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News :: Miscellaneous |
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University of Missouri De Facto Abolishes Tenure |
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by David Brodsky, Co-ordinator, E4D Network
(No verified email address) |
08 Jun 2002
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At its May 31st meeting the University of Missouri Board of Curators unanimously passed an amendment to the Bylaws allowing them to circumvent existing rules and regulations regarding faculty employment...In an indirect manner the Curators' amendment effectively abolishes tenure. |
BACKGROUND
In January 2001 the Curators of the University of Missouri system, on the initiative of President Manuel Pacheco, imposed the policy of post-tenure review over the objections of the faculty, most pointedly the faculty at UM Columbia, who rejected it overwhelmingly in two separate votes. Post-tenure review is an indirect means of weakening the protections afforded by tenure, such as job security and academic freedom.
Since that time assaults on the faculty of the UM system have escalated. In April 2002 the Missouri Legislature bipartisanly punished Professor Harris Mirkin of UMKC due to dislike by right-wing members of the content of his research publications. A month later conservative legislators manufactured a budget crisis by refusing to use the state's "rainy day fund" to make up a budget shortfall. The Governor compounded the assault by burdening the UM system with with a grossly disproportionate share of the shortfall (nearly half, on top of millions in previous cuts).
The massive budget cuts have provoked the formation of primarily administrative committees considering the termination of programs, schools, or even entire campuses. The first casualty is the successful School of Biological Sciences (SBS) at UMKC, which the administration has recommended shutting down, over the objections of its faculty, even while touting the university's commitment to the Life Sciences Intiative in Kansas City. The School's "options" are to see its members dispersed to other units or to be privatized entirely (as an "independent research institute not formally affiliated with UMKC"). While its final fate is being decided by non-faculty bodies, the School has been placed in the equivalent of "receivership," resembling a siege or an embargo. The Provost has frozen all its funding, including from non-university sources, and requires his personal written approval for all expenses. Faculty are not allowed to order supplies for their research. In effect, SBS is being subjected to a total blockade.
The recommendation to abolish SBS is clearly in retaliation for the withdrawal of the School from the discredited Blueprint process at UMKC and its resistance to the corporate erosion (e.g. by biotech companies and financiers) of traditional faculty areas of self-governance, like the control of curriculum and faculty status. Complete privatization, of course, would accomplish these goals directly.
The abolition of SBS would entail serious "collateral" (read "targeted") damage to the UMKC chapter of AAUP. Three of the six members of the newly elected Executive Committee are faculty in that School and many SBS faculty are chapter members.
MOST RECENT AND GRAVEST ASSAULT
In retrospect the attack on Professor Mirkin appears to have been a way of testing the waters for a much more drastic assault on the core of the university itself. The manufactured budget crisis is an opportune pretext for administrative implementation of a variety of destructive agendas.
At its May 31st meeting the University of Missouri Board of Curators unanimously passed an amendment to the Bylaws allowing them to circumvent existing rules and regulations regarding faculty employment. The operative language reads: "Notwithstanding any rule, regulation or policy of the University of Missouri to the contrary, all such appointments are subject to the right of the Board of Curators to adjust salaries and other terms and conditions of employment, on a prospective basis only, at any time during the indefinite, term or continuous appointment of all officers and employees of the University." Existing policy already permits the termination of university employees in any category (including tenured faculty) "at any time at the pleasure of the Board of Curators."
In an indirect manner the Curators' amendment effectively abolishes tenure. Prior language empowering the Board to terminate any officer or employee "at any time" already contravenes AAUP principles, as well as the University's own Collected Rules and Regulations, which is based closely on AAUP language. Both these documents list a finite and specific number of legitimate reasons for termination of tenured faculty, including "for cause," financial exigency, and the discontinuation of a program or department. And, in each case, there is an established procedure for adjudicating the question of termination. Such due process regulations were intended as a protection of faculty against arbitrary or strategical termination.
The new paragraph now empowers the Board to ignore its own rules in the interest of "adjusting" the "salaries and other terms and conditions" of University appointments. The most basic "term and condition" of faculty appointments is tenure. Tenure not only provides job security for regular faculty, it is also the bedrock guarantor of academic freedom. It is specifically recognized as such and clearly spelled out by the University, the Board, and university regulations. The latter state that "academic freedom and the economic security of its academic staff" are "indispensable to the success of the University of Missouri in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society." Likewise they affirm that "tenure is indispensable to the success of an institution of higher education in fulfilling its obligations to the common good."
A memo from Dr. Stephen Lehmkuhle, Vice President for Academic Affairs for the UM system, claims that the intent of the Curators' amendment was not to undermine tenure but to enable the Board to apply future emergency pay cuts to faculty as well as to administrators and support staff--a course they could not legally have followed before the amendment was passed. He states that "the University cannot terminate a tenured faculty member without following its other established rules and regulations..."
But the amendment specifically says that the Board can act "notwithstanding any rule, regulation or policy of the University of Missouri to the contrary," which, of course, includes tenure regulations and due process provisions. And, of course, outright termination is not the only means to silence, intimidate, and punish faculty.
Since the new policy is being instituted in the midst of a severe, if manufactured, budget crisis, its clear purpose is to smooth the way for massive salary cuts, intimidation and termination of tenured faculty, and elimination of programs, units, and schools. The Board arrogates to itself the right to terminate any university employee without having to follow University regulations and established practice. The Board's claim to the right to "adjust" all salaries at any time de facto undermines the job security that tenure is designed to protect. Any cut in pay is a breach of contract. Applied too often or too deeply, such cuts will discourage faculty from remaining at the University, or will drive them out of the profession. Cuts also punish senior faculty for the entire period of their retirement, since their retirement income depends on the average salary of their last five years of service. Finally, the threat of sudden (and frequent) salary cuts is a potent weapon to intimidate faculty from speaking out, that is, it violates academic freedom.
