|
|
 |
|
The
views expressed
on this page are soley those of the author and do not
necessarily
represent the views of County News Online
|
 |
Inside Higher Education
Narrowing the
Terms of Tenure
By Colleen Flaherty
December 13, 2017
University of Arkansas professors want to stall a vote on system policy
changes they say would upend the definition of tenure. Many fear the
system is trying to focus on the vague concept of collegiality.
It’s hard to build faculty consensus on anything, but professors across
Arkansas and colleagues elsewhere are speaking out against proposed
changes to the University of Arkansas System’s personnel policies --
changes they say would make them tenured or working toward tenure in
name only.
Of particular concern is proposed language that would make being a bad
colleague a fireable offense.
The university system says it’s not trying to limit tenure but rather
make its terms clearer. Many professors remain unconvinced.
“Tenure would be kind of like a hollow shell, or the appearance of
tenure without the actual protections” under the proposal, said James
Vander Putten, associate professor of higher education at the
University of Arkansas at Little Rock and vice president of the state’s
conference of the American Association of University Professors.
He added wryly, “The impetus here is nothing more than a wish list for
university attorneys, to make it easier to get rid of troublemaker
faculty members like me."
Troublemaker or not, Vander Putten is far from alone in opposing the
system Board of Trustees’ plan. The Arkansas conference of the AAUP and
the executive committees of the Faculty Senates at the Little Rock
campus and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville all have formally
opposed the changes. The Faculty Senate at the University of Central
Arkansas -- which is not even part of the university system and
therefore not subject to board policy -- also has publicly condemned
the proposal.
“If the University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees adopts the
proposed changes, our colleagues in the University of Arkansas System
will lose the rights of academic freedom, hampering their effectiveness
in teaching, research and service, and face severe hardship in
recruiting and retaining qualified faculty,” reads the Central Arkansas
faculty resolution. “Such weakening of tenure in Arkansas’s flagship
school will affect all Arkansas public universities.”
Currently, system policy says that professors may be terminated for
cause -- such as incompetence, neglect of duty, intellectual dishonesty
or moral turpitude -- after administrative due process. That’s in line
with many if not most institutions’ personnel policies and widely
followed standards suggested by the AAUP. But the University of
Arkansas wants to introduce new, more specific grounds for cause,
including showing “a pattern of disruptive conduct or unwillingness to
work productively with colleagues.”
That sounds a lot like collegiality to professors, and therein lies the
rub. AAUP has long rejected collegiality as a distinct criterion for
faculty evaluation, on the grounds that it is a vague, subjective
concept that has over time been levied against professors with
unpopular ideas or controversial research agendas. AAUP doesn't deny
that collegiality matters, but says that a meaningful lack of it will
manifest in one or all three pillars of faculty work: research,
teaching and service.
“Historically, ‘collegiality’ has not infrequently been associated with
ensuring homogeneity and hence with practices that exclude persons on
the basis of their difference from a perceived norm,” reads the
association’s statement on Collegiality as a Criterion for Faculty
Evaluation. “The invocation of ‘collegiality’ may also threaten
academic freedom. In the heat of important decisions regarding
promotion or tenure, as well as other matters involving such
traditional areas of faculty responsibility as curriculum or academic
hiring, collegiality may be confused with the expectation that a
faculty member display ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘dedication,’ evince ‘a
constructive attitude’ that will ‘foster harmony,’ or display an
excessive deference to administrative or faculty decisions where these
may require reasoned discussion. Such expectations are flatly contrary
to elementary principles of academic freedom, which protect a faculty
member’s right to dissent from the judgments of colleagues and
administrators.”
Two of the most vocal opponents of the changes, Robert Steinbuch and
Joshua Silverstein, professors of law at the Little Rock campus, shared
their own concerns about the changes in a post for the James G. Martin
Center for Academic Renewal’s blog. “The state of Arkansas is facing an
existential threat to academic freedom,” they wrote, saying that a lack
of collegiality would be “a stand-alone basis for termination” under
the policy, placing such behavior “on the same plane as ‘threats or
acts of violence.’”
In responding to faculty concerns, the Arkansas system has said that
current board policies don't preclude dismissal for any of the proposed
guidelines. “The intent of the revision is to add precision and
specificity, thereby providing more explicit guidance to faculty and
removing ambiguity as to the requirements of the policy,” reads an
FAQ-style system document. “For example, there should be no ambiguity
that engaging in racial discrimination or sexual harassment by a
faculty member is cause for disciplinary action.”
Most importantly, the system says, “While the new definition was
expanded to provide additional examples for which a faculty member can
be disciplined or terminated, the new definition explicitly sets out
the type of conduct for which Arkansas system faculty have always been
subject to discipline or termination.” During the past five years, two
tenured professors have been dismissed after trustees’ hearings for
specific reasons, such as disregarding university and departmental
policies, continued poor teaching, or frequent and excessive absences
and unauthorized outside employment, according to the system.
