Faculty Advocate No. 22

THE FACULTY ADVOCATE

NEWSLETTER OF THE UMKC CHAPTER OF THE
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS

October 2007 Editor: Patricia Brodsky Vol. 8, No. 1

Institute for Labor Studies Under the Gun: AAUP Sponsors Panel Discussion Oct. 26

The Attack on Labor Studies, by Judy Ancel

Landmark Court Decision OK's Unionization for Missouri Public Employees

SB 389, Missouri Omnibus Higher Education Bill: A Trojan Horse Within our Gates, by Patricia Brodsky

The War on Higher Education in Missouri, by David Brodsky

Curators, Upper Admin Impose Grievance Policy Undermining Academic Freedom, by Patricia Brodsky

Letter to the Missouri Assembly, by Charles Reitz and Roena Haynie

Testimony to Missouri Senate Education Committee, 25 April 2007, by David Robinson

AAUP Condemns Missouri Bill, by Cary Nelson and Ernest Benjamin

Brooker Intellectual Diversity Bill Dead--For Now (excerpts), by Keith Hardeman

News of the Chapter

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Institute for Labor Studies Under the Gun: AAUP Sponsors Panel Discussion Oct. 26

        Last summer UMKC announced it was closing the Institute for Labor Studies, the only labor education program between Columbia MO and Albuquerque NM. Many members of the UMKC and labor communities rallied to ask the Chancellor to rescind the decision, because they knew and valued the work of the ILS, from its credit and non-credit courses to its weekly radio show on KKFI, the Heartland Labor Forum. The Institute and ILS Director Judy Ancel got a one-semester reprieve, but their future is still in doubt. A decision will be made soon as to the fate of the program.

        Faculty should acknowledge that, in addition to being professionals, we are also workers. Over half the AAUP membership belongs to Collective Bargaining chapters. We need to defend both of our identities, particularly at a time when the national agenda is the corporatization of education and the deprofessionalization of academic work. A recent AAUP study reported that 76.7% of faculty at UMKC are contingent workers, i.e. non-tenure line, both full- and part-time. Our colleagues are particularly vulnerable to substandard labor practices. Labor studies turns out to be relevant for all of us. It can provide a historical context for the deteriorating status of the profession and can inform us of our rights and how to defend them.

        In order to educate the campus community about labor studies, the AAUP chapter is sponsoring a panel discussion with the title "Labor Studies: What is it and why do we need it?" The panel consists of Judy Ancel, Director, Institute of Labor Studies; Judy Morgan, President, Kansas City Federation of Teachers; and Jesse Heckman, Labor Certificate graduate. The discussion will take place Friday, October 26 from 3 to 5 PM in Room 307 Education. Please make every effort to attend.

The Attack on Labor Studies

by Judy Ancel

        By now, most people know that UMKC is trying to get rid of labor studies. Just to refresh you, in late May, departing Provost Bruce Bubacz, with no advance warning, fired a parting shot at The Institute for Labor Studies by unilaterally ending the twenty-two year partnership between UMKC and Longview Community College to co-sponsor the program. My department chair and I were copied on the letter to Longview. There had been no evaluation of the program and no opportunity to defend it in advance of this decision.

        I appealed to Dean Karen Vorst and Chancellor Guy Bailey, hoping they would quickly understand what a mistake this was and rectify it. Both defended the decision although Bailey apologized for Bubacz's incivility. After a petition signed by several hundred students, faculty, community supporters, unions, and faculty in labor studies and industrial relations from around the country, calls and letters from State Senators and local union leaders, Bailey backed up a step and agreed to maintain the nine-year old state-wide Certificate program whose funds support video courses generated and received on three campuses. He decided not to fire me immediately. However, the loss of Longview and cuts in UMKC's support of the program have cost our budget $30,000. I was told to reorganize the program, meaning find outside money. Bailey characterized the cuts as administrative.

        One could hardly blame him for that error, since no one had bothered to look at what ILS does to fulfill UMKC's mission. Not only is ILS a very lean program delivering credit and non-credit programming with a staff of one, but also I do much of the teaching, speaking to civic organizations, churches, the media, and schools and I coordinate our weekly educational radio show, The Heartland Labor Forum, on KKFI. The Institute for Labor Studies has, over the years, brought UMKC into parts of the community it never reaches and served people who basically view higher ed as irrelevant elitism.

        When I last counted, the Bloch School had 47 full and part-time faculty serving the needs of the business community. Labor Studies has one and that's endangered. Should the UMKC community care? Does it matter that there's someone on campus who studies, teaches and speaks out about trends in working conditions, the role of unions in a democratic society, or how offshoring of jobs is affecting society? Is it important to have courses for students and a center that encourages them to go into careers in the labor movement as organizers, researchers, policy advocates? Clearly these things are part of UMKC's mission, but when your state is 47th out of 50 in funding for higher education, then the mission can easily be sacrificed.

        Bailey doesn't talk about mission anymore, he talks about core mission. He says core mission is degree programs. We don't have a degree in labor studies, only a certificate. Since the curator's mandated cuts require us to finance raises by cannibalizing programs, we can expect to see more shots fired at the body of our mission and more programs lopped off which serve both community and students. Before that's done, I hope the UMKC community seriously looks at what we're sacrificing and how selective the impact is. Like The Institute for Labor Studies, other centers are at risk. Find your own money, we're told. Before we know it we'll be lopping off more than the working class. What's at risk? Precisely those parts of our community with the least resources and those parts of our endeavor that are most innovative and experimental. Core mission takes on a decidedly Social Darwinist cast.

Landmark Court Decision OK's Unionization for Missouri Public Employees

At the end of May the Missouri Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, reversed a 1947 ruling and reaffirmed the right of public employees in Missouri to organize and bargain collectively. The language of the Missouri Constitution Bill of Rights, Article I Section 29, is plain: "... employees shall have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing." Yet previous courts had maintained that these rights did not apply to public employees.

The case was brought by the National Education Association against the Independence School District. Governor Blunt called the ruling, written by Missouri Chief Justice Michael A. Wolff, "terrible" and "reckless." But for the 390,000 public-sector employees in Missouri whose rights have been reconfirmed, it could mean a whole new ballgame.

Thanks to Judy Ancel for details in this report.

