Author: David Teplow

COVID-19 and the Faculty Role in Decision-Making

BY RUDY FICHTENBAUM (March 10, 2020)

AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum issued the following statement today on the coronavirus (COVID-19).

As we are learning, COVID-19 (the coronavirus) has the potential to present a serious challenge to the health and safety of our campus communities. At this time, campuses in Washington State, New York State, California, Nebraska, and elsewhere have closed or moved to all-online teaching, and a number of study-abroad programs have been cut short or suspended altogether.

Administrations are taking the potential health impact of the virus seriously, and we applaud their efforts to do so. The safety of the students, the staff, and the faculty should be everyone’s primary concern. We are hearing from AAUP members, however, that decisions to close campuses or to move to an all-online model for the short term are being made without adequate faculty involvement in decision-making. The AAUP’s 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities makes clear that “the faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, . . . and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process.”

In certain situations, it is necessary to close a campus or move to online instruction to safeguard the health of the campus community. Faculty and academic staff—through their shared governance bodies or, when applicable, their unions—should be consulted on how best to implement this decision. In order to ensure full participation, administrations should share information with faculty and seek input from the appropriate faculty bodies. In cases where the institution is moving to an all-online model to avoid virus transmission on campus, it is incumbent on administrations to provide all instructional faculty with the appropriate software and training. Administrations should also consider the needs and limitations of students, who may lack access to the internet or face other obstacles to completing their coursework remotely.

It is hard to know what the ultimate impact of COVID-19 will be on our campuses. The administration should provide the appropriate faculty body—the union or the governance body—with information regarding the impact of COVID-19 on enrollments, revenues, and hiring and renewals. In the spirit of the AAUP’s One Faculty campaign, we encourage our chapters to be especially sensitive to how these closures and any future curtailment of programs could affect our colleagues on full-time non-tenure-track or part-time contingent appointments.

The AAUP has developed a web page with resources on COVID-19. We will continue to update this page as new resources become available. We also ask that chapters share information with us about what is being done on their campus and what the chapter or faculty senate’s role has been in decision-making around campus closures and the implementation of all-online teaching.

3-16-20: President Napolitano asked to delay the start of Spring quarter

UCLA AAUP, in cooperation with the UCLA Faculty Association and CUCFA (Council of UC Faculty Associations), has sent the following letter to President Napolitano asking her to begin Spring quarter 2020 two weeks late, on April 13.

March 16, 2020

TO:       President Janet Napolitano

FROM: Council of UC Faculty Associations

We write to ask you to delay the start of spring quarter by two weeks, to begin on April 13 rather than March 30. We came to this solution following an intensive discussion among our members about the challenges of moving to remote teaching, at least through the spring quarter, and gathering information from other universities around the country on how they are adapting to the COVID-19 emergency. Our campus learning centers and instructional technology staff — typically the least funded departments on our campuses — are valiantly trying to make it possible for instructors to remotely deliver the best approximation of the pedagogical quality of our renowned in-person and residential classes. But we all need more time for faculty to get the training we need to adapt our classes, IT departments to increase their bandwidth, staff to support our emergency efforts, and students to get the adequate technology and appropriate settings they need for remote learning. On top of these challenges, we are also aware that we need to create multiple contingency plans for faculty, staff, and students who may get sick.

Universities that are moving to remote learning and are extending the spring break by one or two weeks to allow adequate preparation include Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, Tufts, Stony Brook, Duke University, Ohio State, Northeastern, University of Alaska, University of Wyoming, University of Texas-Austin, and almost twenty other Texas colleges and universities, among many more. Surely the great University of California system can manage to respond as creatively as other universities around the country.

We know that what is most important is to stay in touch with our students, to assure them that we care for them and are doing everything we can to give them a sense of continuity and help them complete their education. For many of our students, the university is their lifeline. We can reach out to the students registered for our classes to let them know that we are using the two-week period to ensure that they and we are ready for the switch to remote learning. We can even get them started on readings and exercises to get them primed for the class, something many of us already do. Using both synchronous and asynchronous delivery systems, we can pack ten weeks of teaching into eight.

We call on our UC leaders to recognize that administrators, faculty, students, and staff — especially IT units — need a breathing space between the hyper emergency end of this quarter and the beginning of the next, so that everything can run as smoothly as possible, given how much unpredictability we are all facing in our daily lives.

Give us the chance to demonstrate the extraordinary effort, compassion, and resilience that UC faculty, staff, and students can bring to the COVID-19 disaster by providing us the time we need to succeed.

Sincerely,
Constance Penley,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
and Professor of Film and Media Studies, UCSB

cc:  The UC Campus Chancellors

2-24-20: Support quality teaching in the UC system

UC Santa Cruz graduate student workers are trying to negotiate with UCSC for fair wages for their critical work in teaching students. University officials, negotiators, and the Office of the President have been adversarial and punitive, not recognizing the importance of these young teachers to the teaching mission of the UCSC and the larger UC system or the need for a COLA to support the rising living costs faces by these teachers.