Given the global context of the privatization and corporate takeover of public education, it is fairly safe to assume that the Curators' decision is a way to prepare the ground for such a move in Missouri. In court UM officials have presented arguments that "the University of Missouri [including its officials] is not a public body," and only the Board of Curators is a public entity (Kansas City Star, 7 June 2002, p. B8). In addition, the UMKC administration has already announced privatization plans for the School of Biological Sciences. The Stowers Institute, the leading institution promoting privatization, has just started a for-profit company, "whose stock will be owned by a non-profit," to commercialize "scientific discoveries made by the institute and future partners" (Kansas City Star, 7 June 2002, p. C1). The "public non-profit" Board of Curators may become a similar front for a privatized and commercialized university system.
For background on the corporate assault on public education see:
1) "Education for Democracy" cluster in the online journal, Workplace 4.2 (Feb. 2002) (http://www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/wp42.html and http://www.workplace-gsc.com);
2) the Faculty Advocate (http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/);
3) the Education for Democracy Network home page (http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/e4dmain.htm).
Over the summer, system-wide committees will be discussing the termination of programs and even entire schools. Such critical decisions, as well as faculty salaries and the terms and conditions of employment, fall squarely within the sphere of shared governance, in which independent, self-governing, broadly representative faculty bodies must play a significant role. The fact that far-reaching budget decisions impacting on jobs, salaries, and the future of the University are taking place without major participation by faculty violates the principle of shared governance.
The UM system already has a history of unacceptable treatment of faculty, the most publicized being actions taken in 1970 by the UM Columbia administration, the Board of Curators, and the President, which led to AAUP censure of UM Columbia in 1973. Academic freedom, shared governance, tenure, and due process were violated when the administration took reprisals against a group of faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights--specifically, dissent from US government foreign policy in Southeast Asia and the Ohio National Guard killings and woundings of dozens of students at Kent State University. University of Missouri reprisals included salary cuts, denial of salary increases, denial of promotion and tenure, and coercing a faculty member into waiving his right to tenure. Removal of UM Columbia from the AAUP Censured List occurred only seven years later, in 1980, and was contingent on the University of Missouri system (all four campuses) complying with and incorporating AAUP policies into system-wide and campus-wide bylaws.
Dr. Lehmkuhle's assurances that the intent of the Curators' amendment to the Bylaws does not threaten tenure deny that the amendment says what it actually says. The issue, anyway, is not intent but the actual consequences of carte blanche power. This Board of Curators or a future Board has arrogated to itself wide latitude to alter terms and conditions of employment (which would include tenure provisions) as well as salary.
The prolonged extremist assault on the University of Missouri system is likewise a test for right-wing education forces. If successful in Missouri, they will be encouraged to try other states. Their victory in Missouri would establish a dangerous precedent menacing faculty and students in public as well as private institutions.
Thus the Education for Democracy Network urgently requests its members to take the following actions against this outrageous assault on the core values of public, and indeed, all higher education in the US.
PLEASE SEND COPIES OF YOUR MESSAGES TO THE EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY NETWORK: e-mail: brodskyd (at) earthlink.net US mail: 7908 Reeds Rd., Prairie Village, KS 66208
1) Write the Curators of the University of Missouri and send a copy to President Manuel Pacheco, President of the University of Missouri system.
Urge the Curators a) to rescind their resolution, b) to strongly affirm the Board's commitment to tenure, academic freedom, due process, and shared governance, and c) to call for the inclusion of independent, broadly representative, self-governing faculty bodies at the center of any discussions about the future of programs, units, or schools.
Board of Curators
University of Missouri
316 University Hall
Columbia, MO 65211
e-mail: millerkm (at) umsystem.edu
Phone: 573-882-2388
Manuel Pacheco President
University of Missouri system
e-mail: pachecom (at) umsystem.edu
FAX: 573-882-2721
2) Write President Gilliland and Provost Ballard of UMKC. Urge them to end the funding freeze in the School of Biological Sciences, to rescind their vindictive decision to shut down or privatize the School, and to involve faculty at the center of decision-making about the School's future.
Martha Gilliland
Chancellor UMKC
Chancellor's Office
Administrative Center 301
5115 Oak St. Kansas City, MO 64110
FAX: 816-235-5588
TEL: 816-235-1101
e-mail: GillilandM (at) umkc.edu
Steven Ballard
Provost UMKC
Academic Affairs
Administrative Center 358
5115 Oak St. Kansas City, MO 64110
FAX: 816-235-5509
TEL: 816-235-1107
e-mail: ballards (at) umkc.edu
3) Spread this message through your networks (not only via e-mail but fax, snail mail, phone, etc.)
4) Post it in discussion groups and websites
5) Contact academic disciplinary organizations and labor unions
Introduce resolutions in decision-making bodies of these organizations in support of the University of Missouri faculty and the faculty of the School of Biological Sciences at UMKC. Send copies of these resolutions to the addressees listed above, and to the Education for Democracy Network.
6) Send press releases to your local media, both mainstream and progressive
UMKC and the University of Missouri system are now at ground zero of the campaign to corporatize and privatize public higher education in the US. Thanks for your continuing support.
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See also:
http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/e4dmain.htm
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