SB 389, Missouri Omnibus Higher Education Bill: A Trojan Horse Within our Gates

by Patricia Brodsky

        Much could be, and has been, said about SB 389, the Omnibus Higher Education Bill, the so-called Mohela Bill, passed by the Missouri Senate in April 2007 and by the House in May. Two elements of this bill in particular deserve a closer look as threats to the academic profession.

        The first is the clause that reads "A public college or university shall not reject an applicant for a faculty position solely on the lack of a graduate degree if the applicant has an undergraduate degree and has served at least eight years in the General Assembly" (summary of Section 173.475).

        A candidate for a faculty position is normally expected to have at least a graduate if not a terminal degree in an academic discipline. For a tenure track position in most fields the candidate is expected to have completed a lengthy course of specialized study and a dissertation, and will usually have experience teaching in his/her speciality as well as in the broader discipline. He/she is also expected to have a commitment to expand human knowledge through original research. The equation of eight years experience in the General Assembly with the rigors of academic preparation demeans our professional status and would shortchange our students.

        There is something to be said for practical experience and "street learning," and in a very few cases faculty have been hired and even tenured at UMKC and elsewhere without graduate or terminal degrees. But these are exceptional individuals, who brought such valuable experience and expertise to their positions that it was considered to make up for the lack of formal training. While serving as an elected official undoubtedly can provide an individual with insight into the political system, just being elected doesn't guarantee systematic knowledge, understanding, or wisdom, or the ability to teach effectively what one has experienced in the legislature. In the case of many politicians today, serving in elected office increasingly recommends itself as a likely disqualification for an academic job.

        The basic issue here is one of professionalism. This law clearly undermines academic standards and faculty responsibility for hiring. Institutions and faculty would be deprived of their rights to determine criteria for admission into the academic profession, and requirements for tenure would logically be undermined. It is not a great leap to see this legislation as another move in the campaign to do away with tenure altogether.

        Though one may assume a legislator would be applying for a position in government or political science, the law doesn't actually limit the jobs for which he/she must be considered. This omission could lead to bizarre scenarios. Envision, for example, a legislator who, after eight years of pushing factory farm subsidies or arranging TIF's for developers, conceives a yearning to teach brain surgery, or musicology. According to the law, the mere lack of a graduate degree can't stand in the way. True, there are other criteria, and a hiring committee would probably be able to show that Representative X is not qualified for the position. Nevertheless, the prestige and power associated with elected office could not-so-subtly intimidate hiring committees to look the other way.

        The second disturbing element mandated by SB 389 is the new website on which each campus is to provide personal information about each instructor for each course. Aside from unobjectionable data, such as where and when the faculty member received his/her graduate degrees, the site is also intended to include a set of student evaluations for each professor and course. If these are student-generated comments, then it is totally inappropriate for the university itself to post such material. Students at many universities publish their own comments on the faculty, and there is nothing to prevent our students from setting up a blog, a chat room, or a printed publication making these comments available. Likewise they are free to take their opinions to professor.com.

        UMKC Senate Chair Gary Ebersole reports that the evaluations will be responses to questions drafted by the individual campuses. But the result would still represent a kind of rating and ranking of professors and courses, which again is not appro-priate for the university. Never mind the time and money this unfunded mandate will require to create and maintain a new site and to gather and collate the information, every semester.

        Thus SB 389 presents a slippery slope both toward devaluing and deprofessionalizing the faculty, and toward a further commercialization of education (students as "consumers" rating faculty as "product"), in which the university would be complicit. Faculty should protest these "mandates," work to defuse their harmful effects in practice, and call for their reversal in a new legislature.

The War on Higher Education in Missouri

by David Brodsky

1. The larger context of HB 213

HB 213 was only one component of the war on higher education in Missouri, which included a number of other assaults by the state government. SB 389 (see above), which became law, contained three attacks on higher education. First, it raided funds belonging to Mohela, the state student loan program, to pay for UM campus bulding projects, thus weakening the viability of the funds. Second, it undermined professionalism by circumventing advanced degrees as hiring qualifications. And third, it attacked faculty by sponsoring student evaluations on official university websites.

A different, extremely harsh and punitive bill targeting undocumented immigrant workers, which did not become law, would, among other things, have barred them from attending college in the state. Such legislation is meant to help clear the path for the planned NAFTA transportation corridor. One of Governor Blunt's new appointees to the Board of Curators, who also represents UMKC, is Warren K. Erdman. Erdman is 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 a mover and shaker in the NAFTA transportation corridor project. Kansas City is slated to play a major role as a transporatation hub for a hugely expanded guest worker program of indentured servants from Mexico and Central America, a program which one observer calls "transient servitude". On the Board of Curators Erdman replaces Angela Bennett, an African-American graduate of UMKC and dedicated proponent of that institution and of public higher education. As Curator for the next six years, Erdman will have ample opportunity to promote the corporatization of UMKC and the UM system, perhaps as a servicing agent for the NAFTA transportation corridor.

2. The Emily Brooker Case revisited

        Pat Brodsky's op ed (see Faculty Advocate, No. 21) gave a brief summary of the case: "Emily Brooker was a student at Missouri State University in Springfield who sued the institution. She claimed to have been victimized by the faculty's alleged political bias against her (she opposed gay adoption based on her religious beliefs). The university settled within a week, disciplined the instructor, investigated the Social Work Program, and awarded the plaintiff a handsome sum."

        The signal aspect of the Emily Brooker lawsuit against Frank G. Kauffman and other members of the Social Work faculty at Missouri State is that the public knows, at best, only one side of the story, that of the plaintiff. Frank Schmidt, president of the Faculty Council at UM Columbia, acknowledged this fact in his testimony to the House Higher Education Committee on February 27. He stated: "None of us know exactly what happened because the case was settled and the records sealed. The were no public findings of fact. We have allegations and press releases but little else, nor are we likely to get more." The later report of an MSU investigating commission that claims to have confirmed previous allegations may likewise be one-sided.

        As a consequence, the public has not been allowed to hear a single word in their own defense from Kauffman or from other faculty in the MSU Social Work program that was harshly disciplined by the MSU administration. The administration's actions violated the faculty's academic freedom, usurped faculty governance rights--only the faculty have the right and responsibility of investigating charges against a faculty member and, if substantiated, of recommending disciplinary procedures--and sabotaged due process, since by settling out of court and silencing the accused, they have suppressed the facts of the case. Meanwhile, the press across the political spectrum, as well as most academic commentary, has agreed that Kauffman and the program committed terrible deeds deserving the punishment they received. This rush to judgment is based solely on allegations in the lawsuit with no rebuttal by the defense.