Without quality teachers there can be no quality teaching. Without a COLA, there can be no quality teachers.

Please join me in supporting these teachers in their quest for fair and equitable compensation.

David Teplow

President, UCLA-AAUP

2-23-20: Statement of UC Santa Cruz graduate student workers

To the UC Community:

At the UCSC General Assembly on February 21, COLA wildcat strikers voted overwhelmingly to continue to withhold Fall grades beyond Janet Napolitano’s midnight deadline.

At least 85 UCSC graduate student workers, and very likely more, have refused to submit to Napolitano and INC Kletzer’s threat to revoke Spring appointments and block future ones. Nearly 20% of these workers are international graduate students, who now face the risk of de facto deportation.

We feel the collective strength of our fellow workers’ commitment to act decisively in solidarity. We know of pledges to withhold winter grades and commence teaching strikes on multiple UC campuses, and a UCSC, in the event of terminations at UCSC.

We are now past Napolitano’s firing deadline. We hereby consider ourselves terminated from our employment.

We consider these pledges active and in effect until we receive notice that we are reinstated to Spring appointments.

We further call on our graduate worker comrades to strike not only in solidarity with us, but also for their own COLA demands. Our labor stoppages have taught us that the power is on our side to move towards the COLA we need. Strike with us to win it for all of us.

Signed,

Striking graduate student workers at UCSC

1-12-20: AAUP Supports UCLA Lecturers

Lecturers at UCLA and across the UC system contribute to our students’ learning and overall college experience, as well as to the teaching excellence of this University.  Lecturers (also known as non-senate or contingent faculty) teach at least one-third of undergraduate credit hours, and contribute significantly to their departments and generally to the  vitality of the campus.

AAUP supports lecturers and their union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in their current efforts to improve: (1) salaries and benefits reflective of expertise and cost of living; (2) timely notification of hiring and course assignments; (3) full-time, year-long, multi-year appointments; (4) smaller class size; (5) decreased workload to allow more time for class preparation and student interaction; and (6) equal access to course schedules.

AAUP urges its members to support UCLA lecturers. For more information, contact Karl Lisovsky, President, UCLA AFT or the University Council-AFT.

3-7-18: Mass shootings and academic freedom

 

The recent mass shooting of seventeen students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has refocused efforts to stem the epidemic of gun violence plaguing the nation. This time the effort has been initiated and led by the surviving students, supported by their teachers, parents, and students across the country. The American Association of University Professors salutes these brave and eloquent young people.

Gun violence is not a problem limited to high schools. Colleges and universities have been sites of mass shootings since 1966, when sixteen people died and thirty-one were injured at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sign on to our statement in support of gun control.

The AAUP has long opposed and continues to oppose unequivocally any legislation or policy that would compel colleges and universities to permit firearms on campus. In this we stand with the overwhelming majority of educators across the country.

Given the widespread availability of the most deadly weaponry and the growing number of instances in which such weapons have wreaked havoc, however, it is not sufficient only to champion the right of colleges and universities to bar their presence.

We are once again raising the call to take action.

To ensure the safety of students, faculty, and others on campus, we must speak out in support of broader sensible gun control measures like those proposed by the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Specifically, the AAUP calls on faculty and students, on administrators and trustees, and most of all on our political leaders to support:

  • a total ban on the sale and possession of military-style automatic weapons, designed solely to kill human beings and on high-capacity magazines and bump stocks;

  • comprehensive background checks for all who purchase firearms, whether in a gun store or at a gun show, with reasonable restrictions on access to weapons for those with diagnosed mental illness or with a history of violence, including domestic violence;

  • a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms; and

  • raising the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21.

We therefore also endorse the March 24 March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, as well as the efforts of students to protest gun violence with peaceful walkouts on March 14 and April 20.

Add your name to our statement calling for gun control measures.

The AAUP

P.S. To read or share the our full statement, go here.

1-17-18: AAUP Amicus Brief Fights Corporate Model at Universities

Universities have become increasingly corporatized, and the significant expansion of university administration has seriously eroded faculty authority to control or make effective recommendations about university policy.

That is one of the central arguments in an amicus brief submitted by the AAUP urging the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to uphold the National Labor Relation Board’s determination that non-tenure-track faculty at the University of Southern California are not managerial employees and are therefore eligible to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act.

This case arose when Service Employees International Union filed a petition to represent  non-tenure-track full-time and part-time faculty in the USC Roski School of Art and Design.

The administration objected to the petition, arguing that the faculty were managers according to the precedent of the US Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling in NLRB v. Yeshiva University. But the labor relations board concluded that USC had not proven that the non-tenure-track faculty actually exercise control or make effective recommendations about policies that affect the university as a whole. After the faculty voted for the union, the NLRB ordered USC to collectively bargain. USC appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

Institutional changes over the past few decades have led to increased top-down management of the university by the growing ranks of administrators, as well as the rapid expansion of non-tenure track faculty positions. The result has been a system wherein rather than relying on faculty expertise, growing ranks of administrators increasingly make unilateral decisions on university policies and programs, often influenced by considerations of external market forces and revenue generation.