Concerns Beyond Collegiality
Steinbuch and Silverstein nevertheless call the terms of tenure much
more “narrow” under the proposal. They also criticize proposed policy
language saying that professors may be disciplined or dismissed for
“unsatisfactory performance,” another arguably vague standard. The
draft policy says that an unsatisfactory performance evaluation must be
reversed to satisfactory by the end of the following academic year to
avoid risking dismissal, assuming the professor is “actively
cooperating and engaged” in the process. Other timelines may be used if
that’s not the case, it says.
The upshot of that change is “striking,” Steinbuch and Silverstein
wrote, in that if a faculty member “resists a single negative review,
appeals that decision internally, or objects to colleagues or
administrators about that review, he can be fired for lack of
‘cooperation.’”
Steinbuch, Silverstein and their colleagues have a third major concern:
that under the proposed policy, academic freedom would pertain to a
professor’s scholarship and assigned teaching duties, but not
necessarily service. Currently, the policy says that professors’ “mere
expressions of opinion” are generally protected.
“This means, for example, that a professor could be fired merely for
commenting publicly or internally about a school’s alleged financial
improprieties or admission practices,” the law professors wrote,
arguing that the faculty recruitment and freedoms would suffer under
the policies. The changes would be most keenly felt by minorities,
racial, religious and political, they said.
Steinbuch and Silverstein argue that board limitations on faculty
rights are one of two main tools in an ongoing war on academic freedom,
the other being the increased hiring of professors off the tenure
track. Richard J. Peltz-Steele, a professor of law at the University of
Massachusetts at Dartmouth, agreed in a separate post about the matter
on his blog, saying that “what is happening at Arkansas, just one
instance amid an alarming national trend, needs wider attention. Simply
put, an attack on academic freedom anywhere is an attack on academic
freedom everywhere.”
To that point, Arkansas’s board also is considering new policy language
saying that professors teaching off the tenure track are “at will”
employees subject to dismissal for “convenience,” within 30 days’
notice. Professors across campuses have objected to these proposed
changes, as well. The Little Rock Faculty Senate executive committee
memo to the system calls such a policy disruptive to instruction and in
conflict with the university’s mission, for example.
Professors also have objected to the system’s proposal to eliminate an
initial faculty subcommittee in potential dismissal cases involving
tenured faculty members. New language would place the decision to
proceed with termination in the hands of the university’s chief
executive, based on the recommendation or the professor’s chair or
dean. “Faculty see this as a significant reduction in the due process
afforded the faculty member,” reads the Fayetteville Faculty Senate
memo of opposition.
The Fayetteville memo also objects to draft language saying that
“formal rules of court procedure need not be followed” in hearings
before a faculty committee in dismissal cases. “Faculty are concerned
that this is a reduction in the flexibility of the Hearing Committee to
provide protections to the faculty member facing dismissal,” says the
Fayetteville Faculty Senate executive committee.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education also has spoken out
against Arkansas’s plan. Peter Bonilla, director of FIRE’s Individual
Rights Defense program, wrote on the organization’s blog that he’s seen
through his work how collegiality-related charges are “easily and
frequently thrown in as a laundry-list item in faculty investigations,
and often it is the only charge universities can make stick.” That’s
because it’s “a difficult charge for faculty to fight -- just about any
behavior could be subjectively cast as uncollegial, after all -- and
therefore an easy charge with which to gain leverage,” he wrote. “If
the Arkansas system’s policy were enacted, how would an ‘unwillingness
to work productively with colleagues’ be defined? The policy provides
no indication, so your guess is as good as mine.”
Beyond content, questions of process surround the board’s proposal.
Faculty members have accused the body of being fly-by-night in its
approach, releasing the proposed changes to faculty members just two
weeks before a planned vote earlier this fall. The board eventually
delayed the vote to late January due to faculty concerns, and it
recently extended a faculty feedback period. Professors still have
questions about the board’s attempts -- or lack thereof -- at
transparency, however. Some at the Little Rock campus have even
requested documentation on the issue, in the form of public records.
Just last week, the Academic Senate of the University of Arkansas for
Medical Sciences started an online petition against the draft policy,
recommending “in the strongest terms” that the board’s January vote be
delayed. The current discussion should be tabled and a committee should
be formed, representing professors across the university system, to
allow for “proper consultation and discussion.” It’s gathered about 350
signatures so far.
Nate Hinkel, university system spokesperson, said that the process for
revising the board policy is ongoing, and that Arkansas continues to
welcome feedback from across the system.
|
|
|
|