        As the lawsuit establishes, Brooker attacked Kauffman not only for his alleged coercive pedagogy (in fact, as the lawsuit admits, she was permitted to do a different project). She also denounced her instructor because he "engaged in leftist diatribes denigrating President Bush." Thus the most likely reason Kauffman was targeted by Brooker and the right-wing legal foundation that represented her was not his academic behavior--which, like HB 213 itself, was a pretext--but the fact that he was an outspoken progressive in conservative Springfield. He publicly supported gay rights and universal healthcare and criticized President Bush and his war policies. The Springfield News-Leader wrote on January 31 that Kauffman is "a frequent letter writer to the News-Leader ... [and] an unabashed liberal. Some will find that a convictable offense."

        The attack on Kauffman and the Social Work Program occured in the context of a nationwide right-wing campaign against gays and lesbians. The online journal Inside Higher Ed reported on Nov. 1, 2006 that "in a separate case, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to drop ties with the Council on Social Work Education unless the council changes its evaluation standards that FIRE calls 'politically loaded'." The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Nov. 9, 2006 that "several conservative groups have attacked the Council on Social Work Education, an accrediting body, for imposing standards on the field that discriminate against students based on their political beliefs and that violate their free-speech rights. The groups contend that the requirements can amount to a loyalty test to left-wing principles (sic)."

The professional discipline of Social Work is a self-evident target of the right because it defends the victims of right-wing aggression. Ultra-conservative ideology and the legislation and polcies this ideology promotes deny that (among other groups) poor people, people of color, immigrants, and people with other sexual orientations have any rights whatsoever.

3. Update on HB 213, the Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act

        Once the media and the MSU administration "established the guilt" of the Social Work Program, the right-wing campaign took advantage of this unsubstantiated judgment to extend its assault to all of academe. If one member of the faculty could be tarred and feathered as a model of "one of the the most extraordinarily egregious cases I've ever seen," in the words of Brian Foster, University of Missouri-Columbia provost, then all academics could be regarded with suspicion as potential criminals. Such logic repeats ad nauseam the police state measures of the USA Patriot Act, executive orders, the infamous logon message at UMKC in the Gilliland era, FBI "national security letters" sent to libraries and bookstores, etc. Thus HB 213 based its justification ultimately on a police state rationale, one which the public, the legislature, administrators, and all too many academics bought into unreservedly.

        The last issue of Faculty Advocate went to press at the start of April, before HB 213 was passed by the full House and the Senate Education Committee. The bill was an overwhelmingly partisan affair, sponsored and passed out of committees according to party lines. The party distribution of the Missouri House is 92 Republicans and 71 Democrats. But the lopsided floor vote, 97-50 in favor, was the result of 12 Democrats voting for the bill and another 10 who were absent and did not vote (one Republican voted against HB 213 and 6 others were absent).

        A remarkable amendment added to the House version, which was passed by the entire body, called for protecting the viewpoint that "the Bible is inerrant." The Biblical inerrancy clause generated the most publicity, although it was the least of the bill's problems. Nevertheless, had it passed, it would have enshrined religious fundamentalism as the authority controlling all public institutions of higher education. Quoted in Inside Higher Ed, Cary Nelson, President of the national AAUP, called the bill "one of the worst pieces of higher education legislation in a century" and noted that, if it were to become law, "Missouri would no longer have any system of secular public higher education."

        The bill prepared by the Senate Education Committee was a sanitized version presenting an innocuous and friendly face for smooth marketing. Besides eliminating Biblical inerrancy, it carefully suppressed all mention of the legislation's true intent, to impose, in the House version's language, "political, ideological, and religious" criteria on all areas of campus life. Nevertheless, it retained the crucial bias favoring student "opinion" over faculty professional judgment and academic standards: "No students shall be penalized for the expression of an opinion when such opinion relates to the subject matter being taught or issues being discussed." It substituted the word "opinion" for the term "belief" in HB 213, and "student academic freedom" for "intellectual diversity," "pluralism," or "viewpoint discrimination."

        The "student academic freedom" strategy brought it closer to David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR) and his organization, "Students for Academic Freedom." The Senate version still required faculty to inform students of grievance procedures when they objected to challenges to their received opinions, or to being evaluated according to professional norms. Finally, it specified institutional reporting requirements that tabulate the number of student "academic freedom" grievances filed at each campus. Quantity of grievances appeared to be the main criterion for the Missouri legislature to reward or punish university budgets.

        Despite cosmetic changes, the Senate version continued to authorize government intrusion in academic affairs, violation of delegated institutional autonomy, and contempt for academic standards and the professional foundation of higher education.

        The AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom has written about the "Academic Bill of Rights" and its variants: "proper pedagogical authority is to be determined by reference to scholarly and professional standards, as interpreted and applied by the faculty itself." The professional judgment of faculty "separate[s] serious work from mere opinion.... The student has no 'right' to be rewarded for an opinion ... that is independent of these scholarly standards. If students possessed such rights, all knowledge would be reduced to opinion, and education would be rendered superfluous" [emphasis DB].

        In the AAUP's "Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students," the section "Protection Against Improper Academic Evaluation" reads: "Students should have protection through orderly procedures against prejudiced or capricious academic evaluation [emphasis DB]. At the same time, they are responsible for maintaining standards of academic performance established for each course in which they are enrolled."

        In other words, students have every right to make reasoned arguments against what they find objectionable. They are free to say what they want, but their opinions are not exempt from challenges raised by faculty or other students. If students dislike the content of an academic discipline, the teacher's opinions, or the course materials, they are still responsible for doing the work, and their performance in the course will determine their grade. But they cannot refuse to make a serious effort to engage the subject matter, or flout the ethical standards of a profession, or require that their opinion meets with general approval, and then politically denounce the instructor by making false claims of "viewpoint discrimination."

        The Senate version was never scheduled for a floor vote, due in part to increasing opposition. One likely factor in its defeat was an intensified campaign mounted by the AAUP chapter and distributed by the Education for Democracy Network. Following an initial appeal mailed in March requesting messages to the legislature, the campaign sent out four additional appeals in the next five weeks. Messages came from Missouri and nationwide, and from as far afield as the European Union.