Some stunning stats from the brief:
  • Between 1976 and 2015, the number of full-time executives and managers in higher education grew by 140 percent.
  • Conversely, the number of full-time and tenure-track positions has plummeted, with lower-wage non-tenure track faculty making up 70 percent of all faculty positions. This is nearly the reverse of the proportions in 1969, when 78 percent of faculty positions were tenured and tenure-track.
  • From 1976 to 2011, the number of full-time non-faculty professional positions increased by 366 percent overall, with growth of 558 percent in that category at private institutions.
In supporting the collective bargaining rights of non-tenure-track faculty at USC, the AAUP brief challenges the “paper authority” that universities attribute to faculty without granting them actual authority in university policy making. You can read the full brief here.

1-2-18: Stand up for free speech

OPEN LETTER TO AAUP MEMBERS:

Free speech on campuses has become a focus of contentious debate and increased media scrutiny. Campus communities—including administrators, faculty, and students—generally embrace the concept of free speech yet lack a clear consensus about its limits. The AAUP invites proposals for presentations at our June 14–17 annual conference that offer nuanced articulations of the concept of free speech in the context of higher education. Submissions are due by January 14.

Presentations might explore

  • competing claims about who has free speech rights and how far they extend;
  • free speech and its relation to academic freedom;
  • the politicization of free speech before, during, and after the 2016 presidential election;
  • free speech and the problem of hate speech, racism, or white supremacy;
  • rights and obligations regarding controversial outside speakers;
  • campuses and their communities as sites of protest and counterprotest;
  • social media controversies and their consequences;
  • media coverage of free speech on campuses;
  • free speech and faculty on contingent appointments;
  • free speech and the right to organize in unions;
  • the history and legacy of the 1960s free speech movement; or
  • the future of free speech on campuses.

Presentations on other topics of interest to a diverse, multidisciplinary higher education audience are welcome. We encourage proposals that raise questions, engage conference participants in discussion, and foster dialogue. See additional details and submit your proposal at https://www.aaup.org/CFP-2018.

Best wishes,
Gwendolyn Bradley
Director of External Relations

PS: If you’re interested in writing an article on the topic of free speech for the AAUP’s online Journal of Academic Freedom, take a look at our call for papers, with submissions due by January 31.

12/7/17: National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom

National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom

Assault on Science and Academic Freedom Threatens the Public Good and International Stature of US 

Washington, DC—A new report, National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom, released by the AAUP details troubling threats to academic freedom in the physical and natural sciences that have been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s hostility to science. International scientific exchange and, especially, the charging of innocent Chinese or Chinese American scientists with espionage in the name of national security is one focus of the report. The second is climate science, an area that has been subject to vicious attacks that have intensified significantly under the current administration.

The report’s survey of recent criminal cases involving international scientific exchange suggests that the government’s invocation of national security claims related to espionage has not been justified and is negatively affecting the ability of the United States to participate in global science. Xiaoxing Xi’s case at Temple University illustrates how stated concerns about national security and espionage have led to increasing threats to the global exchange of scientific research and the academic freedom of American scientists to interact with foreign colleagues. The report also highlights five other instances in which Chinese American or Chinese scientists have been targeted. President Trump’s executive orders restricting entry to the United States for residents of certain Muslim-majority countries and efforts to limit H-1B visas to foreign scientists pose additional, disturbing threats to scientific exchange. The report argues that the restrictions under consideration now, even if they are ultimately defeated in the courts, create a chilling environment for the international exchange of scholars, including scientists whose work may have no obvious political implications.

The report explores how the politicization of science, rooted in anti-intellectualism and propelled by anti-elitist mantras, is constraining the free pursuit of knowledge and scientific inquiry and limiting the ability of science to serve the public good. As the report notes, challenges to the validity of scientific findings and to the free pursuit of scientific inquiry began well before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It details the severity of harassment and coordinated attacks that scientists and scholars face online and offline when their research, teaching, or public commentary runs counter to others’ beliefs. Well-funded interest groups and members of Congress have also sought to intimidate scientific researchers with whom they disagree, especially through freedom of information “fishing expeditions” and notably in relation to the communications and research of climate scientists. Many in the scientific community view Trump’s appointments to key cabinet posts and federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, and the National Aeronautics and Space administration, as antithetical to the institution of science and its role in public policy debates. Congressional efforts to curb scientific work, especially in climate science, have also intensified.

The report concludes with recommendations for scientists, colleges and universities, scientific associations, scholarly organizations, government employees, and news outlets to resist efforts by government agencies to unduly restrict or discredit scientific research on grounds of national security, to speak out against the politicization of science, to report extensively and specifically about assaults on science, and to protect academic freedom.

Read the full report here.