Task Force," commissioned by the Greater Kansas City Community
Foundation with the blessings of the UMKC Trustees and of Governor Matt
Blunt.
The Renewed Attack
Following Gilliland's
resignation, there were prolonged assaults in the media--on the
University, the President, the faculty, and the principle of
tenure. Vilification vanished
for several months, then reappeared in the March 18 issue of the
Kansas
City Business Journal, which recommended a reorganization plan for
the University of Missouri that would eliminate "the job of
universitywide
president," and, of course, its current occupant, whom the
Journal
"strongly advocate[s] removing" (Braude, "University"). This
marked
the start of a new campaign by certain business interests, who are
angered
and frustrated by events at UMKC.
An April 11 press release
informed the public that the UMKC Trustees, a private body without any
legal role in the governance of the University, had endorsed a task
force commissioned by the Greater Kansas City Community
Foundation. The GKCCF is a
local non-profit that manages and distributes private donations to
civic
projects. The avowed intention of the task force is "to conduct
a ... study of UMKC as an urban university.... The study process
will include a review of best practices of leading urban universities
across
the country.... With the search for a new chancellor underway,
reviewing the University's role in the urban community will be
valuable."
The Foundation officially sent a
letter to the Trustees on April 12, proposing the task force and
requesting the Trustees' approval. The letter, which describes a
team of "national education and urban development leaders" that had
clearly already been
constituted, concludes disingenuously: "If the Trustees are supportive
of this initiative, the Community Foundation will proceed immediately
to organize the Blue Ribbon Task Force." Many at the University
were
jarred by the fact that the discussion completely circumvented those
legally
responsible for governing the University--the President, the Board of
Curators,
and the faculty. The letter was cc'ed to System President and
Interim
UMKC Chancellor Floyd as a courtesy. He was not asked whether he
thought a study was necessary or desirable.
The Trustees' press release
immediately set off alarm bells, in particular the statement, "The task
force expects to complete the study in time to support the University
System
in its search for a new chancellor at UMKC." Not coincidentally,
the
Business Journal on April 29 was already proposing its own
candidate for chancellor, Carol Marinovich, former head of the Unified
Government
of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. Marinovich's most
significant
accomplishments, according to the
Business Journal , were the
unification
of the governments of the county and the city, and the business
development
of western Wyandotte County (Kansas Speedway, Cabela's, and other
"signature
developments"). Her professional qualification for the job is the
fact that she "started her career in education," although the
Journal
admits that she is not a "'pure' educator." If President Floyd
were
to take the
Journal's advice, it "would cause me to say, 'All
is forgiven'" (Braude, "UMKC").
Thus the study's timing is
meant to influence the chancellor search, and the agenda of one
proposed
candidate is clearly business, rather than academic, development.
However, the right and responsibility to fill the chancellor's position
are an internal matter. A faculty-driven search committee, which
also contains representatives from the Trustees and the wider
community,
is already at work. No one else from outside the university has
a say in this process.
UMKC is a public institution, and
the University of Missouri system and its Board of Curators are
established by the Constitution of the State of Missouri. In
addition, the Constitution requires that the General Assembly
adequately maintain the state university. UMKC thus operates
within a very clear set of rules, obligations and
rights. One of the reasons for the votes of no confidence which
led to Chancellor Gilliland's resignation was the fact that outside
forces,
such as highly paid consultants, were undermining the principles of
faculty
governance and exerting undue pressure on the workings of the
university.
The Blue Ribbon Task Force study seeks to regain the influence these
forces
lost with the Chancellor's departure.
The Jefferson City Connection
But the threats implicit in the
commissioning of the Task Force are more far-reaching and more
drastic. The Foundation's letter to the Trustees stated: "[the
Foundation feels] this study can be of use to Governor Matt Blunt's
Government Reform Commission (sic) as it evaluates the role of state
government in higher education." That is, the Task Force is not
simply an ad-hoc body backed by local interests with their own
agenda. It is part of a larger assault on public higher education
and the public sphere in general, with direct ties to the Blunt
administration and with an agenda echoing the one in Washington.
For example, the Governor recently signed legislation eliminating
Medicaid "coverage for about 100,000 Missourians," amounting to about
$368 million (Lubbes). And the Legislature is currently debating
a $48 million cut
in higher education funding.
As one of his first acts in
office, Governor Blunt formed the Missouri Government Review Commission
to recommend a "major reorganization" of state agencies and the
University of Missouri. Its mandate is to "examine executive
departments from top-to-bottom and to make recommendations on how state
government can address inefficiencies, achieve cost savings and provide
better service" (Missouri Government). The co-chair of the
Missouri Government Review Commission, Warren Erdman, is also a UMKC
Trustee. The Blue Ribbon Task Force, despite its supposed Kansas
City focus, is scheduled to present its findings not to the Curators or
the President but to the Missouri Government Review Commission.
Thus we can surmise that the Task
Force is not "independent" but is intended to dovetail with the
Governor's broad attack on public services, and on higher education in
particular. There are other interesting ideological
connections. UMKC Trustee and Missouri Commission co-chair Erdman
served as chairman for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004 in Missouri and
Kansas (Schlesinger). The Bush administration is vigorously
pursuing the privatization of public services, such as Social Security
and education (e.g. through vouchers). A close continuity with
Gilliland's Blueprint is also apparent. In a letter to the editor
of the
Chronicle of Higher Education in December 2002, Erdman
defended the Chancellor's autocratic methods, in familiar pop-psych
jargon straight out of Gilliland's press releases (i.e. in
"Bluespeak"). Erdman
wrote, "UMKC has put forward a clear vision. We aspire to be a
campus
where the walls come down, the silos of exclusion are replaced by
programs
of inclusion, and town and gown commingle, coalesce, and create."
The similarities between the
Blueprint and the Blue Ribbon Task Force go beyond the color of their
title pages to the forces behind them. It's a safe guess that the
report the Blue Ribbon Task Force plans to present will have much in
common
with the Blueprint/Vision. Apropos of privatization, we should
not
forget the recent history of the Gilliland administration, which
attempted
to sell off UMKC piecemeal to local business interests: SBS to the
Stowers
Institute (pretext of KC Life Sciences Initiative), the School of
Education
to the Kauffman Foundation (pretext of community service), and the Law
School
to Zimmer Companies Incorporated (pretext of downtown
revitalization). Hugh Zimmer is himself a Trustee, as is James
Stowers III. Other
major players with a presence on the Board include Hallmark, SW
Bell,
Dunn Construction, and Belger Cartage.
Nor should we forget a long
article in the
Kansas City Star by Bill Tammeus (Feb. 22, 2003)
proposing his vision of the future of UMKC. Tammeus' frame of
reference and proposals closely followed the KC Life Science Initiative
and UMKC Blueprint/Vision. It was answered by Marino
Martinez-Carrion in the March 4
Star
(reprinted in
The Faculty Advocate) and by David Brodsky in the
April 2003 Faculty
Advocate .
Thus all the evidence so far
suggests the hypothesis that the Blue Ribbon Task Force has been
established to privatize public higher education, in part or in toto,
starting with UMKC. More evidence for this hypothesis is offered
below.
Benno Schmidt, Chair of the Blue Ribbon Task
Force
Any doubts that the Task Force
study is a purely predatory move benefiting familiar interests, and
that its purpose is privatization of public higher education, can be
dispelled by looking at its members, who plan to pass judgment on UMKC
and give
us "expert" advice about our future.
The UMKC Board of Trustees
described the members of the Task Force as "distinguished national
leaders
and experts in the field of higher education" (UMKC Board). Let
us examine this claim.
The person chosen to chair
the study,
Benno Schmidt, is a notorious champion of
privatization
and enemy of the public sphere, with a long record of hostile relations
with faculty, students, and labor unions. While president of
Yale,
he "proposed cutting Yale's faculty ranks by 11% and eliminating
Sociology,
Linguistics and Engineering departments" (Clarion). "All but 4 of
the 35 departments in arts and sciences [were to] lose faculty
positions"
(DePalma). Strong faculty opposition to the cuts was one of the
reasons
for Schmidt's resignation, after only six years in office, the shortest
tenure
of a Yale president in the school's history.
Schmidt is also Chairman of the
Board for the Edison Schools corporation, which aggressively pushes to
privatize public schools for profit. But the company has
consistently lost money since its inception, and parents' groups at
Edison schools around the country are demanding a return to public
education for their children (Kaplan, Bracey). In Kansas City,
the board of the Westport Charter School and Edison sued one another
and were engaged in lengthy litigation. A school board official
called Edison an "'out-of-state, out-of-touch'
management company" (Franey). As of 2005 at least ten class
action
suits had been filed against Edison, including for civil rights
violations
and failure to provide a free and adequate education. During
Schmidt's
tenure as Chairman, Edison was fined by the US Department of
Education's
Office of Civil Rights for "failing to provide legally required
classroom
help for a disabled child" (PSC).
A look at Edison's financial
record reveals an even darker picture, and calls into question
Schmidt's suitability to advise either Kansas City or the
University. Schmidt has done well for himself in a company which
one observer called "Education's Enron" (Bracey). Edison founder
Christopher Whittle arranged for
CEO Schmidt to receive a $1.6 million loan from Edison in 1992 and
another
substantial loan in 1996, both at below market interest rates.
Both
Whittle and Schmidt received salaries of close to $300,000 in
1999.
Yet as of that year, Edison had revenues of only $215 million and
operating
costs of close to $326 million, and was soliciting money from
philanthropies
at the same time it was trying to sell stock on Wall Street (Byron).
Things got worse. Edison
used "'aggressive bookkeeping' ... to inflate stock prices while hiding
huge losses ... Edison officers have enjoyed windfalls in the
tens of millions of dollars" (Bracey). By 2002 Edison shares had
dropped 98%, and Edison had been accused by the SEC of misleading
investors (Evans). As another commentator pointed out, "Edison's
collapse would have been a major embarrassment for boosters of
educational privatization" (Moberg). But in a move that pleased
Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who, like his brother, is "an ardent
promoter of privatization and school vouchers," Edison was sold in July
2003 to Liberty Partners, the firm that manages investments for the
Florida Retirement System (FRS). "FRS became virtually the sole
owner of Edison." Thus the pension fund for public employees was
put at risk in order to bail out a failing company whose goal had been
to put them out of work. The deal with Edison was consummated one
year after that same pension fund had lost $325 million on Enron
stock. The only rational explanation for investing in an
extremely risky company is not economic but ideological (Moberg).
Schmidt's next privatization
campaign targeted the City University of New York, the largest public
urban university in the US. He first was appointed to head Mayor
Giuliani's Advisory Task Force on CUNY. The hotly contested study
he produced, entitled "The City University of New York: An Institution
Adrift," resulted in the adoption of a new master plan by the CUNY
board
of Trustees and the New York State Board of Regents. After being
named head of the board of Trustees at CUNY by Governor Pataki,
Schmidt's
job was to put this master plan into effect, privatizing parts of the
CUNY
system and drastically altering the school's ability to fulfill its
traditional
mission of accessible education for all New Yorkers. A press
release
from Governor Pataki's office quotes the Chairman and CEO of New York
Life
Insurance Company as stating approvingly, "Chairman Schmidt has brought
business and industry leaders back into the University" (Pataki).
As an article in
The Nation
put it in 1999, the recommendations of Schmidt's task force "would
dismantle CUNY's historic commitment, mandated by state law, to serve
New Yorkers by maintaining academic excellence and providing 'equal
access
and opportunity for students'." It proposed to eliminate
remediation, a cornerstone of CUNY's open access policy. The task
force report ignored "the need to apply university expertise to help
solve city problems" and "overlooked the increasingly lifelong nature
of higher education." The
Nation article concludes,
"external politics is driving
policy at [CUNY] ... threatening its ability to fulfill its critical
mission:
to integrate the city's poor and its immigrant population into the
economic and social fabric of New York." In other words,
Schmidt's policy
at CUNY is to undermine the university's service mission to the
community, i.e. the majority of New York's population.
According to a report in the
Clarion , the newsletter of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC),
the faculty union at CUNY, Schmidt's task force also recommended
"issuing vouchers for remedial classes" to be taken outside CUNY, and
called for "greater reliance on standardized tests" and "more
centralized management of CUNY." These are all characteristics of
the "accountability movement," the move toward a corporate model.
Comments Schmidt made during the debate over remediation indicate that
he favors a business model for education. In that context, he
said he thought privatization "'can add to people's choices'. He
suggested that the school could subcontract the remedial progam to a
private educational source, such as Sylvan, Kaplan or Berlitz.
This could encourage competition among Catholic schools, CUNY, and
public high schools" (Mauldin).