        Other likely factors were letters to the editor, op eds, and testimony at legislative hearings, including a number of AAUP interventions. Besides Pat Brodsky's publications in March and early April (St. Charles County Business Record, Kansas City Star, UMKC University News), AAUP State Conference Vice President David Robinson of Truman State University gave testimony to the Senate Education Committee, AAUP State Conference President Keith Hardeman published op eds in the Springfield News-Leader and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and national AAUP President Cary Nelson and Executive Director Ernest Benjamin posted a public statement on the AAUP website, which simultaneously was sent as a letter to the Missouri Senate Education Committee. A report on the bill in Inside Higher Ed (April 16) helped bring the crisis to national attention.

        This issue of Faculty Advocate reprints Robinson's testimony, Nelson and Benjamin's statement, and Hardeman's summary of the campaign in the Fall issue of Missouri Academe. It also reprints a letter to the legislature by two Kansas City retired social science professors, which places the issues in sharp focus.

        For thorough background on ABOR, consult Faculty Advocate No. 19 online, which contains a cluster of three articles on the subject.

Curators, Upper Admin Impose Grievance Policy Undermining Academic Freedom

by Patricia Brodsky

1. "Intellectual Diversity" and the Curators' Plan

        When, after passing in the Missouri House, HB 213, the "Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act," failed to make it to the Senate floor during the 2007 session, opponents in the legislature and the higher education community thought they had received a reprieve. They naturally assumed that the mean-spirited bill, a direct outgrowth of David Horowitz's national campaign against academic freedom, would reappear in some form in the next session, and began working out new strategies to oppose it. But by October it became evident that forces promoting the bill had decided to take the non-law into their own hands.

        This turn of events did not come as a complete surprise. A newspaper report in the Columbia Tribune (April 6) explains the untoward silence of the University of Missouri, which issued no public statements and did not testify at the House Higher Education Committee hearing on HB 213 in February. The article reports that some high-placed administrators--Stephen Lehmkuhle, then Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs in the UM system, and Brian Foster, University of Missouri Columbia provost--essentially came out in favor of the bill in early April. Curator David Wasinger, who a year ago led the attack on the UM system retirement plan and retiree health benefits, was a predictable proponent of HB 213, and he repeated the false allegations of David Horowitz that right-wing students and faculty are fearful of expressing their opinions.

        As reported in the Tribune, UM Columbia provost Foster said, "'I think the Brooker case is one of the most extraordinarily egregious cases I've ever seen of this sort." Lehmkuhle stated that "this issue is less about the views of faculty members; it's more about how to accommodate and respect the views and perspectives of students that may conflict with the tenets of a discipline and its normal methodologies'." In other words, student "opinion" trumps professional standards. Perhaps deprofessionalized faculty needed to be instructed in the techniques of deference to right-wing opinion, and lessons might start with bowing and scraping exercises. Lehmkuhle has since left the University of Missouri to take a job in Minnesota.

        A draft document suddenly surfaced on UM campuses, apparently issuing from a meeting between the Curators, Provosts, and administrators from Student Affairs. It contained four virtually identical sections, one for each campus, driven by a supposed need for a new grievance mechanism for students to register ideological complaints agains faculty. Soon after, another draft document, unsigned and undated, headed "Intellectual Pluralism. Progress Report. University of Missouri-Kansas City" arrived on the scene. It contained a series of mandates, such as "[e]ach campus will establish a readily accessible website for students to register concerns or complaints about an instructor," and "[e]ach campus will designate an individual to receive student complaints about an instructor." The designated ombudsman is to keep records of all complaints, and write a report at the end of each year. (Significantly, the document omitted to say who was to receive this report and whether it would be kept confidential.)

        Following each of the mandates was a description of UMKC's efforts to conform to them. UMKC was said to be in the process of creating an online form for this purpose, and to have "appointed Robin Hamilton, Executive Staff Assistant within the Office of the VC for Student Affairs" as acting ombudsman, "until they hire a new person as campus ombudsman." To facilitate this system, various "teaching support programs" were mandated. UMKC promised to emphasize "diversity" via workshops for GTA's, discussions in FaCET, and New Faculty Orientation materials.

2. Faculty Objections

        Opponents of HB 213 made it clear from the beginning that college faculty strongly support academic freedom, freedom of speech, and respect for varying points of view, both for students and professors. However, the spectre of students suffering at the hands of biased instructors, which drove propaganda for HB 213, was pure invention. The real threat was the legislation itself, the purposeful distortion of the terms "diversity" and "pluralism" by the right wing, and its agenda to create a climate of intimidation of faculty and to encourage self-censorship of mainstream, non-reactionary points of view.

        The Curators' policy and its implementation by upper administrations on all four campuses accomplishes essentially the same things, and criticisms of the legislation apply equally to the new policy. It undermines the professional basis of higher education, on which academic freedom rests, by replacing professional with ideological criteria. It violates delegated institutional autonomy and due process. It supersedes peer review--faculty responsibility for investigating and disciplining faculty improprieties. And it harms academic standards, and thus the reputation and income (loss of tuition revenue and large grants in the sciences) of higher education institutions in Missouri.

        The overt intent of Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" and its spinoffs like HB 213 is to advance right-wing ideology while suppressing non-right-wing viewpoints. But clear, long-standing university policies already deal effectively with student grievances. Thus the self-evident purpose of the the Curators' mandating a new and separate track for student "viewpoint discrimination" ("diversity," "pluralism") complaints is to promote and encourage political and ideological denunciations of mainstream faculty by right-wing students (Wasinger's ideological rationale is explicit). That such a regime will chill the teaching and practice of critical thinking and silence challenges to the received opinions of such students is likewise self-evident. Other self-evident consequences are institutionally based ideological surveillance, political policing, and harassment of targeted faculty. The worst aspect of the curators' policy is that it establishes a precedent in the UM system for these illegitimate and reprehensible principles.

