|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Labor |
|
December Issue Of Faculty Advocate Now Online |
Current rating: 0 |
by David Brodsky
(No verified email address) |
15 Dec 2002
|
|
The December 2002 issue of The Faculty Advocate, newsletter of the AAUP chapter at UMKC, is now online. Its address is: http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/facadv11.htm |
In response to requests by some chapter members, this issue places chapter news and announcements on the front page. Of note is the fact that although the chapter has recently lost a number of members through early retirement, several dozen new members have joined largely as a result of the recruiting campaign.
A short notice mentions a de facto blackout on the existence and activities of the UMKC chapter of AAUP and its newsletter, The Faculty Advocate, maintained by local print media, as well as by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle devoted an article to administrative manhandling of School of Biological Sciences in its November 1 issue (Piper Fogg, "Chancellor Says Transformation, Biologists Say Mumbo-Jumbo"). The Kansas City Star, Kansas City Pitch, and the Chronicle are well aware of the chapter's activities, since all received copies of the Faculty Advocate, and the Chronicle interviewed and quoted several members and officers, without, however, identifying them as such. The blackout has been broken only by the national AAUP magazine, Academe.
On October 25 the chapter sponsored a symposium, "Putting the Faculty Back into Shared Governance," which attracted about 50 people and initiated a prolonged and lively discussion. Two presentations from the symposium are reproduced in this issue, and further ones are scheduled for later publication. Stuart McAninch proposes policies to strengthen faculty governance on campus and at the level of the university system. Pat Brodsky points out the divergence between the strong role faculty should play in hiring, of both faculty and of administrators at all levels, and actual practice at UMKC and in the UM system. Perhaps the most important lesson learned at the symposium was that faculty, as one speaker said, "do have power. It comes with responsibility." Or, as an audience member put it, "we're in charge. That's mind boggling."
A letter from the UMKC chapter welcomes Elson Floyd, the new President of the University of Missouri system, which is facing disastrous budget cuts and violations of academic freedom by a punitive state government, as well as central and campus administrations. Floyd, the first African-American to hold that position, is commended in the letter for his support for recent gains by contingent faculty at Western Michigan, where he is currently the chief administrative officer. The letter also asks him to address other grave issues that have arisen recently. Background pieces on Floyd in the Kansas City Star mention the enthusiasm of the president of the Western Michigan AAUP chapter about Floyd's leadership there.
Rich Moser, a member of the AAUP national staff, reports on gains by contingent faculty at Western Michigan. Following the latest contract negotiations between the AAUP bargaining unit and the administration, some contingent faculty are now eligible for tenure, an "historic breakthrough" in US institutions.
UMKC chapter vice-president and treasurer, Ed Gogol, summarizes an exchange of letters between Robert Kreiser, Associate Secretary of the national AAUP, and UMKC Chancellor Gilliland, on the School of Biological Sciences crisis. While denying any violations of due process or faculty governance, the Chancellor's reply also apparently revised "the history of her dealings" with SBS. A full response by SBS is in preparation and will soon be made public.
The current issue reprints a letter published in the prestigious journal, Nature, by Ray Pierotti, president of the University of Kansas AAUP chapter and participant in our "Education for Democracy Conference" last year. Opposing the corporatization of academic science, Pierotti notes that recent corporate scandals have damaged the integrity of universities and scientific institutions, and the "adoption of money-centered business practices leaves academia open to [the] same abuses."
In her column, Food for Thought, Pat Brodsky documents stonewalling by the UMKC administration on requests for public information, such as "the University contract with Pricewaterhouse Coopers to audit SBS" and the names of faculty who have taken early retirement. In addition, a number of promises to improve the working and learning conditions of faculty and students remain unfulfilled.
Stuart McAninch analyzes a close vote in the School of Education which resulted in faculty abdication of responsibility for guarding the integrity of university rules and regulations.
The top priority of the AAUP Missouri State Conference Meeting, according to Ed Gogol's report, is mobilization to increase state funding.
A short notice cites an article in the November issue of Z Magazine on the latest right-wing assaults on academia, including destructive actions by Florida Governor, Jeb Bush.
In an investigative piece, David Brodsky documents how Tulane University was a testing ground for the UMKC Blueprint, particularly when current UMKC Chancellor Martha Gilliland was Provost there. Assaults were made on core values, such as tenure, academic freedom, faculty governance, and artistic freedom, and the administration also tried to expropriate the faculty's intellectual property, undermine program funding, and interfere in faculty hiring and elections. For successful resistance to these assaults the Tulane AAUP chapter won an award from the national AAUP. Although the kinds of assaults at both institutions are similar, their packaging is different.
A welcome surprise is the news that faculty at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, about 60 miles southeast of Kansas City, are conducting a campaign for collective bargaining. The collection of union authorization cards at CMSU is a first in a state where no academic faculty are unionized. Leader of the petition drive at CMSU, assistant professor of English, Bill Vaughn, helped organize the Graduate Teaching Assistants when he was a student at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
In other welcome news not appearing in The Faculty Advocate due to space and budget constraints, the Allied Students of UMKC have successfully initiated a series of weekly teach-ins concerning the US war on Iraq. At their most recent meeting, "Manufacturing Terror: Faces of Evil and the Mass Media," Doug Cowan, assistant professor of religious studies, showed slides of Newsweek covers published before and during the first Gulf War in 1991, which he analyzed as examples of war propaganda.
So far UMKC students are more fortunate than students at the New School in New York City, who were forced to sit in at President Bob Kerrey's office to get him to agree to "hold a public forum [discussing] the impact his extremely public pro-war stance is having on the New School community." After several hours Kerrey agreed to "participate in a student organized public forum" on December 4. The New School, which was founded by pacifists during World War One, has "has a long tradition of anti-war activity." (E-mail message December 5 from National Campus Network, A Youth Caucus list of the Black Radical Congress).
To view this issue of the Faculty Advocate, visit the link below: |
See also:
http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/facadv11.htm
|