Schmidt's principle of
competition applies only to institutions at the bottom of the food
chain. But companies at the top like Edison need not turn a
profit, are bailed out by philanthropies and the Florida retirement
system, and receive lucrative monopoly franchises from public agencies
in Pennsylvania to privatize the large Philadelphia public school
system. Schmidt indulges in standard neo-liberal cynicism when he
uses the word "choice" to refer to forcing
the poor to pay for remediation that they can't afford and that was
formerly free.
In 2000 Schmidt led a group of
investors in the purchase of Ross University, a medical school in the
Carribean. Only three years later the group announced it was
selling the school at a $180 million profit ("University
Buyout"). Privatization typically entails no long-term commitment
to the institution. Education is merely another commodity, and
the only commitment is to investor profit.
Now Schmidt has come to Kansas
City. He left Yale under faculty pressure, and the CUNY
Professional Staff Congress has described him as "implacably antiunion"
(PSC). At Yale he persisted for six years in refusing to meet
with representatives of the Graduate Employees and Students Union, and
as recently as last
week he refused to talk with representatives of the PSC at CUNY, who
have
been denied raises for 4 years (PSC). He has also said publicly
that
most schools of education "have been a massive failure," and that,
given
the chance, he would "abolish all undergraduate majors in 'education'"
(Philanthropy).
The rest of Schmidt's Task Force
Schmidt apparently selected the
other members of the task force. These are: Richard Atkinson,
former president of the University of California state system; James J.
Duderstadt, president emeritus of University of Michigan; Susan
Lindquist, Molecular Biologist at MIT and member of the Science
Advisory Board of Stowers
Institute; Sara Martinez Tucker, President and CEO of the National
Hispanic
Scholarship Fund; Kurt Schmoke, dean of Howard Law School and former
Mayor
of Baltimore; and Farris Womack, former CFO of the University of North
Carolina and University of Michigan.
They all share similar
educational "values." Most of them are linked by a network of
close professional, personal and ideological ties, as well as ties with
UMKC or with former Chancellor Gilliland. Most of them represent
the conservative, corporate, neo-con wing in higher education
today. Schmidt and
Sara Martinez-Tucker were both on the
board of the Council for Aid to Education, a subsidiary of the Rand
Corporation. In 2004 Rand was under contract to Edison to
evaluate its performance (Moberg).
Kurt Schmoke is
committed to urban education, but believes vouchers are the way to
go. Like Schmidt,
Richard Atkinson has a record of being
anti-union.
More disturbing are
James
Duderstadt , who resigned as President of the University of
Michigan after a bitter struggle with the Regents (Zarko), and
Farris
Womack, former CFO at the same institution. Records from
political strategy meetings during the Duderstadt administration note
that his policy was to "keep the Regents 'dumb, distracted,
divided'." In the book they coauthored after leaving U. of M.,
The
Future of the Public University in America: Beyond the Crossroads
(2003), Duderstadt and Womack leave no doubt
about their attitudes towards faculty and the democratic process.
They call for "strong, decisive, visionary presidents" and decry shared
governance as "cumbersome and awkward at best and ineffective and
indecisive
at worst ... shared anarchy ... inhibit[ing] change." Academic
officers
"should have the same degree of authority to take actions ... that
their
counterparts in business and government possess." As a review of
their book in the AAUP bulletin
Academe notes, they express a
"desire
to emulate the corporate world" and are "focused on presidential
autonomy
in privatizing the university" (Rhoades).
The Blue Ribbon Task Force, then,
is not made up of a disinterested body of experts. Its goal is
not to provide guidance for well-meaning community members in relating
to UMKC, or for traditionally philanthropic (no strings attached)
support of university programs. It does not represent a
grassroots effort to improve communication and cooperation between
Kansas City and UMKC, nor does it grow out of a genuine concern for the
well-being of either. It regards the traditional and successful
culture of US universities, distinguished by academic freedom, tenure,
shared governance, and due process, as merely an obstacle to a
corporate takeover serving for-profit privatization ventures.
In addition, it is not out
of the question that one or more members of the Blue Ribbon Task Force
may be candidates for the Chancellor's job at UMKC, a fact the public
cannot verify because the search process has been closed to the
public. While Schmidt's move from CUNY to UMKC is unlikely, other
"distinguished" members currently out of an administrative job might
consider the position. Recent precedent at UMKC recalls retired
university president Frank Horton and his role as enforcer of
Gilliland's diktat in SBS.
Strategies and Responses
We can't know in advance the
specific recommendations the Task Force will make in its report.
But, knowing its members' past performance, we can be fairly sure of
the direction it will take. Their proposed study is wrapped in
the
packaging of reason, neutrality, and constructive engagement.
Larry
Jacob, Senior Vice President of Community Investment for the
Foundation,
stated, "We intend for this study to help guide business,
philanthropic,
civic and government leaders as they help to strengthen UMKC."
The
fox likewise presents himself as the benefactor of the henhouse.
Privatization could range from
partial to full. If partial, past experience at UMKC and
elsewhere provides a number of likely scenarios (see below "What is
Privatization?"). If full, the Task Force could conceivably
recommend removing UMKC from
the UM system, or even dismantling the UM system altogether. In
that
case, UMKC could revert to the private institution known as UKC, its
designation before joining the University of Missouri in 1964.
UMKC has every intention of
working with our diverse community to achieve our common goals.
Suggestions from the community are welcome and necessary, so long as
they are founded on respect for the integrity of the institution.
But ultimately,
it is up to the faculty and administration to determine what kind of
urban university UMKC can and should be.
Given the displeasure of
well-known elements in the business community at our newfound sense of
independence, the unsolicited "guidance" the Task Force proposes to
offer could well be a form of blackmail: get back to business as usual,
or face unpleasant consequences. In a time of punitively slashed
state funding, some might be sufficiently worried to find this pressure
compelling.
The Blue Ribbon Task Force
represents a serious threat to the principles of public higher
education
and faculty governance, indeed, to the university as we know it.
Faculty, students, staff, administrators, parents, and the public at
large need to come to its defense. Even during finals and after
the semester ends, faculty and students should go out of their way to
attend any public meeting at which members of the Task Force or the
Foundation
appear. They should ask hard questions and insist on straight
answers.
They should write to President Floyd, assuring him of their support in
rejecting outside interference in the running of the University.
They should write to the UM Curators, express their outrage, and urge
them to involve themselves in defense of the public university.
They
should write letters and op eds to the
Star , exposing this
likely
attempt to seize control of a public institution. And above all,
they should join with their colleagues in telling everyone they meet
(starting,
for example, at graduation ceremonies) that UMKC is alive and well, a
public
university eager to serve the community, and determined to preserve its
integrity.
Sources cited
"Benno Schmidt." Informational leaflet. Professional
Staff Congress (PSC). City University of New York
Bracey, Gerald W. "Edison Schools Inc: Education's Enron."
http://www.educationnews.org/edison_schools_inc.htm
Braude, Michael. "UMKC needs a unifier as chancellor; it needs
WyCo's Carol Marinovich."
Kansas City Business
Journal (April 29, 2005).
http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2005/05/02/editorial.html
Braude, Michael. "University of Missouri could find organization
of Kansas system instructive."
Kansas City Business
Journal (March 18, 2005).
http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2005/03/21/editorial.html
Byron, Christopher. "A Lesson in Corporate Values for Edison Schools."
TheStreet.com (Aug. 18, 1999).
http://www.thestreet.com/pf/comment/keyhole/774791.html
Council for Aid to Education. "CAE Board of Directors."
http://www.cae.org/content/abo_board.htm
"CUNY's Board of Trustees: The Powers that Be."
Clarion
[nd]
http://www.psc-cuny.org/ClarionBOT.htm
"CUNY Faculty and Staff Demand a Fair Contract." Informational
leaflet. Professional Staff Congress (PSC). City University
of New York
DePalma, Anthony. "Yale Panel Proposes Deep Cuts in Faculty and
in Departments."
New York Times (Jan. 17, 1992):
A1, B4.
Erdman, Warren. Letter to the Editor.
Chronicle of
Higher Education (December 13, 2002).
Evans, David. "Ex-Edison Schools Director Says Board Kept in Dark."
Bloomberg.com (Aug. 16, 2002).
http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?ptitle=David%20Evans&touch=1&s1=evans&tp=ad_t
Franey, Lynn. "With a recent graduation behind it, Westport
Charter faces uncertain future."
Kansas City Star (June
1,
2004).
Glion Colloquium IV, 2003: Reinventing the Research University.
Conference program.
http://www.glion.org/?a6202&p=1525
"Governor Pataki names Benno C. Schmidt new CUNY Trustee Chair."
Press release from Governor's office (April 1, 2003).
http://www.state.ny.us/governor/press/year03/april1_1_03.htm
Kaplan, Esther. "Lights Out for Edison."
PSCcuny NEWS
BULLETIN , (April 2001).
http://www.psc-cuny.org/lightsOut.htm
Lane, Frederick S. "CUNY under Attack."
The Nation
(July 5, 1999).
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=19990705&s=lane
Lubbes, Sara. "Medicaid Protests hit Capitol."
Kansas
City Star (April 28, 2005).
Mauldin, William S. "Ex-Yale President Schmidt draws fire in new
position."
Yale Herald (Oct. 2, 1998).
http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/XXVI/10.2.98/news/benno.html
Missouri Government Review Commission.
http://www.oa.mo.gov/comofc/releases/042005MSGRC.html
Moberg, David. "How Edison Survived."
The Nation
(March 15, 2004).
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040315&s=moberg
Program for Seminars on Academic Computing/Directors Seminar Sessions,
1997. Conference Program.
http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=6086&bhcp=1
"Private Giving Fuels Innovation: an Interview with Benno
Schmidt."
The Philanthropy Roundtable (Nov-Dec
2004).
wysiwyg://37/http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/2004/NovDec/interview.htm
Rhoades, Gary. Review.
Beyond the Crossroads: The
Future of the Public University in America. By James J.
Duderstadt and Farris W. Womack.
Academe
(Nov-Dec. 2003): 84-86
Schlesinger, Robert. "Stocks and Bond."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/11/kit_bond/index2.html
(October 11,
2004)
UMKC Board of Trustees. "Proposed Resolution." April
11, 2005
UMKC School of Medicine News (Aug. 19, 2004)
"University Buyout."
Yale Insider: News and Analysis for the
Yale Community. March 21, 2003.
http://www.yaleinsider.org/blog_archives.jsp?month=2&year=2003
Zarko, Chetly. "U-Michigan Duderstadt Administration Sought to
Keep Regents 'Dumb, Distracted, and Divided'.
Administrative Arrogance and Disrespect for
Democracy Shine Through in Documents from U-M Archives."
The
Czar's
Court (Nov. 20, 2000).
http://www.chetly.home.comcast.net/features/regents-dumb.html
Who is Warren K. Erdman?
by Alfred Esser
Short answer to this question:
Warren K. Erdman is the Republican co-chair of the "Missouri Government
Review Commission" created by Governor Matt Blunt to analyze the
structure of state government and recommend changes to improve
efficiency. More interesting questions are: how this 46 year-old
native of Higginsville, MO could reach such a pinnacle of political
power that in significant ways could potentially influence the lives of
many Missourians; and what credentials does he bring to the job.
Members of the UMKC community
know him as the UMKC (formerly UKC) trustee who staunchly defended
ex-Chancellor Martha Gilliland in a letter to the editor of
The
Chronicle of Higher Education . The journal had painted a not
very flattering picture of Gilliland's attempt to change UMKC from "a
'Cartesian' organization--one that is deterministic and
hierarchical--into a 'quantum' one, that is, one that is unpredictable
by its nature and stresses relationships among people." In his
response Erdman claimed that the author's description of UMKC "is
uninformed and wrong," that Gilliland's "efforts have created heartburn
for some of the faculty, especially those who are comfortable in the
ways
of the past," and that she "should be applauded, not condemned." He
predicted
that the campus would become a place where "town and gown commingle,
coalesce, and create."
In the "town" he is known as Vice
President for Corporate Affairs at Kansas City Southern Industries
(KCSI, a holding company comprised of four railroads in the US, Mexico
and
Panama), and as the current Chairman of the Economic Development
Council (EDC) of Kansas City. He is also on the boards of the
Greater Downtown Development Authority of Kansas City, the Downtown
Council, the Downtown Community Improvement District, and the Arts
Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, and was founding chairman of the
Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance. Outside the region he
serves on the board of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and in 2004 was
appointed to the advisory board of FannieMae, the agency which
handles mortgage loans. Indeed many organizations in town use his
services and connections, such as the Stowers Institute, for whom he
lobbied
Missouri lawmakers.