        Not surprisingly, this ideological denunciation system was invented and implemented in order to bypass and discredit faculty procedures and to nullify faculty responsibility for the curriculum, for student evaluation, and for disciplining faculty who violate academic standards. First of all, the denunciation regime was planned entirely without faculty participation, business as usual in the UM system. Instead of defending the faculty and reaffirming the University's commitment to academic freedom, the administrations jumped on the Curators' bandwagon. Second, besides long-standing student grievance policies handled by the administration, with very specific instructions for registering a formal complaint, academic units have procedures for addressing student complaints before they get to the formal grievance stage. The new imposed system intentionally circumvents faculty procdures, and student complaints, rather than being adjudicated at the level of the department, go directly to an administrator and become part of the permanent record (see the "year-end report," above). The political denunciation system escalates problems that can usually be solved by a face to face discussion, aided by the chair or a faculty committee. Instead, students are encouraged to complain about their instructors, thereby setting faculty and students against one another in an adversarial relationship, and splitting the campus along ideological lines, the usual divide and rule tactic. These are calculated outcomes of Horowitz's strategy.

3. The UMKC Website: HB 213 as a Guide for Students

        What does the UMKC complaint website look like? One can access the relevant page either by typing in http://www.umkc.edu/helpline/ or by going to the UMKC home page, clicking on "Student Life," then (at the upper right) clicking on "get help" and finally on "helpline." What comes up is the "Helpline" page. Here we find a statement of UMKC's unobjectionable position on intellectual diversity and discrimination. The student is told to go to helpline@umkc.edu if he feels he has been treated unfairly on the bases of his personal beliefs or affiliations. (NB this is merely an email address; there are no instructions for filing a complaint.) Under "Additional Resources," the site provides a link to the Board of Curators' response to "intellectual pluralism." This document quotes the Collected Rules and Regulations, which in turn are based on the 1940 AAUP statement on academic freedom. But the last paragraph, which cites the vacuous notion of "intellectual pluralism," thereby intentionally misreads the AAUP statement (as does Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights"). The website also has links to procedures for the already existing student grievance process, and a brief overview about making a formal complaint.

        However, the shocking fourth link on the UMKC website is to the "Full text of House Bill 213, 'Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act'." It should be noted that on the student grievance websites of the other three UM campuses, links to HB 213 do not (as yet) show up. By placing HB 213 on this particular website, its authors are not merely providing background information for students. They are investing HB 213 with authority and legitimacy. In this way, the UMKC administration is promoting and thereby lobbying for the passage of a failed law. Such solidarity with the far right recalls the Gilliland era.
There is absolutely no justification for an official University web page to refer to a failed piece of legislation as a legal or intellectual authority. Faculty need to ask who was responsible for this website. Who at UMKC proposed and who approved the inclusion of this document, notoriously hostile to the faculty and to academic freedom, as a guide for student complaints?    The top-down imposition of an administrative "solution" to a non-problem and the circumvention of existing procedures undermine faculty governance. By investing HB 213 with political and intellectual authority, the drafters of this webpage demonstrate their hostility to the faculty and abet students' adversarial relationship with their instructors.

4. Reactions on Other UM Campuses

        Other UM campus administrations have acquiesced to pressure from the Curators. At UMSL a website is up, but the links are not finished, and as yet no one has taken on the role of ombudsman. UMC's Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities includes a quote from the American Council on Education's Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities as a basis for UMC's policy. "Submit Concerns/Complaints" leads to the message that this site is under construction. UM Rolla's statement on Student Discrimination Grievance or Informal Concern/ Complaint was difficult to find; it doesn't seem to be foregrounded, and one has to google "grievance" to get there. Of note is the fact that the site assures the student that "information will be kept confidential and will be shared with only those involved with the incident and the Student Discrimination & Grievance procedure." Nowhere does the site specifically refer to complaints about instructors.

        In addition to new websites, official responses have included a forum on "intellectual diversity" held at UMSL on October 11. Sponsored by the UMSL Chancellor's Diversity Initiative and the Center for Teaching and Learning, the meeting was structured as a panel discussion, but was dominated by conservative voices. The message of the meeting seemed to be "if we don't want the legislature to police us, we must police ourselves"--a variant of "it's a done deal, so let's make the best of it." One student complained that his poli sci courses had not provided him with enough contacts to Republican party organizations. Most disturbingly, Representative Jane Cunningham, sponsor of HB 213, was invited to the forum without the faculty's knowledge, and was given ten uninterrupted minutes to present her distinctly biased view of the Emily Brooker case (see "The War on Higher Education"). Inviting a politician to make a partisan presentation at the UMSL faculty meeting demonstrates the same kind of administrative political bias as the UMKC website legitimation of HB 213.

        Like all people, faculty hold opinions, some of them strong. But because faculty opinion is based on long study that results in knowledge of a discipline, they have not only the right but the duty to express their opinions forthrightly and without apology. A new AAUP report, "Freedom in the Classroom," which references HB 213 at the start, makes that point explicit. If a student is permitted and encouraged to denounce the instructor with whom he disagrees, then education and the professionalism on which it rests is a dead letter.

        Faculty at both UMC and UMSL have expressed opposition to the Curators' policy and to their administrations' response. A dormant AAUP chapter in Columbia is stirring back to life, as faculty seek channels to resist.

5. Where do we go From Here?

        An editorial in the Kansas City Star on Sunday October 21 defended the faculty and higher education, making some of the same points as AAUP critiques had done earlier. Besides blasting the legislature for "stingy budget appropriations," and certain curators for berating academic freedom, which the editorial calls "the most basic tenet of higher education," it warned of potential damage to the reputation of Missouri's public universities. The last session of the legislature, it stated, "was particularly embarrassing," due to the "hostility toward higher education" shown by the Missouri General Assembly and three ultra-conservative Curators, David Wasinger, Doug Russell, and John Carnahan. Its conclusion echoes the appeals made by the AAUP chapter: "Too many Republican lawmakers--and even the curators mentioned above--have allowed misguided political and religious agendas to harm Missouri's universities. People who care about the future of the state and its colleges--including thousands of alumni across Missouri--need to speak up and demand a change in course."

        The Star's advice to "speak up and demand a change in course" applies above all to faculty, particularly those in the UM system, who are about to be subjected to the same regime that HB 213 recommended. The accommodation of faculty organizations to this assault has been rather pronounced. The response on three campuses has been resignation ("done deal") and complacency ("it isn't so bad, we can work around it"). Both responses are fallacies. Faculty input into planning the denunciation regime has been nil, and so far there has been little evidence of faculty intervention after the regime was imposed. As for "done deals," it is useful to remember that it took less than a week to remove the infamous logon message criminalizing all computer users, which the Gilliland administration tried to impose several years ago.

        Faculty activism burnout is understandable but not justifiable. Neither is the lesser of two evils rationale offered by everyone, from the above-named curators (who, because they supported the legislation, pressured UM campuses to adopt this regime while posing as protectors of the university), to the Interim President of the system, to the central administration, to campus administrations, and to UM faculty themselves. This rationale alleges that university "self-policing" will reduce the pressure for legislation.

        We should remember that highly placed UM administrators called for this political denunciation system at the April Curators meeting even before the House voted on the bill, thus, in effect lobbying for its passage. Now that the denunciation regime has been imposed from above, the same forces that wrote and promoted the legislation are preparing to take advantage of the fait accompli in the UM system to extend HB 213 type legislation to all public institutions in the state. Once the large public institutions are subjected to the regime, many smaller private ones are sure to follow.

        Never mind that "self-policing" is the ideal scenario envi-sioned by Horowitz himself. "Voluntary" compliance preserves the shell of academic freedom while eviscerating its substance. Self-policing is, of course, self-censorship, which signals the end of de facto academic freedom and the demoralization of both faculty and students. Self-policing, and perhaps also grade inflation, would be foregone conclusions for vulnerable contingent faculty, who constitute three-fourths of the total faculty at University of Missouri campuses, and well over half at most other public institutions in the state.

        But self-policing, it turns out, may not accomplish what it alleges. Besides acting as a convenient method of anesthetizing faculty opposition, the notion that voluntary self-censorship will somehow prevent censorship imposed "from outside" is a delusion. According to an attendee at the UMSL campus-wide forum on "intellectual diversity", the sponsor of HB 213, Representative Jane Cunningham--when asked by a knowledgeable faculty member whether "self-policing" by the UM campuses would reduce the pressure for legislation--said she was definitely planning to introduce the bill again in the upcoming session in 2008.

        So, instead of preempting repressive legislation, self-censorship actually aids and abets it. Rather than the lesser of two evils, faculty will be hit by the same evil, but doubled in its impact. Faculty accommodation today will smooth the way for both evils tomorrow. Rather than protect the university from malign legislation, the curators and upper administrators in central and on the UM campuses are doing all they can to insure the passage of a failed bill by persuading the faculty to do nothing.

        Because Republicans have a comfortable majority in both houses (92-71 in the House, 20-14 in the Senate) and votes have closely followed party lines, defeating it in committee or filibustering are viable options in the Assembly, although filibusters can and have been overridden. Thus the best and probably only method of defeating the bill in 2008 is a massive outpouring of public opposition. Pressure from faculty to immediately remove the political denunciation regime (website plus ombudsman) from all four UM campuses would effectively end the argument of a precedent (done deal) justifying the legislation.

        We should not forget that faculty and academic disciplines are being held hostage to an aggressive and vocal minority intent on marginalizing mainstream opinion, which on this issue includes the editorial page of the conservative Star. The mainstream outnumbers the vocal minority, and, if it wishes, can make its voice authoritative. Another compelling reason to overturn the denuniciation regime is the fact that the tenured and tenure-line faculty, who comprise only one-quarter of the teachers in the UM system, are the custodians of academic freedom for the 75% of instructors who are contingent and lack all protections.

        Faculty should write their academic senators, demanding a public forum on the "viewpoint discrimination" agenda and the Curators' and administration role in its imposition. An appropriate venue for such a forum would be the special open meeting which the Senate is required to offer once a semester.

        There should be a single grievance process (excluding ideological denunciations), and it should be structured, developed and maintained by faculty. It should contain only a brief statement reiterating faculty support of academic freedom and respect for all members of the university community, and clear instructions for accessing existing procedures, starting at the department level. There is no need for an ombudsman to receive complaints. That position simply represents an extra layer of bureaucracy and undermines faculty governance.

        If the Curators and administrations are incapable of accepting this reasoned response (no ombudsman, faculty responsibility for grievances), another response is possible. Curators are appointed to serve the good of the University, which includes the protection of the faculty's academic freedom. Academic freedom is specifically included in the UM Collected Rules and Regulations. If the Curators cannot or will not support academic freedom and faculty governance responsibilities, then the faculty might consider a vote of no confidence. As for the Assembly, there is an election next year.

        For those who insist that resistance is futile and accommodation is astute, I can only say: remember Martha. And remember what the united faculty accomplished.

Letter to the Missouri Assembly

by Charles Reitz and Roena Haynie

        We are two retired social science professors writing to ask you to oppose the "The Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act," HB 213, and hope you will consider what we believe are compelling reasons to stop it.

        This so-called diversity proposal really has no cosmopolitan or multicultural vision. It is not committed to defending the rights of minorities, to the protection of dissent, or to reclaiming our common humanity. It is a calculated and vicious misrepresentation to call it a diversity proposal. Instead it attempts to oppose those who advocate multicultural education reform and intercultural peace and understanding. The proposal actually constricts debate and critical thinking through a reassertion of a variety of conservative ideologies. We see this "diversity" proposal as akin to the "diversity" that the religious right would like to see introduced into the nation's biology texts, to include creationism and intelligent design ideologies and displace scientific rigor in the natural sciences. Now they want to stress nationalism, militarism, and a narrow-minded jingoism, to censure and intimidate the critics of war, racism, and sexism in the social sciences today. This is an utterly bogus plan to "expand" academic freedom. On the contrary, it creates pressure for self-censorship.

        If the legislature wishes to bring genuine diversity to education, especially higher education, it should first acknowledge that until rather recently the Humanities--studies thought of as having universally human aims and goals--were actually disfigured by the politics of privilege: white privilege, male privilege, and wealth privilege. For decades prior to the 1960s education built silences into the curriculum suppressing the histories of women, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and the labor movement. This mono-cultural WASP or Anglo-conformist curriculum has been successfully challenged by the multicultural education reform movement over the past few decades. The civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the student anti-war movement each contributed to a reconsideration of conventional thinking about historical conditions in the US. But now this key intellectual progress and the expanded democratic freedoms represented by genuine multicultural efforts in schools and society are being pushed back by a backlash including the calculatedly deceptive "diversity" proposal now before the House. Let the legislature support curriculum reform efforts that reclaim our common humanity by celebrating the global dream of peace, equality, and empowerment for all. There is a library of scholarly resources available on the work still needed in intercultural education: James Banks, Christine Sleeter, and Carl Grant offer the academic research that should stand at the foundation of any of the legislature's future efforts.