Aside from successfully
completing "Missouri Boys State" training sessions in 1976, he doesn't
appear to have garnered any other major scholastic or athletic awards
while in high school or at Westminster College in Fulton, MO, where he
graduated in 1981. He did, however, land a job in state
government, serving as an Assistant for Public Affairs when Kit Bond
was Governor, and he was involved in the strategic planning of the
Missouri Republican Party's voter identification and turnout data base
program during the Bond and Ashcroft administrations. During the
Reagan, Bush and Dole presidential campaigns, Erdman served
as a strategist for the fundraising and grassroots efforts of the
Missouri
Victory Committees. After Bond moved to Washington, DC he made
Erdman
chief of staff overseeing the senator's Washington office and five
offices
in Missouri until 1997, when Erdman moved back to Missouri to become
KCSI's vice president and chief lobbyist. In 2000, Erdman
assisted the Bush-Cheney campaign in Michigan, and during the 2004
election cycle he was the Bush-Cheney '04 regional campaign chairman
for the Central region that includes Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and
Arkansas.
As Robert Schlesinger wrote
in October 2004 in an on-line article in Salon.com, one of Erdman's
first acts as a KCSI employee was to lobby his former boss to win
Senate approval for KCSI's attempt to turn the defunct Richards-Gebaur
Air Force Base into a major rail hub. Bond obliged quickly by
inserting into a Senate bill
a $500,000 grant for the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce to study the
proposal. The same article quotes Celia Wexler, Common Cause's
vice president for
advocacy: "What bothers me is not so much that he [Bond] has bought
stock
in the company--although that is somewhat troubling --but ... that his
former chief of staff is now lobbying,... Investments are a
concern,
but what is more of a concern is the relationships, personal
relationships."
[The hundreds of jobs Erdman promised would be available at
former
Richards-Gebaur never materialized.--Ed.]
The "winner gets the spoils"
maxim and personal relationships appear to have played a big role in
Mr. Erdman's ascendance to co-chair of the Reform Commission. The
Associated Press reported that the commission consists mostly of people
who donated to Blunt's campaign. The article cited Missouri
Ethics Commission records that showed the appointees' households
donated 25 times as much money to Republicans as they did to
Democrats. Considering Missouri's current financial problems, it
is not surprising that Mr. Erdman--as reported in the
Kansas City
Star --"did not want the committee to hire consultants. 'I think we
lead by example'." Of course, with so many friends and allies in
Kansas City, it was easy for him to have someone else provide the
$50,000 (and counting) to pay for consultants, such as Mr. Benno
Schmidt, who will appear before the commission to present the
"community's"--or more
accurately, his employer's--view on higher education in Kansas
City. Is that what Erdman had in mind when he proclaimed that the
commission wants
to "hear from the people?" Pardon the sarcasm, but couldn't he
dispense
with the charade, and just ask Mr. Schmidt to go the extra mile by
writing
the "Missouri Government Review Commission"'s final report as well?
What is
privatization?
by David Brodsky
(This is a slightly expanded presentation of
the print version of The Faculty Advocate
--Ed.)
In a recent meeting with faculty,
Benno Schmidt, chair of the Blue Ribbon Task Force to "evaluate" UMKC,
challenged a faculty member's question with another question: "What do
you mean by privatization?"
For the past two decades Schmidt
has specialized in the privatization of public education, both
pre-college and higher. In response to Schmidt's challenge, this
article provides a short course, a sort of Privatization 101 or
Privatization for Beginners. While readers may be tempted to
dismiss some assertions in this essay as exaggerated, they are all
supported by documentation, which can be found in the longer studies
listed below under "Resources."
Introductory Remarks
At the start it must be said that
legally regulated business philanthropy--e.g. 501(c)3
organizations--supports educational needs identified by the
institution. By contrast, corporatized "partnerships" set terms
and conditions incompatible with the institution's educational mission.
It's equally important to note at
the beginning that the consequences of privatization are not trivial,
much less benevolent. Understanding its operation is not a
question of abstract intellectual amusement but a condition for
effective deterrence.
For example, measured by the
corporate criteria of commercial utility and "efficiency", the jobs of
faculty in unprivileged disciplines--humanities, arts, education,
public service oriented social sciences, "outdated" natural sciences,
etc.--would be eliminated, or degraded to an extent that faculty might
not find bearable. Accordingly, the students and the campus
intellectual and cultural environment would suffer. Even in the
less likely scenario where AAUP guidelines would be retained, tenure
would probably not protect you in the face of institutional
reorganization.
Likely consequences of
privatization for faculty retirement plans are fairly easy to predict,
and they should hit close to home, particularly for senior faculty
within a decade of retirement.
If UMKC is severed from the UM
system, then it would probably also be severed from the UM retirement
system,
in which the faculty's retirement funds are now vested.
Retirement
benefits would decrease, perhaps dramatically, among other reasons
because
the funding pool would be much smaller.
Since the prime motive to sever
UMKC from the UM system would be privatization of the university, the
retirement plan would also most likely be privatized. Faculty
would then be
forced to invest part or all of their retirement savings in securities
they did not choose and would receive diminished benefits.
An obvious precedent and possible
model is the Florida Retirement System's forced ownership of the Edison
Corporation, without the consent of state employees. Another
model is Bush administration privatization plans for Social Security,
which similarly contemplate channelling retirement funds into a very
narrow range of private investment "choices," very likely high risk
instruments funding right-wing policies and entities.
Privatized retirement funds will
pay lower benefits, because they will be reduced by high handling fees
charged by private investment firms. The main motive for
privatization
is the opportunity to collect such fees. The UMKC portion of the
UM
retirement system (or perhaps the entire UM retirement system itself)
may
be another prize that Schmidt and other private investors are eyeing.
There is also the likelihood of
retirement funds being wiped out in insecure investments. The
Florida retirement system has already lost $325 million in Enron stock,
and Edison, which the system now owns, has been called the Enron of
education. Enron employees lost all their retirement funds when
their company went bankrupt.
Upper management sold off its own stock and left employees holding a
bag
full of worthless paper.
Finally, given the ultimate goals
of neo-liberal ideology (see below), UMKC retirement might simply be
eliminated altogether. This has already happened to hundreds of
thousands of
employees of private companies, which have reneged on their retirement
promises.
Those who expect immediate
personal benefits from privatization should think twice.
Privatization exacts a high price: in loss of faculty autonomy in
instruction, research, and
institutional governance; and in the sudden abandonment of commitment
and
funding when a business decides its investment is no longer
profitable.
Privatization strategy is to expropriate what can make quick money for
investors
(not for the university) and to consign the rest to the trash
heap.
Because it weakens or eliminates public education for large numbers of
people,
privatization diminishes not only the targeted fields mentioned above
but
also the total number of full-time faculty positions.
Basics of privatization
Most generally
privatization signifies the private expropriation of public property.
It transforms public property into a private commodity that can be
bought
and sold, like cars and computers. Since investor profit is the
main
motive in privatization, public property is typically sold to private
interests at well below market prices.
The mass media (especially the
privatized airwaves, which legally belong to the public) are already
controlled by a few mega-corporations, health care is in the grip of
private insurance companies, and public utilities and social security
are under siege.
In neo-liberal parlance,
education is classified as a service (as opposed to a manufactured
product), and the activities of teaching and learning are caricatured
as "trade in services." Corporate-speak mocks the life of the
mind with terms like "customers, stakeholders, and markets." The
underlying issue is the reduction of US intellectual life and culture,
including education, to lucre.
Lucre determines the concentrated
ownership of book and journal publishing, of the mass media, and of
megabookstore chains (Schiffrin), and the demolition of library budgets
and collections of books and journals. Overpriced and fetishized
computer technology steals resources from print media, which are
additionally saddled with
inflated prices set by their multi-national publishers, particularly
for
scientific journals. The crisis in scholarly publishing is
another
consequence of the profit motive, which has become the chief or sole
criterion
for viability, including at academic presses, thereby eliminating from
consideration most scholarly books, which have a small
readership.
Academic freedom shrinks when the supply of and access to knowledge
(course
books, specialized studies, news, and culture) is narrowed.
A constant of
privatization in services is that it raises costs while lowering
quality and reducing access, a consequence of the profit imperative.
Profit is the surplus remaining after costs have been deducted from
total income. Privatized services often erect a formidable layer
of bureaucracy to control their employees and limit "customers'"
access (burgeoning bureaucracy in the privatized "managed care"
model of US health care is notorious), thus skimming off a large
portion of income for this function. And CEOs
of privatized services typically demand inflated executive compensation
(salary, privileges, stock options, etc.), which further drains the
pool of available funding. Most important, privatized services
can be traded on global commodity markets, generating many times more
profit than can be obtained through direct provision of the services
themselves. Provision of
degraded services then becomes an afterthought.
Basics of corporatization
Privatization is only one
component in the neo-liberal ideology of corporatization and cannot be
separated from it. Neo-liberal ideology is codified in
international trade agreements. The agreement governing education
is GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services.
Corporatization involves multiple kinds of assaults
on the public domain--to which public universities belong. Our
experience with the Gilliland administration has familiarized us with
many of these practices.
The public domain is where the
public makes its home and is at home, and the eviction of the public
from the public domain drives it into homelessness. Human rights,
such as the right to an education, typically are realized inside the
public domain, which provides public and publicly funded services to
most of the people in the world. Thus the war on public education
belongs to a wider war on the very idea of human rights. The
elites are trying to reduce or do away with public services, the public
domain, and human rights because they stand in the way of their further
accumulation of wealth and power.
The goals of neo-liberal
corporate policy are, first, to maximize short-term profits accruing to
top managers or administrators and the business and investor interests
that support them. The "education market," a lucrative source of
corporate profit, was valued at 2.2 trillion dollars in 1999.
However, because the bulk
of the education sector cannot be made profitable, education will be
terminated
for the majority of the world's people. The second goal is to
maximize
political control exercised by these managers, through replacing
democratic
institutions, such as faculty and shared governance, with top-down,
adversarial,
command-style administration. The third goal is to seize
ideological
control of the doctrinal system (the media and education), in order to
promote
the corporate agenda and reproduce authoritarian structures.
Control
of the media and education allows corporate elites to use them as tools
of indoctrination to shape public discourse, public thinking, and
public
policy. An example of corporate control uniting the media and
education
is Channel One, which invades classrooms with corporate advertising and
news programs.
Nevertheless, the ultimate
neo-liberal goal is the elimination of the public domain, including
public education. Public social institutions that provide for
people's health, education, employment benefits, unemployment support,
retirement, transportation, communication, housing, utilities, food,
even water, are to be terminated, and the costs borne solely by
individuals. Those who can't afford privatized services will have
to go without them.
Examples of privatized education
The ground for corporatization
and privatization is prepared by neo-liberal government policy.
Public financing of higher education is slashed in order to starve
universities into compliance with neo-liberal (and now also neo-con)
dictates.
Reduced funding reduces public access and
democratic oversight . Academic programs are squeezed or
downsized, new and replacement hiring is placed on hold, physical plant
deteriorates, etc. Tuition and fees are raised dramatically to
compensate for manufactured shortfalls, and to shift the burden of
funding from public sources onto private individuals. As a result
working class students increasingly are excluded from higher
education. The ending of affirmative action re-erects race and
gender barriers as well. Micro-management, stagnant salaries,
increasing workloads, and biased treatment succeed in demoralizing the
faculty, and thus the students as well. Reduced public funding
forces educational institutions to
take the bait of corporate "partnerships" with strings attached.
Once
hooked, schools and universities become tasty snacks at power lunches.
Mindful of such possibilities, a
New York Times editorial (July 15, 2001) concluded: "With public
universities leaning more on private sources, both educators and
legislators will need to be vigilant to preserve academic
integrity. But it will be a shame if the states allow this trend
toward private fund-raising to progress too far. The states must
not abdicate their responsibility for supporting a sound public
university system as an alternative to the private schools."
As Beth Huber, a former UMKC
part-time instructor, wrote, corporate culture stresses competition,
amorality, the pecking order, absentee decision-making, exclusion of
altruistic goals, dehumanization through commodification, preference
for quantity over quality, and a blindered definition of knowledge
(Huber). It also trumpets as a virtue private gain at the expense
of others.
Propaganda issued by corporatized
university administrations, produced by public relations specialists,
and supported unflaggingly by the business press (this includes the
mainstream media, both print and broadcast), is essential to the
success of corporatization.
Privatization can be full or
partial. Full privatization means completely removing a publicly
owned good or service from the public domain by selling it to private
investors.