        Thank you and best wishes,

Charles Reitz, Ph.D., Kansas City MO
Professor of Social Science and Director of Multicultural Education (Retired), Kansas City Kansas Community College

Roena L. Haynie, Ph.D, Kansas City, MO
Chair of Social Science (Retired), Avila University, Kansas City, MO

Testimony to Missouri Senate Education Committee, 25 April 2007

by David Robinson

        Testimony of David K. Robinson, Professor of History, Truman State University, Vice-President of Missouri Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

Mr. Chairman and honored senators:

        Faculty at institutions of higher education in our state are overwhelmingly opposed to HB213. Similar bills have been introduced and defeated in twenty-eight other states over the past four years. We urge you to do the same, for the following reasons:

        1. HB 213 would have the opposite effect of its stated intentions: it would curtail academic freedom and free expression by imposing restrictions on what can or cannot be taught. Academic freedom means that faculty members, who are trained to evaluate information through critical inquiry, interact with students who need to learn to do the same. Legislating someone's idea of "balance" in the classroom will require that opinions or beliefs be given equal weight with facts and scientific theory, implying that all imaginable theories and laws have equal legitimacy, regardless of expert consensus within a discipline. The best way to assure the kind of intellectual diversity that we really need in colleges and universities is to promote academic freedom, to keep a free market of ideas alive and flourishing. This legislation would restrict that market by stifling debate and inquiry.

        2. Grievance mechanisms are already in place in all Missouri colleges and universities. These procedures work well, and this legislation would harm rather than improve the grievance systems. Even the unfortunate Brooker case was satisfactorily resolved, once her administration was informed. Such cases are extremely rare, and we must not destroy the whole system in a vain attempt to save it from that rare problem.

        3. HB 213 would open the learning process to partisan battles that really have no place in most classrooms. Rather than protecting students from unnecessary politicization, such oversight could well insert politics into every classroom.

        4. Under HB 213, colleges and universities would incur significant costs, both in money and time. If this becomes an unfunded mandate, faculty will have less time for their important duties of class preparation, grading, tutoring, research, recruiting, etc.

        5. Nationally the main proponents of such proposals as HB 213 are the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and David Horowitz, who claim to be defending students from "indoctrination," but present precious little evidence that students are not free to follow their interests. Other states that have examined such proposals have all rejected them. In my opinion, they did so because they feared the unnecessary politicization that the so-called "Intellectual Diversity Laws" would bring to their universities. I am quite sure that Horowitz and his followers will never be satisfied until they eliminate the views that they disagree with. They are in the business of destroying academic freedom, not protecting it. Please do not help them with their destruction. Please reject HB213.

Text reproduced from Truman State University AAUP chapter website

AAUP Condemns Missouri Bill

by Cary Nelson and Ernest Benjamin

        AAUP President Cary Nelson and Executive Director Ernest Benjamin have released the following statement regarding Missouri BIll H213.

        The Missouri House of Representatives has passed a bill (HB 213) which ostensibly "ensure[s] intellectual diversity and the free exchange of ideas." The bill, sponsored by legislators and others who are concerned about what they see as the politicalization of the classroom, directs public colleges and universities to report annually to the state legislature steps they have taken to achieve these goals. Possible steps enumerated in the legislation include grievance policies that allow for complaints to be filed "directly with the governing board"; a "balanced variety" of campus speakers; methods to achieve educational objectives that do not require a student "to act against his or her conscience"; and periodic meetings with students to determine if they believe "they are receiving a sound and respectful education." Moreover, the bill states that intellectual diversity in teaching must protect "the viewpoint that the Bible is inerrant."

        If this bill becomes law, it will do incalculable damage to the independence of Missouri's state colleges and universities and to academic freedom. A fundamental principle of academic freedom is that decisions concerning the content of academic programs and academic policies are to be made by academic professionals. Some departments, for example, may endorse many schools of thought; others may wish to emphasize a particular disciplinary approach. One institution may conclude that a diverse array of outside speakers makes good academic sense; another may favor a limited range of speakers. And while some individuals may believe that the Bible is inerrant, it is for professors to decide on the basis of their expertise and training and in accordance with standards of the academic profession whether and how that belief may find its way into classroom teaching; it is not for the Missouri legislature to dictate the content of what can be taught. The former is an exercise of academic freedom, the latter an abridgment of it.

        The bill threatens to impose legislative oversight on the professional judgment of faculty and to deprive academic institutions of their authority from making decisions that are central to their academic purpose. It would substitute a political body for academic ones, replace academic decisions with political judgments, and therefore open colleges and universities to greater politicalization, not less. The bill's proponents have not put forward any compelling reasons for adopting a measure that is so at odds with the principles of academic freedom. Indeed, the bill itself would limit and constrain intellectual diversity and the free exchange of ideas. The bill's infirmities run too deep to be cured with textual refinements. It should be discarded entirely.

Text reproduced from national AAUP website

Brooker Intellectual Diversity Bill Dead--For Now (excerpts)

by Keith Hardeman

        The Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Bill ..., sponsored by Rep. Jane Cunningham (R-Chesterfield), died last May on the Senate Informal Calendar. Had this legislation passed, political standards would have been imposed in the classrooms of Missouri's public colleges and universities.

        A clone of David Horowitz's equally misnamed Academic Bill of Rights, the Brooker bill would have put unsubstantiated (or, in some cases, factually discredited) opinions and perspectives on a level playing field with mainstream disciplinary information, evidence, and logic.

        Science departments could have been mandated to give equal time to creationism (and its factually inaccurate assertion that the earth is only 6000 years old) as a plausible scientific alternative to evolution, cosmology, and thermonuclear dynamics. The content of environment courses would need to include the notion that global warming has no relation to human activity, which, again, goes against the vast consensus of the world's credible science community.

        History professors might have had to entertain the idea that the Holocaust never took place. In many cases, we would have been in the position of having to evaluate students based as much on their own religious and political points of view as on substantive course material. Therefore, the bill that Rep. Cunningham claims would remove politics from the classroom would, in reality, guarantee the opposite effect. The above scenarios could still happen.