Partial privatization sells off individual components. When a
public
institution is fully remade as a private business, the entire
institution
becomes a commodity. Capitalization and income typically come
from
public as well as private sources. Edison Corporation, for
example,
could not survive without access to public funds (e.g. the Florida
retirement
system, public agencies of the state of Pennsylvania and the city of
Philadelphia,
etc.).
Examples of private for-profit
educational institutions are University of Phoenix, an online company,
and DeVry University, a bricks and mortar business. Private
for-profit institutions should not be confused with traditional private
universities (e.g. University of Chicago) that are legally non-profit
entities.
Because private for-profit
universities are commodities, investor commitment to them is
short-term. The sale of Ross University after only three years,
by the investor group which
Benno Schmidt led, is a prime example. Novartis likewise pulled
out
of the UC Berkeley Department of Plant and Microbial Biology after a
few
years, leaving it with a deficit and an assistant professor denied
tenure
for having objected to the takeover.
Total privatization effectively
terminates the professional status of faculty, as well as academic
freedom, tenure, faculty governance, and due process. From the
employee's
point of view, private corporations are dictatorships or
oligarchies.
The majority of corporate employees are excluded in practice from the
right
to vote on institutional policy. They also lack free speech on
the
job, the rights to organize and bargain collectively, a free press
voicing
their interests and dissenting from dictated policy, free assembly, due
process, and fair grievance procedures.
In a corporatized workplace
only unionization is capable of establishing a counterforce to
arbitrary
rule and treatment. Often the same is true of public universities
with corporatized governance. CUNY, where Benno Schmidt presides
over the Board of Trustees, is a prime example. Hence the
necessary
existence and activism of the CUNY Professional Staff Congress.
A less complete version of
privatization is exemplified by the Edison corporation. Its
biggest catch is the Philadelphia public school system, fifth largest
in the US. Edison does not own the schools, which remain
nominally public. But it runs the school system, and its policy
encourages the award of lucrative contracts to outside businesses,
ranging from construction to the provision of services. Edison
undoubtedly profits by these arrangements.
Other examples of partial
privatization are standardized tests. They control the
curriculum, since instructors are forced to teach to the externally
designed exams, and they make big profits for private testing
companies. Standardized tests expropriate the faculty's
responsibility to design the curriculum and to evaluate students
according to its own professional standards. By contrast,
standardized online courses used in so-called distance education
actually expropriate the faculty's intellectual property, whose
ownership and control are transferred to the institution. Labor
costs in "virtual ed" are dramatically reduced by the use of untrained
"course managers," and construction and maintenance costs vanish with
the elimination of the campus and its entire physical plant.
Both systems of standardization
establish a regimented industrial model of education, where teaching is
assembly-line production and students are "product", killing the joy of
discovery and smothering the fires of creativity. Undergraduate
students
enrolled in virtual courses study in isolation, suffer from depression,
and have a high drop-out rate. But in order to fool students into
believing they are empowered subjects rather than commodified objects,
corporate
propaganda calls them "consumers" commanding an ever expanding range of
choices.
Privatization, even when partial,
impacts the areas of labor relations, the quality and standards of
instruction and research, and university governance. Corporate
governance seeks to minimize or eliminate the faculty's role, often
through weakening or abolishing tenure, and restricts its access to
information needed to make policy. Even when tenure remains in
force, faculty are treated as
expendable ciphers, their salaries fall below the inflation rate and
sometimes
decline in absolute terms, administrative interference in hiring,
promotion,
and tenure decisions increases, and instruction and research are
adversely
affected, especially when outside forces play a role.
A participant in an AAUP
sponsored conference on shared governance concluded: "'Applying
corporate models to universities undermines quality by substituting
quantifiable, business-driven measures for the judgments of faculty who
have the expertise to make sound decisions for higher education.'"
("Governance Conference").
Privatization at UMKC and elsewhere
The scientific and technical
fields--life and health sciences in particular at UMKC--are potentially
lucrative targets for outside investment. In the US over several
decades, corporations wielding intellectual property rights law have
been imposing unacceptable conditions on grants that fund scientific
research. They reward researchers who provide results favorable
to their products, particularly pharmaceuticals, and defund those who
don't. They also suppress the normal public exchange of
scientific findings by declaring them to be secret proprietary
information (Soley).
Starting in the mid-1980s
privatization was applied at UMKC in small but destructive ways.
Certain support services for faculty and students were turned into
stand alone units required to make a profit. To bring in revenue
they started charging each department a fee for each service they
provided. Predictably, costs rose and quality plummeted.
The bookstore and physical plant are examples. To bring in
revenue, the bookstore used to mark up textbooks 25% above retail,
forcing students to look elsewhere for course materials.
Privatization also attempted to
invade the UM system. In early 2003 the system sought to redefine
itself as a private institution, in order to avoid releasing its
internal audits to the
Kansas City Star. The
Star
sued and won, on grounds that the university is a public entity.
Outsourcing, that is, awarding
contracts, and often monopoly franchises, to businesses outside the
institution is another tactic of privatization. A good example at
UMKC is food services. While UMKC cafeteria food has been
mediocre at best, management by Sodexho has made it worse, and its poor
quality has been generating student complaints since the start of the
franchise. In Spring 2001 the
Faculty Advocate published
a student expose of Sodexho (
Turner), and
one of the demands of this spring's Tent State University students was
to terminate the university contract with this corporation.
Because it has a monopoly
franchise, Sodexho can financially exploit food workers and students
alike, by means of low wages, high prices, and non-refundable meal
contracts. Sodexho's profits from the prison industry, where it
likewise has monopoly franchises, illustrate the predatory nature of
privatization. Similarly, Coca-Cola's monopoly franchise at KU
has come under scrutiny (Pierotti), and poet Martin Espada--who spoke
last year at the MPA conference co-sponsored by the
AAUP--sent his KU honorarium to a labor union trying to organize Coke
plants in Colombia. "The New York City Council sent a
fact-finding delegation to the country that says it found 179 human
rights violations and nine murders at Coke plants" (International
Labor).
Monopoly franchises often involve
the imposition of corporate logos and branding on schools.
Students who poke fun at branding (e.g. by wearing a Pepsi T-shirt at a
Coke school) have been disciplined for "ingratitude to their
benefactors."
A major tactic of
privatization/corporatization is the overuse and super-exploitation of
casualized contingent part-time labor. The status of full-time
non-tenured instructors and graduate student assistants is only
marginally better. UMKC part-timer pay, for example, ranks at the
bottom for research universities in the US. As cheap workers they
generate millions in revenue for their institutions. At the same
time, funds that should support instruction by full-time tenure-track
faculty are instead shifted to other areas. At high-powered
research institutions they support lucrative research projects, or, as
in the case of Gilliland's consultants, pure pork barrel. The
starving of instructional budgets is an expropriation from a core
educational activity and, of course, weakens tenure by reducing the
number of tenure-track faculty.
Exploiting labor by minimizing
labor costs (low pay) is the first measure taken to raise profit
margins. Raising prices is the second. And cheapening the
product (or service) is a close third. Ignoring environmental
consequences (usually by denying their existence) likewise raises
profits by suppressing costs. Cheapening of the educational
"service" under the pretext of "efficiency," and corporatizing
governance under the pretext of "accountability", cheats faculty,
students, and the public (parents) alike.
In short, the corporate
educational agenda in the US pursues short-term profit, proprietary
hoarding of knowledge, narrow vocational training, restricted
intellectual choices in teaching, learning, and research, command-style
administration, and suppression of dissent. It replaces the
public domain values of liberal education, critical thinking, and free
and open inquiry; public sharing of knowledge and civic engagement; a
broad familiarity with and appreciation for diverse cultures, and
democratic governance.
Unequal education for the rich and the rest
On the road to complete abolition
of the public domain and public education is the transitional stage,
which establishes a two-tiered educational system, one for the rich and
the
other for the rest. A major long term goal of the war on human
rights,
the public domain, and education is to restore a regressive model of
society, restratified according to rigid class boundaries defined by
wealth.
The privileged class expects to
attend one of the relatively few elite educational institutions with
the highest quality (or highest profile) faculty, facilities, and
programs. Elite students will receive at least a semblance of a
decent education, preparing them to occupy positions of power and
influence, and elite faculty will generally continue to be treated like
valued professionals.
On the other side of the class divide, to the degree they are
corporatized, the large majority of institutions, like UMKC, which will
serve that portion of non-elite students who can still afford a higher
education, will become degraded institutions. They will offer
narrow and substandard vocational training for routinized dead end
jobs, with restricted choices and scant opportunities for improvement
or advancement, trapping students and faculty alike. To the
degree education is commodified, the student's right to quality
education and the faculty's right to pursue a profession will be
diminished, and standard educational goals like critical thinking,
preparation for citizenship, and personal development will vanish.
An observer from the third world
writes: "The poor quality of general education and training in the
United States, the product of a deep-rooted prejudice in favor of the
private to the detriment of the public sector, is one of the main
reasons for the profound crisis that U.S. society is currently going
through" (Amin, 20-21).
Conclusion and strategies for deterrence
Thus we can see that
"privatization" is a euphemistic term for expropriation of public
property at bargain basement prices, and the provision of inferior
services at high prices using primarily exploited labor, in order to
enrich top managers and investors. Marketed under the slogans of
"partnership" and "community involvement",
privatization can fairly be called a hostile corporate takeover and
plunder
of the public domain. It is the "partnership" of the
shark
with the shrimp, the final solution to the public education question.
Nevertheless, in the final
reckoning, education is not a commodity to be traded but a social
process rooted in a cultural context. As Stuart McAninch wrote
four years ago, the faculty need to develop a positive ethical, social,
and pedagogical agenda to
demonstrate why the public has a stake in the faculty's fight for
university governance, autonomy in the classroom, and professional
status (McAninch).
The confidence of the public in
education can be preserved only when professional standards are
maintained and supervised by professionally trained faculty dedicated
to serving
their students, the public good, and their professions.
Privatization and corporatization
can be forestalled by effective activism. An outstanding example
is provided by the California Faculty Association (CFA). In 1999
the CFA held a series of public hearings across the state to develop a
public higher education agenda with a non-corporate future. This
was the
inspiration for our Education for Democracy Conference held at UMKC in
2001.
Even more dramatically, in 1997 CFA, along with other faculty, student,
and community organizations, organized successfully
with a six-week
deadline to prevent the takeover of the entire 23 campus California
State University system by four corporate giants: Microsoft, Fujitsu,
GTE, and Hughes Electronics.
Concerted action by the UMKC
faculty convinced the Gilliland administration to resign. Now, as
in California eight years ago, the faculty, students, and community
face the corporate backers of that administration directly.
Concerted action
and the creation of broad alliances provide the opportunity to convince
those
forces to abandon their takeover plans.
Resources
Faculty, students, and members of
the community who wish to learn more about privatization and
corporatization, both theory and practice, in global and local
dimensions, can consult the following resources, accessible from the
AAUP website. Its old and new addresses are:
http://cas.umkc.edu/aaup/index.htm
; and
http://cas.umkc.edu/aaup/index.htm
1)
The Faculty Advocate ,
issues 1-18. Each issue contains material on privatization and
corporatization. See especially:
Janet Behrend,
"Corporatization of Remedial Reading Programs" (#4) ,
Franklin
W. Neff, "Potential Consequences of International Trade Agreements for
Higher Education" (#4) ,
Patricia P.
Brodsky, "Shrunken Heads: The Humanities under the Corporate Model" (#6)
,
Richard Moser,
"Corporatization, Its Discontents and the Renewal of Academic
Citizenship" (#8) ,
Gary
Zabel. "The 'Corporatization"'of Higher Education" (#10) ,
Ray
Pierotti, "The Corporatization of Academic Science" (#11) ,
David Brodsky, "The
War on Public Education in Europe" (#14) .
2) 17 articles from the
conference "Education for Democracy: Fighting the Corporate Takeover",
published in the online journal
Workplace:
http://www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/wp42.html
3) David Brodsky's comprehensive
report "The Broad Perspective of Academic Freedom,"
http://cas.umkc.edu/aaup/perspective.htm
Sources cited
Amin, Samir. "Confronting the Empire."
Monthly Review
(July-August 2003): 15-22.
"Governance Conference Brings Together Faculty and
Administrators."
ASC Statelines 7.4. (Winter 2000).
Huber, Beth. "Homogenizing the Curriculum: Manufacturing the
Standardized Student."
http://www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/huber.html
International Labor Communications Association, March 30, 2005;
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2157
McAninch, Stuart A. "The Struggle for Faculty Governance: its
Ethical, Social, and Pedagogical Significance."
http://www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/mcaninch.html
Pierotti, Raymond. "The Morale of Faculty, Students, and Staff
under a Corporate Model: The Case of the University of
Kansas."
http://www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/pierotti.html
Schiffrin, Andre. "The Business of Books." Interview by
David Barsamian.