        The fight to maintain academic standards in Missouri is likely not over. Since the Brooker Bill passed the Missouri House by a 97-50 margin, do not be surprised if Representative Cunningham or others follow up with more nefarious attempts to polticize a college education and reduce academic freedom.

..........

        ... unaware faculty members ... at first glance may see nothing wrong with a government-regulated decrease of academic freedom ...

        Perhaps they erronesouly believe their own course material could not be influenced. We must be vigilant not only in the public and political arenas, but also in our own back yards. I hope we are able to reach this minority of professors and enlighten them: When the government limits academic freedom by imposing points of view on experts in institutions beholden to the search for truth, everyone is adversely affected, regardless of one's own personal politics.

..........

        The Brooker bill was never about improving education. It was about partisan politics at their worst. Obtaining the third highest academic degree in the world should mean something beyond receiving a glorified endorsement of one's own political or religious ideologies. In other words, the point of a college education is for students to step outside the box and learn different perspectives, ideas, and ways of thinking. Dumbing down and politicizing curriculum simply because some do not like the facts within a discipline will only serve to dumb down society as a whole. And no one wins when that happens.

        Let us continue to work in the best interests of our students so that Missouri does not have the dubious distinction of becoming the first and only state to adopt such perilous legislation.

[Missouri Academe] Editor's Note: Representative Jane Cunningham was contacted and invited to provide text in favor of her bill for publication in this issue. She did not respond.

Faculty Advocate note: This article originally appeared in Missouri Academe (Sept. 2007), the newsletter of the Missouri Conference of AAUP. Keith Hardeman, Professor and Chair of Communication and Fine Arts at Westminster College, is President of the Conference.

News of the Chapter

        The lively and well-attended first meeting of the semester was held on September 14th at Kelly Pinkham's. Attendees enjoyed the refreshments and pleasant surroundings and caught up on each other's summer activities. The meeting proper began with Roger Pick's treasurer's report and dealt with a number of campus issues. These included possible targets for cuts under the mandated "1% rule;" the upcoming election for IFC representative; and faculty governance problems in one campus unit.

        One attendee gave the group a heads-up about post-tenure review. The system, which was mandated some five years ago, is now going into effect. Central Administration is apparently circumventing the review procedures the schools had decided on. For example, the first persons to come up for review should have been those who had not undergone recent special reviews. Yet some faculty members who have just completed special review processes, such as for promotion or tenure, have already received notices from the Central Administration that they are due for post tenure review.

        The national AAUP as well as the UMKC Chapter have spoken out vigorously against the system of post tenure review, as it is clearly a plan to undermine the tenure system. Tenure is by definition a definitive review: a faculty member is judged by his peers to deserve permanent appointment, which can be removed only in very specific, narrowly defined circumstances.

        Post tenure review could be transformed from a punitive system to one that supports faculty, for example, via reduced teaching loads or release time for research or retraining. But for this to happen, the faculty would have to seize the process and make it their own.

        Other discussion focused on the chapter's plans for 2007-2008. One major project is a recruitment campaign. Numbers are important for a member-driven organization like the AAUP, and our operating budget is based entirely on dues and the occasional, very welcome, gift. In addition, it's always been our goal to attract people with energy, ideas and commitment. Members of the Executive Committee plan to visit faculty who aren't yet members, solicit their issues and ideas, and invite them to join AAUP. Membership Chair Scott Baker made a brief report on how the recruitment campaign is shaping up. As always, all chapter members are urged to approach their colleagues about joining. It needn't take much time, and talking about something you believe in is a pleasure.

        In early 2008 we will once again sponsor a Tenure Workshop for non-tenured faculty. Our previous workshops have consisted of a panel of faculty and administrators--typically a department chair, a dean, a member of the Campus P & T Committee, a recently tenured faculty member, and someone currently undergoing tenure review. Brief presentations and a question and answer session have proved very useful by providing honest, practical advice to faculty on the tenure track.

        Proposals were discussed for two AAUP-sponsored forums, one of which has already been scheduled for October 26. Judy Ancel, Director of the Institute for Labor Studies, which is still under threat of arbitrary closure, will speak on the history and goals of labor education. She will be joined by Judy Morgan, President of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers, and Jesse Heckman, UMKC Labor Certificate graduate (see above).

        The second proposed meeting was a legislative forum focussing on "intellectual diversity." HB 213, the "Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act," was passed by the Missouri House in the spring, but never made it to the floor of the Senate (see Faculty Advocate, No. 21 for a critique of the bill and the national agenda behind it; also see related articles in this issue). At the time of our September meeting it seemed likely that a related bill would reappear in the next legislative session (and that likelihood became a certainty when confirmed a month later by the bill's sponsor). Chapter members agreed that it was important to educate people on the issues, and on the deceptive use of language which strives to make a destructive idea sound harmless or even desirable.

        Now, however, such a forum would have to expand to deal with the new "intellectual diversity" mandate called for by the Curators and imposed by the upper administrations of each UM campus. It consists of a dedicated website to specifically address student ideological grievances and campus ombudsmen to process them (see above "Curators, Upper Admin Impose Grievance Policy Undermining Academic Freedom").

        One of our most important activities, which, of necessity, receives little publicity, is aiding AAUP members at UMKC and in other institutions with grievances. Besides helping our own colleagues prepare their cases and resolve conflicts, over the past year chapter members have offered counseling on governance and academic freedom issues to faculty at other universities in the Metro area and around the state. They have also served as outside observers on grievance panels. In addition, the chapter has supported faculty at several institutions in their chapter organizing efforts. We shouldn't forget that our chapter can be of great service to our colleagues by sharing our experience and expertise.

        In other news, Pat Brodsky, Alfred Esser, Ed Hood and Ana Iriarte were among the new emeriti professors honored at Celebrate UMKC, the fall convocation in September.

JOIN AAUP! DEFEND ACADEMIC FREEDOM!

They're at it again. Forces hostile to academic freedom and quality education are trying to shape the university in their own distorted image. Join AAUP and serve the best interests of your students, your institution, and your community.

The entire contents of each issue of The Faculty Advocate (except for public domain material) is copyrighted. The Faculty Advocate, October 2007, Copyright 2007 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: 913-649-2536, e-mail: brodskyp@umkc.edu

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