Z Magazine 16.9 (September 2003): 36-42.
Soley, Lawrence C.
Leasing the Ivory Tower: The Corporate
Takeover of Academia. Boston: South End P, 1995.
Turner, Chris. "UMKC Student Group Plans Boycott of
Sodexho-Marriott."
Faculty Advocate
1.3 (Feb. 2001).
System President's
Meeting with AAUP Chapter Unprecedented
On March 18 UM System President
Elson Floyd met with members of the UMKC AAUP chapter for an informal
question and answer session that is surely unprecedented at UMKC, and
probably
extremely rare anywhere. The relaxed but lively meeting, which
lasted
an hour and a half, ranged over a broad spectrum of faculty concerns,
and as President Floyd laughingly remarked, we didn't make it easy for
him.
Chancellor search focus of discussion
Faculty had many questions about
the search for a chancellor, which had just begun. The questions
ranged from concerns about the final makeup of the search committee to
the
ultimate responsibility for a decision. There was concern that
several
units were not represented on the committee, particularly SBS, which
could
fairly be said to have suffered most under the previous
administration. Floyd said that he had not chosen the members by
unit, but had been at pains
to include a wide variety of faculty ranks as well as members of other
constituencies such as students and the community. He reminded us
that the final committee had a majority of faculty members: 11 out of
21.
When asked about the role and
limitations of the search firm chosen to aid the committee, Jan
Greewood and Associates, whom the President had also used in the
chancellor search at UM-Rolla, Floyd's answer was plain: the search
firm is a conduit, not a screener. The committee must make the
decision on finalists. It will then send an unranked short list
of three candidates (though he admitted this number is not set in
stone, and could also be four or five) to the President. Floyd
also said that he does not intend to micromanage. Except for a
couple of meetings to help get the process started, he will not be
meeting with the committee, nor does he intend to submit names
or make recommendations himself. Faculty emphasized that the
candidates' first priorty must be academics and research, and insisted
that focus
and vision must come from the faculty, not be imposed from above.
Floyd replied that a candidate who is not interested in research and
graduate
education would not be acceptable to him.
Continuity
There were many questions
concerning continuity in the campus administration--for example,
whether a new chancellor could appoint his or her own staff.
Floyd replied that several posts will be vacated soon in any case--Bill
French is retiring before September 1, and the Provost's position will
be open in a year. The chancellor could review this position as
well as all dean positions; he or she should meet early on with the
faculty of each unit. Floyd indicated that he will probably
eliminate some positions, but that this process will not be completed
before the new chancellor arrives. A lengthy discussion followed
about administrative structure and lines of responsibility. There
was broad agreement that the current administration is too large and
absorbs too much money. Titles had proliferated and been
inflated, and so had salaries. There was also dissatisfaction
that little had changed in the administration, except that the
chancellor had gone.
Diversity and the Community
Stuart McAninch mentioned that
there is strong faculty support for the Urban Institute, but worried
about the composition of the Steering Committee. The "community"
members were all business people, with no non-elite members, teachers,
or community activists. McAninch pointed out that UMKC serves
primarily the working class, not the elites whose children do not
attend UMKC. Another faculty member proposed that the teaching of
diversity, including the concepts of race, ethnicity, gender, and
class, be made a graduation requirement. President Floyd agreed that we
need to look carefully at our definition of "community," including
looking east of Troost. He also agreed with our assessment that
the faculty was very one-sided in terms of gender and race, but pointed
out that hiring was a faculty prerogative, and that we must take the
initiative and work on this problem ourselves. He noted that the
UM system in general has a bad record for diversity. (Several
weeks after this meeting, President Floyd sent a memo to the University
Community strongly supporting the hiring of minorities and pledging
support for diversity.)
Other issues
Other issues raised included
post-tenure review, the loss of tenure lines, and the status of
SBS. One unit changed its tenure requirements in the middle of a
candidate's probationary period, ultimately leading to that person
going off the tenure track, while a tenured colleague in the same unit
was forced out because of a similar change of requirements.
Faculty expressed the opinion that post-tenure review should be
abolished, and it was pointed out that since the policy had been
imposed by a previous president, it could be rescinded by a
president. There was some troublesome discussion of SBS, with the
implication that its identity, functions and existence were still
matters of debate. Faculty urged President Floyd to communicate
with the members of that school.
There was universal agreement
that the meeting with President Floyd had been productive, and that we
would like to host similar meetings in the future.
Chancellor Search
Underway: Closed Search Raises Concerns
by Patricia Brodsky
Amidst the euphoria engendered by
the votes of no confidence and Chancellor Gilliland's resignation in
December, we all knew that the hard part was yet to come. We
would need to keep the pressure on to move the culture of this campus
toward transparency
and faculty empowerment, and we would need to choose a new
administration.
The initial process was
promising. Individual faculty were invited to submit to the
Faculty Senate nominations both for membership on a search committee
and for chairmanship of that committee. The Senate received
sixty-seven names; ultimately a slate of twenty-one, including
alternates, was sent to President Floyd. Of
these he chose nine, while substituting two faculty names for two
recommended by the Senate. The other members include students,
administrators and
the community. The AAUP is represented on the committee by chair
David
Atkinson and Chapter members Bruce Bubacz and Loyce Caruthers.
All
the members deserve our thanks for their willingness to engage in this
enormously
important and time-consuming project. The membership list is
printed
below.
The presence of so many faculty
members is a reassuring change from past search committees.
Likewise the spread of representation within the University is far
greater than
in previous years; the committee that brought us Chancellor Gilliland,
for example, had
no members from the College of Arts and
Sciences,
the largest unit on campus. However the fact that four units are
not
represented is cause for serious concern. Biological Sciences,
Libraries,
and Engineering have no members, and Nursing is not represented by a
fulltime faculty member.
The committee is being aided by
the search firm Jan Greenwood and Associates. Its function is to
coordinate the search, do a coarse preliminary filtering, and handle
the
masses of paperwork involved in a national search. President
Floyd stated during his meeting with the AAUP on March 18 that the
search firm is a conduit, not a screener. The decision will rest
with the committee. Ads have gone out to the
Chronicle of
Higher Education and other
standard venues, and the committee foresees the close of applications
by
May 1 and a target date for a hire of September 1. Public forums
were
set for April 20, at which faculty and others were invited to express
their
selection criteria for a chancellor.
In conversations with President
Floyd faculty have made it clear that it is of the utmost importance
that this search be carried out with as much transparency and faculty
involvement as possible, particularly given our recent history.
The reestablishment of trust in the governance process is one of our
main goals, and the University cannot afford even a hint that it is
returning to the "bad old days" of secrecy and top-down decision
making. Floyd indicated he understood.
But serious problems have
arisen. At a recent meeting the search committee voted to conduct
a closed search, that is, there will be no open campus interviews, and
no opportunity for faculty and others to meet, confront, question and
evaluate the candidates. The rationale given by the search firm
and apparently supported by President Floyd is that in order to attract
the best candidates, which they define as sitting presidents and
provosts, confidentiality must be maintained throughout the
process. According to Chairman Atkinson, the committee will
be doing a thorough job of contacting colleagues of the candidates, so
there will be "no surprises." Well, no, not for the
committee. But if the faculty at large has no chance to judge,
everything is going to
be a surprise to the rest of us.
Chairman Atkinson has said that
the search
might be opened up at the end, if the final
candidates have no objections. This is not good enough. Our
votes of
no confidence, our insistence on the AAUP principle of faculty
governance, become meaningless if the openness of the process and the
participation
of the faculty as a whole depend on the whim of a candidate. This
is
a terrible precedent, and it sends the signal that we can be ignored,
as
previously. In an effort to urge the committee to reverse itself
on
this decision, I have spoken before the Senate and the Arts and
Sciences
faculty. My argument is printed below.
Chancellor Search
Committee Members
David Atkinson, Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor, College of
Arts and Sciences (Chair)
David Achtenberg, Associate Professor, School of Law
Lee Bolman, Marion Bloch Professor of Leadership, Business and Public
Administration, Bloch School of Business & Public
Administration
Bruce Bubacz, Distinguished Teaching Professor in Philosophy, College
of Arts & Sciences
Loyce Caruthers, Assistant Professor of Education, School of Education
Woody Cozad, UMKC Trustee, former Curator and Attorney for Morrison
& Hecker, L.L.P.
Burton Dunbar, Professor of Art & Art History and Chair of the Art
Department, College of Arts & Sciences
David Eick, Curators' Professor and Department Chair in Oral Biology,
School of Dentistry
Marjorie Fonza, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Geoff Gerling, President, Student Government Association
Carol Grimaldi, Executive Director, Brush Creek Community Partners
Kathleen Kilway, Associate Professor of Chemistry, College of Arts
& Sciences
Kelly Limpic, President, UMKC Staff Council and Senior Human Resource
Specialist, Human Resources Department
Trish Marken, Professor of Pharmacy and Division Chair, School of
Pharmacy
Freda Mendez Smith, Vice President for Diversity and Minority Alumni,
UMKC Alumni Association Board
Leo Morton, UMKC Trustee and Senior Vice President & CAO, Aquila,
Inc.
Christopher Papasian, Associate Professor and Chair of the Basic
Medical Science Department, School of Medicine
Randy Pembrook, Dean, UMKC Conservatory of Music
Sarah Peters, President, Conservatory Student Association
Mel Tyler, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment
Management
Alan Weber, President, UMKC Alumni Association and President, Marketing
Analytics Group
Statement on the
Chancellor's Search Process Presented to the Faculty Senate, April 5,
2005
by Patricia Brodsky
I want to address several
issues. First is the specious argument that the identity of
candidates must be kept secret to protect them. When faculty
apply for jobs, we don't get these privileges; everything is
public. And so should it be for administrators, especially at a
public university. Administrative candidates should have to abide
by the same rules.
Second is the equally specious
argument that the
quality of the candidates depends on
secrecy. The most qualified and best candidates are ones who are
capable of undergoing public scrutiny, questioning and debate to
evaluate their qualifications. Those who cannot or will not do
this are by definition not the kind of candidates we want.
Thus the entire process should be
transparent, and open to the faculty as a whole.
At the very
least , however, there must be open campus interviews for the
finalists.
Given the recent history of
interference with faculty governance on this campus, the circumstances
that led to seven votes of no confidence, and the clear intention of
the
faculty as a whole to take an active role in any future decisions on
administrative hirings, a totally closed search--that is, one in which
the university community as a whole had no opportunity to meet and
question at least a short list of candidates--would be regarded as a
betrayal.
It is generally acknowledged that
a major goal is to reestablish both trust and faculty governance on
this campus. To now close the search for a chancellor and prevent
direct faculty participation would put us back where we were before the
votes of no confidence. It does not make sense to alienate the
faculty as a
whole by ignoring their good will, insight, expertise and energy in
making
this important choice. Finally, a closed search would be an
inauspicious beginning for any candidate hired in this fashion, without
the participation of the whole faculty.
A totally closed search is
unacceptable. The opinion of the faculty as a whole must be
decisive. The AAUP therefore calls on the committee to reverse
its decision and to commit itself
to a search that directly involves the faculty as a whole, preferably
throughout the process, but
at the very least at the short-list
stage.
MO AAUP Conference
Annual Meeting Discusses State Defunding of Higher Education
On March 5 three chapter members,
Stuart McAninch, Pat Brodsky, and David Brodsky, attended the annual
meeting of the Missouri Conference of the AAUP in Columbia. Five
other institutions around the state were represented: MU, Truman State,
Lincoln University, Westminster College, and SMSU.
A main focus of discussion was
funding for education in Missouri, including the ins and outs of
Governor Blunt's budget. In his annual report, Missouri
Conference President John Harms expressed the fear that without
appropriate state support, non-affluent students will simply be priced
out of higher education (see his article
"The Structural
Basis
of Missouri's Higher Education Crisis," Faculty Advocate, Feb.
2005 ). Harms also emphasized the need for making common
cause with students and the public: "If we don't speak up, we're
walking bullseyes."
At present, funding for K-12 is
built into the state constitution, so that when there are cuts, higher
education takes the biggest hit. Thus we find ourselves in the
grotesque position of competing for scarce dollars with elementary and
high school education. (Note: in April State Representative Beth
Low of the
39th District, which includes UMKC, told us about HB 742. Passed
out of committee but not scheduled to reach the floor this year, this
legislation would change the funding basis of higher education to a
voucher
system, which would result in even less state support.)
The first guest speaker was
Otto Fajen, legislative director of the Missouri NEA. Fajen's
decade-long familiarity with the Missouri legislature has given him
keen insights into its inner workings. His talk covered a
wide range of topics of importance to Missouri educators. Much
threatening legislation has
been proposed or discussed in this session, including bills on the
teaching of creationism, the abolition of tenure (HB 432, which has
been formally withdrawn), and punitive funding bills relating to higher
education. For example, SB 231, a not too subtle attack on higher
education, would have made its funding merely a line-item in the
budget, preventing the transfer of funds to needed areas and
establishing a purposely cumbersome process for
raising tuition. Whether or not these bills pass--and we hope
none of
them do--our vigilance is required in the climate of intensified
hostility towards higher education.
Fajen also pointed out the
irrationality of some aspects of the Blunt budget. The Governor
has called for a $632 million cut in Medicaid spending. But if
Medicaid is cut, Missouri loses federal funds attached to that
program. In the past the state budget had been
patched together with tobacco settlement money and other one-time
funds. But because they are no longer availble, Blunt and the
legislature must find other sources--including education and
healthcare.
Resistance to cuts
is
occuring on a number of fronts. The state of Missouri is
currently being sued for unfair distribution of funds per student in
poorer districts. Suggestions have been made to modernize the tax
codes; Missourians for Tax Justice are working to establish a
progressive income tax. The suggestion has been made to
consolidate K-12 and higher education under a single state board of
education, or to house both in a single department of education
with two components. Success in either scenario would depend on
increased cooperation between K-12 and higher education in serving the
cause of
all education in the state. At present,
according to Fajen,
the two constituencies simply don't talk to one another. Like
Harms,
Fajen urged progressive educators to speak to the public at the level
of
values: we can't let the right-wing claim a monopoly on ethical
discussion. He also urged that more cooperation is necessary
between the NEA and the
AAUP, since we share many goals.
The second guest speaker of
the day was Tom Guild, Chair of the Assembly of State Conferences of
the
national AAUP. Guild spoke about threats and trends in the
academy
around the nation. He sounded a warning against TABOR--the
Taxpayer
Bill of Rights--which has succeeded in destroying the public sector in
Colorado, where higher education has suffered the most. Some of
the
national trends he mentioned include the "president as CEO" syndrome
and
the drastic rise in the percentage of total costs covered by tuition.
Guild also emphasized the
necessity for faculty to insist on a dominant role in campus
governance. Search committees, he said, must be created through
direct faculty election, not e.g. via a Senate list. Faculty
participation on a grievance board is crucial in strengthening due
process. Post-tenure review is also a troublesome issue.
Where post-tenure review exists, Guild said,
it must be transformed into a faculty support system and used to
promote faculty development. It should not become a punitive tool
or a strategy to weaken tenure, and faculty should have the right to
defend their record before a faculty committee. Unfortunately,
many administrations use PTR as a device to control and intimidate
faculty; as a means to eviscerate tenure; as a tool of political
retaliation; and as a way to restrict speech on and off campus.
Guild ended his talk by saluting the work of local chapters in
protecting faculty rights.
During the business meeting
the members unanimously supported the creation of a leadership award in
honor of former Conference President David Gruber, who is in the final
stages of cancer. Stuart McAninch was subsequently reelected to
the
post of At-Large Member of the state Executive Committee. And the
Conference also approved unanimously a resolution drafted by David
Brodsky
in support of the academic freedom and tenure of Professor Ward
Churchill,
currently under siege at the University of Colorado (see below for full
text).
The Political Show Trial
of Ward Churchill
by David Brodsky
The Ward Churchill case is
significant in two ways. It signals an intensified nationwide
assault on academic freedom and tenure. And it announces a
renewed right-wing campaign to remove and exclude from academia the
already quite marginal presence of left of center faculty and programs,
including ethnic, women's, queer, and cultural studies.
Silencing the left voice in
US society as a whole was the explicit goal of the McCarthy period
purges, which successfully enforced tacit censorship for several
decades. The purges also succeeded in intimidating liberal and
centrist opinion into self-censorship, marked by contorted
accommodations to the ruling ideology.
Our current neo-McCarthyist demagogy aims to enforce a similar
ideological
hegemony.
In early March, in a speech
at the University of Hawaii, Churchill gave "a rousing endorsement of
academic freedom. 'I never set out to be a poster boy of academic
freedom. They selected me. And I'm going to stand on the
principle. I'm going to stand on the issue because to give a inch
is to give away something that we cannot afford to lose, and when I say
"we" I mean all of us in
the academy. Whatever your interest is in the academy, if you let
this one go down you've lost it all'" (
Chronicle of Higher Education
, March 4, 2005, p. A48)
The current firestorm surrounding
Churchill began when he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in New
York state. In December 2004 a right-wing professor at Hamilton
circulated on the internet an essay Churchill had published in early
2002 about the 9/11 attacks. As Churchill clarified in a January
31, 2005 statement, his essay, answering the question "why they hate
us", argued that "if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and
destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that
destruction is returned. I have
never said that people 'should' engage in armed attacks on the United
States,
but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of
unlawful
U.S. policy" (Ward Churchill Answers the Hate-Mongers &
Critics!
http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=4910
)
Churchill's essay was picked up
by Bill O'Reilly, who ideologically mauled the professor on his
syndicated talk show and told his audience to write Hamilton to protest
Churchill's appearance. O'Reilly's denunciation predictably
ignited threats of violence against Churchill, who eventually received
over one hundred death threats. This is the same treatment
O'Reilly applied to Professor Sami al-Arian shortly after 9/11.
The rest of the mass media obediently joined the hunt.
Caving in to rightwing pressure,
Hamilton College changed the format of Churchill's talk from lecture to
roundtable discussion. Then, using the pretext of the risk to
Churchill's safety--a risk carefully augmented by the kangaroo court of
the mass media--Hamilton eventually retracted the invitation
altogether. Several years earlier, compromised personal safety
manufactured by the right-wing served as the pretext to illegally ban
Professor Sami al-Arian from his own campus for nearly two years.
In researching the role of
right-wing political networks, Churchill's colleague, Emma Perez, Chair
of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, made some interesting
discoveries. "CU-Boulder has likely been made their 'test case,'
their break-the-mould moment in a national strategy. Their local
resources and troops (thinktanks, legislative, rank-and-file followers)
are already fully mobilized and their national resources are mobilizing
in our direction (if not already mobilized), and the infrastructure
they already have here is formidable." ("Ward Churchill is Neocon Test
Case for Academic Purges," 2/15/05;
http://wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5021&Itemid=2
)
Perez continues: "The Colorado
governor, Bill Owens, is no ordinary Republican governor. He is
an activist leader in their battle for higher education through his
role in ACTA (American Council of Trustees and Alumni)....
Governor Owens is especially active in ACTA's 'Governors Project'."
(Ibid).
ACTA was co-founded by Lynne
Cheney, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Reagan
and the wife of Dick Cheney. Soon after 9/11 ACTA attempted to
establish a blacklist of over one hundred left of center
academics. Its McCarthyist "loyalty test" held up 9/11 as a
sacred icon of martyrdom, insufficient obeisiance to which generated
accusations of "treason." The blacklist failed when scores of
other academics, many of whom questioned the official story of how 9/11
happened and objected to the reactionary agendas to which it was
harnessed, asked to be added to the tally of "traitors."
Colorado Governor Owens, writes
Perez, "has already hosted an ACTA-led conference in CO for state
trustees, probably for training them (wouldn't be surprised if some of
our regents aren't in this same loop).... Also leading in this
'Governors Project' is Pataki in NY--no doubt connected with the
Hamilton College incident
that started all of this."
Following Churchill's "trial by
media" ("Open Letter", see below), reprisals within academe came
swiftly and began to ramify, fulfilling right-wing expectations.
Churchill was forced to step down as Chair of the CU Ethnic Studies
Program (he
tendered his resignation on January 31, 2005), and numerous speaking
engagements were cancelled, including at his own campus. The
first victim of
right-wing "collateral damage" was Professor Nancy Sorbkin Rabinowitz,
director of Hamilton College's Kirkland Project for the Study of
Gender,
Society, and Culture, which had originally invited Churchill to speak
there.
Rabinowitz was dismissed as Kirkland's director (John J. Simon, "Notes
from the Editors,
Monthly Review, 56.11 [April 2005]:
64).
After Elizabeth Hoffman, President of the University of Colorado,
publicly
stated on March 3 "that she feared a 'new McCarthyism' was responsible
for the uproar over Ward Churchill's essay" (
Newsday, March 5,
2005;
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--embattledprofesso0305mar05,0,899315.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork),
she was forced into resigning five days later (
New York Times
, March 8, 2005, National Report A14).
The organized right is pursuing a
two-phase strategy against Churchill. The first phase, a neo-con
frontal attack on his academic freedom and tenure based on objections
to his politics, is intended to severely narrow the range of critical
discourse in academia and US society. An AP story published in
Newsday (op cit) explained that Churchill was being disciplined
for "exceeding the boundaries of academic freedom." Or, in the
words
of the CU Chancellor, whose office conducted a "preliminary review" by
hunting for heresy in Churchill's writings and public utterances, "did
certain
statements by Professor Churchill exceed the boundaries of protected
speech?"
("Statement By Chancellor Phil DiStefano," March 24, 2005;
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/distefanostatement.html)
Largely due to strong support for
Churchill's academic freedom by many of his colleagues in Colorado
and faculty elsewhere, the campaign of public vilification (akin to
saturation bombing) failed to remove him from his position. Thus
the Chancellor's committee was forced to conclude that Churchill's
political views were
protected speech and illegitimate grounds for terminating him.
But
the noise of bombardment, by the media, elected officials, regents,
administrators, and others firmly established the perception of
Churchill as an "enemy" to be eradicated. Support statements for
Churchill were largely
excluded from the mass media, which have generally enforced an embargo
of left opinion for several decades. Media noise aimed to firmly
implant the image of Churchill as "unamerican," among the broader
public,
university authorities, and his own colleagues.
The second phase of the
inquisition, an investigation of "allegations of research
misconduct..., including plagiarism, fabrication, and misuse of others'
work," has been left to a faculty body, the Standing Committee on
Research Misconduct. Since the Chancellor had repeatedly
expressed his strong personal antipathy to Churchill, not surprisingly
the Chancellor's committee ruled that "allegations of research
misconduct" are not "frivolous" ("Statement," op cit). The
scholarly
credentials of the Chancellor's committee (which included, besides the
chancellor, two deans) to make even this preliminary judgment, however,
have not been established. Likewise, the faculty Standing
Committee, conveniently, contains not a single member from the
Humanities or the Social Sciences, those scholars who are best equipped
to recognize political bias ("frivolity") in the allegations against
Churchill ("Standing Committee
on Research Misconduct: Membership" (
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill.committee.html).
Most damaging, the Chancellor's
committee report has asked the faculty Standing Committee "to inquire
into whether Professor Churchill committed research misconduct by
misrepresenting himself as an American Indian to gain credibility and
authority for his
work" (DiStefano, op cit). This charge, based on "blood quantum"
and "enrolled membership in a tribe," is bogus, despite its legal
standing,
because it excludes countless numbers of Native Americans from public
recognition
of their identity. Famous "non-enrolled" historical figures
include
Crazy Horse, Geronimo, and Chief Joseph (H. Mathew Barkhausen III, "In
Defense of Ward Churchill: A Legacy of Scapegoat-Ism";
http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5116&Itemid=2).
A petition in defense of Churchill addressed to the Governor,
Legislature, and Board of Regents refers to the "blood quantum" as a
standard imposed by "modern day eugenicists" (
http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5020&Itemid=2).
The spurious and grossly biased
nature of these inquisitorial proceedings, which violate Churchill's
academic freedom, is also revealed by their time-tested reliance on the
principle of guilt by association, the tactical foundation of McCarthy
era purges. In Churchill's case, not association with "suspect
individuals or groups" but the close association of allegations of
"research misconduct" with
his "suspect politics" is the unchallenged basis for pursuing the
inquisition.
The long "Report on Conclusion of
Preliminary Review in the Matter of Professor Ward Churchill"
establishes guilt by association--controversial content and lack of
professional integrity--as a matter of principle. It states: "the
matters reviewed here arose as a result of statements by Professor
Churchill protected by the First
Amendment ... The fact that the controversial subject
matter
of speech may be constitutionally protected does not insulate it from
conforming
to minimum standards of professional integrity, including standards for
academic research" (Op cit).
These standards are not
specified. Three of the examples cited alleging lack of integrity
concern politically loaded issues (two concern Native American
identity) and could be politically motivated. Claims of wilfull
misrepresentation are useful in discrediting an opponent, particularly
one whose identity as a Native American is likewise under challenge.
The 1940 Statement of Principles
on Academic Freedom and Tenure notes that judgments of unfitness are
limited to the criteria of "incompetence" and "moral turpitude" (
AAUP
Policy Documents and Reports, 9th ed., p. 4). The 1970
commentary on the 1940 statement adds that "extramural utterances
rarely bear upon the faculty member's fitness for the position" (p.
6). And it defines "moral turpitude" as "behavior that would
evoke condemnation by the academic community generally" (p. 7).
In a 1964 statement, the phrase "weighty evidence of unfitness"
clarifies the 1940 statement about dismissal on account on extramural
utterances (p. 32).
The guilt by association
principle enunciated in the Colorado Chancellor's Report also implies
that academic freedom (at University of Colorado) is narrower than
constitutionally protected speech, an intepretation which the Supreme
Court rejected in 1967. It wrote that "[academic] freedom is
therefore a special concern of the
First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of
orthodoxy
over the classroom" (
AAUP Policy Documents and Reports , 9th
ed.,
p. 5).
The report quotes (and condemns)
four utterances by Churchill before concluding that all of his words
are protected speech (
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/).
There is no pretense of presenting the facts in a disinterested and
analytical manner. While Churchill's words are immaterial,
because they represent protected speech, their presence in the report
reinforces the connection between his politics and alleged research
misconduct. The singling out and cataloguing of controversial
passages in itself constitutes a crude political assault on his
academic freedom.
Thus the assertion that the
process has now been "depoliticized" because a faculty committee is in
charge of the investigation is a gigantic falsehood. The
allegations
of research misconduct are purely instrumental to achieving right-wing
political goals. The faculty, as in the McCarthy period, is being
carefully prepared and channelled into playing the executioner of its
own
colleagues.
If the faculty committee,
nevertheless, were to find in Churchill's favor, it would deserve
congratulations for standing up to the purge. But the most
legitimate decision it could make would be to declare the entire
inquisition to be utterly without merit. That would be a ringing
defense and vindication of academic freedom. And of the rights
and duties of left of center academics, and, indeed, of all public
intellectuals, to continue using their critical faculties to
make informed and sharp judgments about their own society.
AAUP Missouri
Conference resolution on Ward Churchill, March 5, 2005
"Whereas the most serious attacks
on Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado, by
government officials and the mass media in Colorado and throughout the
nation, constitute assaults on his academic freedom and his tenured
position, as well as on his discipline, his colleagues, and his
university, and on academic freedom, the institution of tenure, and the
academic profession as a whole:
Resolved, that the 2005 annual
meeting of the Missouri Conference of the AAUP urge the national
organization of AAUP, the Association of State Conferences, and all
local chapters and individual state conferences, to actively and
publicly show their uncompromising and unequivocal support for
Professor Ward Churchill's academic freedom and the tenure which
protects it; for example, through public statements in the local and
national media, messages to the Governor and legislature of Colorado
and the administration of the University of Colorado, and through
publicizing resolutions of support; and, further, to disseminate this
resolution as widely and rapidly as possible to the AAUP membership,
for example, through an e-mail alert, which includes contact
information for recipients of
AAUP messages."
A sample message to the Governor,
Regents, and President of the University, read as follows: "I fully and
unequivocally support Ward Churchill's academic freedom and the tenure
which protects it. I oppose the campaign of vilification against
him and urge: 1) that he be retained in his present position at his
current
rank; 2) that the state of Colorado restore a high level of public
funding
to public education, including higher education; and 3) that the
Governor
of Colorado, the Colorado General Assembly, the Regents of the
University
of Colorado, and the administration and faculty of the University of
Colorado
make public statements strongly affirming academic freedom and the
institution
of tenure which supports it, both in general and with specific
reference
to Professor Churchill."
Open Letter From
Concerned Academics, March 2, 2005
Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking on Campus
(This "Open Letter" was circuated
widely on the internet, and is available on a number of websites).
We call on all those who teach
and research at colleges and universities to raise their voices in
opposition to this inquisition. Sign and act on this open
letter. Circulate it widely. Inform the media.
As an immediate step, we call on
our colleagues to pass emergency resolutions in faculty and
professional associations and send them to the University of Colorado
Board of Regents. We offer the following as a template for such
resolutions:
Resolved, that the attempt,
escalated by government authority, to fire Ward Churchill and the trial
by media which he is undergoing amount to a serious assault on dissent,
critical inquiry, and academic freedom, and a heightening of the
repressive
atmosphere in American society overall. This attack is
intolerable
and must stop now. The precedents already set in this case "that
a professor can be publicly pilloried and threatened with dismissal for
what he writes" must not be allowed to stand. The University of
Colorado
Board of Regents must drop any effort to fire Churchill, cease its
spurious
investigation into his body of work and repudiate its actions up to
now;
and all colleges and universities must reaffirm, in word and deed,
their
commitment to defend critical thinking.
The past month has witnessed a
chilling turn in American political and intellectual life. Ward
Churchill, a tenured professor and former chair of the Ethnic Studies
Department at the University of Colorado, has been made the object of
an unprecedented nationwide attack for an essay he wrote three years
ago. Two governors, including the governor of Colorado, have
called for his firing. The national and local media have not only
misrepresented his work and views, but have increasingly vilified and
slandered Ward Churchill himself. Some of Churchill's speaking
engagements have been cancelled. Death threats have been made
against him. In response, the University of Colorado Board of
Regents not only "apologized" for Churchill's remarks "itself an
utterly gratuitous and inappropriate action" but initiated an
investigation into his entire body of work to search for mistakes and
supposed evidence of "fraud." During the week of March 7, the
Board of Regents will conclude its 30-day review of all of Churchill's
writings and statements.
One must go back to the
"scoundrel time" of the McCarthy years to find anything even close to
this. And now, as an unmistakable sign of what this portends,
just a week ago the University of Colorado at Boulder announced an
investigation into campus records to make sure that every faculty
member has actually signed his or her state-required loyalty oath!
All this is intolerable and
must be reversed--immediately.
To be clear: the issues here have
nothing to do with the quality of Ward Churchill's scholarship or his
professional credentials. However one views his choice of words
or
specific arguments, he is being put in the dock solely for his radical
critique of U.S. history and present-day policy in the wake of the
events of September 11, 2001. Apparently, 9/11 is now the third
rail of American intellectual life: to critically probe into its causes
and to interrogate
the international role of the United States is treated as heresy; those
inquiring can be denied forums, careers, and even personal
safety. And now Churchill's persecutors have gone further,
repeatedly ridiculing his scholarly argumentation that the United
States committed genocide against the indigenous people of this
continent, and that the FBI systematically attempted to disrupt and
destroy the movements and leaders of the 1960s. Rather than
debate or disprove such theses, Churchill's attackers attempt to render
them beyond the pale of respectable discourse. Through all this,
new ground rules are being established: any criticism or even
questioning of the institutional foundations of the United States, or
of the motives and interests behind its policies, will be treated as
essentially treasonous. Left unopposed, this trajectory will lead
to a situation of uncontested indoctrination enforced by the state.
The Churchill case is not an
isolated incident but a concentrated example of a well-orchestrated
campaign launched in the name of "academic freedom" and "balance"
which in fact aims to purge the universities of more radical thinkers
and oppositional thought generally, and to create a climate of
intimidation. While the right-wing claim that the universities
are "left-wing dictatorships" is specious beyond belief, it is
unfortunately true that the campus remains one of the few surviving
refuges of critical thinking and dissent in this country. This is
something to defend and strengthen.
It would be hard to overstate the
serious nature of what has already happened, let alone what it would
mean should the Regents fire Churchill. If this assault on
academe succeeds, the consequences for American society as a whole will
be nothing short of disastrous.
The response from the academic
world has thus far fallen short of what is required. Voices have
been raised in opposition, but many have been intimidated. What
is needed is an outpouring of faculty resolutions condemning this
witch-hunt. Teach-ins. Protests.
We propose that emergency faculty
resolutions be passed and sent to the University of Colorado Board of
Regents (secretary:
millie.cortez@colorado.edu
, cc:
EthnicStudies@colorado.edu)
and major media outlets. We further propose that if the
Colorado authorities continue their persecution of Churchill, we mount
major nationally coordinated protests on campuses all over America--and
internationally-- as soon as possible, and that we begin to join
efforts to reverse this dangerous direction in American political and
intellectual life.
The hour is very late; this
case is nothing less than a watershed. We must act, and act now.
Not just Process but
"Substantive Issues":
Amy McAninch Protests her Alma Mater's Sabotage of Academic Freedom
Amy McAninch, an alumna of
Hamilton College, a faculty member at Rockhurst University, and an AAUP
activist, responded to a letter addressed to Hamilton alumni on the
college's handling of the Churchill case. She raised the
questions not only of academic freedom but also of Churchill's message,
which was being distorted and suppressed.
The following letter, dated
March 23, 2005, was sent to Hamilton alumni by Robert L. Simon,
Professor
of Philosophy at the College.
"The last few months have seen
Hamilton go through one of the most tumultuous periods in its
history. Many alumni, parents and friends of the College have
contacted Hamilton to express their concerns about the controversies
surrounding Susan Rosenberg and Ward Churchill. Their viewpoints
are varied and merit serious consideration, and they reflect
perspectives shared by many on campus. While it is important for
the College to sponsor controversial speakers, all parties seem to
agree that speakers invited to our campus should promote reasoned
academic discourse.
I write to assure you that the
College is re-assessing the process that resulted in these invitations,
and that the practice of providing undergraduates with an education of
the highest quality is alive and well at Hamilton. For example,
there has been wide ranging debate, both formal and informal, among
students, in classes, at special panels and in
The Spectator,
on the role and limits of academic freedom and the nature of academic
responsibility. The debate
has been intense and of real intellectual quality. I am
optimistic that
good things will come of it.
Most important, the faculty
continues to engage in those activities that we hope all of you found
valuable during your days here as students. Good teachers
continue
to work with fine students in class and in independent research.
Students continue to engage in the arts, theatre, athletics and
countless
other activities of worth. Important ideas are discussed and
examined
in and out of class. Students continue to win national awards and
fellowships. Faculty members are sought out for their scholarship
by prestigious institutions and segments of the media to share their
expertise.
These activities will help Hamilton reclaim the national spotlight in a
positive way.
Your support is vital if Hamilton
is to continue to succeed at the high levels we have all come to expect
and appreciate. Withholding support from the College affects
everyone on the Hill, including students who could not be here without
scholarship support and faculty and staff who are deeply committed to
this institution. While many, both on and off campus, are
frustrated with recent events, I assure you that the principal values
for which a Hamilton education has always stood remain in place.
I urge you to help make the College better
through your continued engagement and financial support."
Amy McAninch responded as
follows:
"Dear Bob: As a Kirkland
grad (K '78), I received a copy of your March 23 letter to alumni
regarding recent events on campus. I have followed the Ward
Churchill incident closely because I am currently a college professor
(in the field of Educational Theory) and an active member of the
AAUP. I was deeply disturbed by your letter and the other
correspondence I have received (from the Student Government group, from
President Stewart) which have generally assumed an apologetic and
defensive tone: 'don't worry.... we haven't lost our
minds.... we are still the same place.' I have gone back
and read Ward Churchill's original statement and you all are right to
find it inflammatory and flippant. But nowhere in all the
correspondence from the college has there been any indication that the
substance of his argument is worthy of examination. Indeed, other
social critics have made
similar arguments, from Noam Chomsky to Franz Fanon. It is
healthy for the college to debate freedom of speech, but there also
seems to be a
resistance to even considering the possibility that Churchill may be
raising
questions worthy of discussion. The focus of the debate on campus
has been about anything but the substantive issue he poses: are
elements
of U.S. foreign policy and the practices of U.S. corporations
responsible
for policies that promote genocide in the third world?
My suspicion is that a college
that functions as a preparatory school for Wall Streeters can't afford
to have its students seriously examine this question. Hamilton,
in its very protective way, has a function to keep such job aspirants
guilt-free and dissociated from the ethical issues such involvement
poses.
I am disappointed in the
administration at Hamilton and the decisions that it and the faculty
have made in all this. I would have liked Hamilton to tell the
pundits of Fox News Channel that they are shameless, and that Hamilton
will not be intimidated by the likes of Sean Hannity et al or used to
advance their right-wing agenda. I would have liked the President
to affirm that Ward Churchill not only has the right to express his
views, but that Hamilton students may actually learn something from
him. I think it was a huge mistake to change the format of
Churchill's original talk on campus to a panel discussion, where his
views could be 'confronted.' I look forward to future campus
speakers
(Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Tom Delay, Donald Rumsfeld???) also
having
their views challenged and confronted on a panel in a similar
manner.
Who decides the parameters of 'reasoned discourse'? How will it
be
decided who is allowed to be unconfronted? The college's
decisions
will have a chilling effect on Hamilton's campus and others--and erode
faculty
rights. Where is Hamilton's backbone?"
Amy McAninch 'K78
Fairway, KS
Postscript
Other defenses of Churchill, such
as the "Open Letter From Concerned Academics" quoted above, likewise
maintained a double focus on academic freedom and substantive issues.
Award-winning journalist Mumia
Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner incarcerated on death row for a quarter
century, wrote: "It is not enough for us to merely, dumbly, intone that
Churchill has the right to write what he does. No--we must do
more. We must insist that Churchill is right" ("In Defense of
Ward Churchill-Historian" (Feb. 10, 2005),
Turning the Tide,
March-April 2005, p. 1; also available on many websites, e.g.
http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5172).
Robert Jensen, a journalism
professor at the University of Texas at Austin, entitled his essay:
"Ward
Churchill has rights, and he's right" (Feb. 14, 2005;
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Section=43&ItemID=7248).
John J. Simon wrote in
Monthly
Review: "in the main, Churchill's argument was as analytically
nuanced as it was powerful.... The attack of the right-wing media
opinion-mongers on his essay is part of a larger effort to squelch
critical thinking, to inhibit opposition to ruling class goals, and to
enfeeble the academy as a marginally safe arena for such
views.... The United States has yet to recover from the societal
and intellectual 'dumbing down' it suffered in
the wake of the 'red scare' of the 1940s and '50s; without broad
opposition it can and will happen again, this time with perhaps even
more devastating results" (April 2005, inside back cover, p. 64).
Chapter Supports
Successful Student Project "Tent State University"
by Patricia Brodsky
From April 11-15 the campus
was the site of UMKC's first "Tent State University," an "alternative
university" project for informing the community about urgent issues and
engaging them in a dialogue about change. Launched in 2003 at
Rutgers
University in New Jersey, and named in honor of the four students
gunned
down by the Ohio National Guard during a 1970 protest at Kent State
University,
the original TSU protested drastic budget cuts to education.
Since
then, students around the country have held Tent State Universities
each
year, focusing on cuts in education funding, rises in tuition, and
other
issues touching on the daily lives of students and professors.
UMKC's event was organized by a
coalition of students groups, spearheaded by the Campus Greens.
The organizers took great care to establish good relationships with the
administration, the faculty, and buildings and grounds staff.
Dean of Arts and Sciences Bryan LeBeau offically opened TSU at a ribbon
cutting ceremony on April 11, during which he expressed his strong
support for
the students' right to speak out. The AAUP chapter was a
co-sponsor,
and underwrote several of the outside speakers.
TSU's logo is a primitive tent
surrounded by the "Latin" logo "alumnus brokus maximus," alluding to
the financial state of many students, thanks to out-of-control tuition
and the rollback of governmental support for education. According
to their statement of purpose, the "Ultimatum for Higher Education,"
TSU "embodies the homelessness of education in an increasingly violent
and fearful society." To dramatize this "homelessness," several
dozen students camped out in colorful tents on the quad for four
nights. Camping tested the depth of their commitment, as the week
began with pouring rain and nighttime temperatures sometimes dropped
into the thirties.
Issues foregrounded in the
official TSU statement included an end to tuition hikes, increased
state funding for higher education, support for academic freedom and
civil liberties, a living wage for all UMKC employees, a sweatshop-free
U-Store, and opposition to the Iraq war, which drains money from social
services like education. Other demands included terminating the
contract with Sodexho food services on account of the company's poor
labor policies and its profiting from the prison industry, and a UMKC
holiday on election day to encourage students to vote.
Tables on campus offered
petitions, sign-up sheets for various organizations, and information
about the TSU concerns, as well as free food. Activities included
"alternative classes" on a wide variety of topics, ranging from
"Students, Sweatshops, and Justice" to "Homelessness and Politics in
Germany," to "Social Security and Privatization." Fifteen UMKC
faculty, including eight AAUP members, made presentations
in this part of the program. Many thanks to Stuart McAninch and
Scott Baker for staffing the AAUP table for four days and for
distributing AAUP materials and fact sheets on educational funding in
Missouri.
Among the outside speakers who
brought new perspectives to the discussion was Vernon Bellecourt, a
founder of the American Indian Movement, who discussed "500 Years of
U.S. Wars of Conquest." Green Party presidential candidate David
Cobb spoke about corporations and the US constitution and called on
listeners to "take back democracy." On Friday Beth Low,
representative of the 39th Missouri House District, which includes
UMKC, and member of the Appropriations committee, whose
responsibilities include higher education, gave the Tent State
University "commencement address" and received an honorary
degree. After discussing the situation in the Missouri
legislature, she praised the students for their courage and initiative.
Despite the organizers' care in
planning and arranging TSU, some harassment did occur.
On Wednesday night eight campus
policemen suddenly ordered the students to shut down their live
concert, despite a permit from the administration and the fact that the
sound system was well within the agreed upon decibel limits and
times. This incident occurred after some thirty TSU students had
attended a UMKC Student Senate meeting and tried unsuccessfully to take
part in a discussion about control over student fees. At an
emergency meeting the next day TSU leaders discussed their concerns
with Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Pat
Long, and her staff, who did their best to defuse the situation and
gave
assurances that the police overreaction would not be repeated.
On Thursday afternoon about
twenty-five TSU students engaged in UMKC's first-ever civil
disobedience,
a "walk-in" on Rockhill Road. Protesters strolled in a continuous
circle on the pedestrian crossing between the library and the pharmacy
building, holding signs and chanting "books, not bombs" and "education,
not war." Traffic quickly backed up in both directions along
Rockhill,
attracting a number of UMKC and KCMO police cars as well as a "crime
scene"
van. Police blocked off Rockhill, diverting traffic onto side
streets,
while about a hundred observers and supporters lined the stone wall at
the
edge of campus.
The goal of the civil
disobedience action was to persuade the administration to negotiate
with the students on their demands, which had been submitted in writing
the previous week. Commendably, the administration agreed to
talk, and, to the satisfaction of most observers, a two-hour
conversation between students and administrators brought the students
major concessions on a number of issues. Likewise commendable was
police restraint in handling the situation on Rockhill Road.
This upsurge of activism at
UMKC did not happen in a vacuum. At about the same time as Tent
State, protests, sit-ins, and hunger strikes occurred at UC Santa Cruz,
Georgetown, Washington University, and others. UMKC is primarily
a commuter school. Our students work and study hard, and tend to
have little time or inclination for political engagement. The
AAUP
is extremely proud of the thought and effort which UMKC students put
into
this week-long event. Our students are beginning to realize the
power
that resides in informed protest and principled resistance, values
basic
to the AAUP as well.
Consider attending AAUP
Summer Institute
AAUP Summer Institutes are a rich
source of ideas and strategies for faculty organizers, as well as a
way of networking with activist faculty from around the country.
Session
topics include the making of a faculty handbook, political action,
gender
equity, institutional budgets, and developing shared governance.
There
will also be seminars on labor history, privacy issues and sexual
harrassment, diversity, and grad student organizing, among others.
The 2005 AAUP Summer Institute
will be held at the University of New Hampshire in Durham from July
21-24. Fees include registration, workshop materials, dorm
accommodations for three nights, and meals (dinner on Thursday,
breakfast and lunch on Friday and Saturday, and brunch on Sunday).
Fees are as follows: first-time
attendees $300; all others $360; early arrival (July 20) $65 fee; late
departure (July 25) $65 fee; registration after June 17 $75 extra.
For more details and to sign up,
go to
http://www.aaup.org and click
on "events." Small travel stipends may be available.
Contact Pat Brodsky for information,
brodskyp@umkc.edu
The Happy Hour held at
Ed
Gogol's after the meeting with President Floyd on March 18th
provided great food--for body, soul, and thought. In addition to
membership on the Chancellor Search Committee and participation in Tent
State Unversity, chapter members have been in the news since the last
Faculty
Advocate appeared.
Congratulations to
Ed
Underwood , who has been named Executive Director of the new
Institute for Urban Education (IUE). We wish him great success in
taking on this major responsibility. Congratulations are also due
Charles Wurrey , who has been selected as UMKC's nominee for "US
Professor of the
Year," an award sponsored by the Council for the Advancement and
Support
of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching.
Linda Voigts was inducted as a fellow of the Medieval Academy
of America, an honor accorded fewer than 3% of the overall
membership.
The chapter also congratulates
Drew Bergerson, Doug Cowan, Alex
Holsinger,
and Hali Fieldman for achieving tenure and promotion to Associate
Professor.
Drew attracted a large crowd to a book signing
at Barnes and Noble on April 7. He read from his recently
published book,
Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times: the Nazi
Revolution in Hildesheim. A number of members presented
papers in March and April:
Alfred Esser at a conference in New
Zealand,
Pat Brodsky at the Kentucky Foreign Language
Conference in Lexington,
Joan
Dean at the University of British Columbia, and
Fred Lee at
several sites in Ireland.
In March
Stuart McAninch
resigned from the IFC in order to devote more time to responsibilities
in the School of Education.
Bruce Bubacz, who had
received the next highest number of votes in the previous election,
agreed to serve out Stuart's term. Candidates for
Gary
Ebersole's seat were AAUP members
Phil Olson and Gary
himself, who chose to run for reelection. We're happy to know the
faculty will be well represented on the IFC, regardless of the outcome
of the election, which will be announced in early May.
On March 22 a number of chapter
members attended the first session of a new regional forum, the
Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, sponsored by the Midwest
Holocaust Education Center. The purpose of the roundtable, which
will meet twice a semester and focus on a variety of related issues, is
to exchange ideas on teaching about the Holocaust in higher
education. To start things off
Drew Bergerson spoke about the problems of writing Holocaust
history
as a German historian. Several other UMKC faculty participated,
including chapter member
Cynthia Jones. Attendees at the
first meeting represented (besides UMKC) KU, Maple Woods, Missouri
Southern,
CMSU, and Avila.
Corrections of print
version of Faculty Advocate
1. In "Public Higher Education Again Under Fire: Privatization of UMKC
may be in the Works," by Patricia Brodsky
a. "Schmidt was also Chairman of the Board for the
Edison Schools corporation."
Schmidt
still is
Chairman of Edison as of this writing.
b. "The deal with Edison was consummated one year
after that same pension fund had lost $325 on Enron stock."
The fund lost
$325 million
(Moberg)
2. In "Who is Warren K. Erdman?", by Alfred Esser
Fannie Mae was incorrectly
identified as "the federal student loan agency." The phrase "the
federal student loan agency" was an editorial addition.
Fannie Mae handles mortgage
loans. The federal student loan agency is Sallie Mae. The
Editor regrets
the error and publicly apologizes to Professor Esser.
The entire contents of each issue of
The
Faculty Advocate (except for public domain material) is
copyrighted.
The Faculty Advocate , May 2005, Copyright
2005 by the UMKC Chapter of the American Association of University
Professors. All rights returned to authors upon
publication. AAUP chapters, state conferences, and the national
organization have permission to reproduce and distribute.
Permission for other non-profit publishers is a formality, but UMKC
AAUP asks them for the courtesy of requesting it. Contact the
Editor, Patricia Brodsky: 816-235-2826, e-mail:
brodskyp@umkc.edu
AAUP Dues Information
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Open to all faculty
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Part-time
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Membership requires payment of both local and national dues
Local UMKC chapter dues
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Send payment to Treasurer, Alfred Esser, BSB 417, 816-235-5316, or essera@umkc.edu.
Please make checks payable to "UMKC-AAUP Chapter."
Also please send Alfred your preferred mailing address(es), phone(s),
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Discounts on national dues for following
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Back
Issues
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 1, No. 1 (September 2000)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 2000)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 1, No. 3 (February 2001)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 1, No. 4 (April 2001)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 2, No. 1 (October 2001)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 2, No. 2 (December 2001)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 2, No. 3 (February 2002)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 2, No. 4 (April 2002)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 2, No. 5 (June 2002)
The Faculty
Advocate, Vol. 3, No. 1 (September 2002)
The Faculty
Advocate, Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2002)
The Faculty
Advocate, Vol. 3, Nos. 3-4 (April 2003)
The Faculty
Advocate, Vol. 4, Nos. 1-2 (December 2003)
The Faculty
Advocate, Vol. 4, Nos. 3-4 (April 2004)
The Faculty
Advocate, Vol. 5, No.1 (August 2004)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 5, no. 2 (October 2004)
The Faculty Advocate,
Vol. 5, no. 3 (February 2005)
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