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Here. Reactions?
(Thanks to Larry Shapiro for the pointer.)
My thanks to you Brian and Professor Shapiro for this link.
I'm staggered to be put into the place of appreciating the minimal wisdom of Sarah Palin: this is lipstick on a pig. The fact that there are no faculty governance procedures to address a Chancellor's decision to fire a tenured faculty member is porcine message enough for me. Financial decisions to close programs and fire tenured people as a consequence are now at bottom purely administrative decisions, with the only possible recourse civil litigation for particular cases. Chancellor Blank can promise all she wants that no tenured people at Madison will be fired. The fact is that that promise pertains only to her particular attitudes about these issues. Even if she genuinely will follow through with her promise, there is no guarantee her successors will. The final power over programs that do not produce enough student bodies in the seats relative to other programs is with the Chancellors and Deans, whatever faculty "input" there may be.
As I've said before on this blog, Madison faculty will in fact be somewhat protected by their bigger budgets and the vast moveable feast of programs on that campus. A small program may be closed and the faculty moved to a similar discipline pretty easily. That is, of course, should the Dean/Chancellor agree with faculty "consultation" to that effect. Or not. Believe me, in the lower-tier UW institutions like mine, we already have experienced powerlessness of faculty against administration, and even before these "reforms" as our governor wishes to call them. I think Blank means what she says–but she cannot write a Blank check for Madison to cash in the future, so to speak.
The chancellor writes:
"In March, the Board approved a broad System-wide policy relating to tenure and the layoff of tenured faculty members. That policy allowed layoffs to be considered only in cases of financial emergency or program discontinuance due to educational considerations. To state this clearly: The Regents chose not to allow layoffs of tenured faculty in the case of program changes or modifications. This aspect of our policy is consistent with and in some cases stronger than some of our peers."
The Board-approved grounds for layoff of tenured faculty strike me as in accord with AAUP guidelines and with the grounds enumerated in the tenure policies of many peer research universities.
But there's also the issue, to which V. Alan White draws attention, of the robustness of the procedures for determining when these grounds have been met. It appears that the main worry is that (quoting from the chancellor's statement) "the chancellor is the final decision-maker on faculty layoffs following review and recommendations from a number of faculty committees".
If this is at variance with the procedures at other major research institutions, then this is cause for concern, as it marks the erosion of tenure in the US. But is it at variance with the procedures, e.g., at Michigan and North Carolina, with which the chancellor says Wisconsin's new procedures are consistent? That strikes me as the key question.
The chancellor's statement contains a link to new UW-Madison policy. As far as I can tell, the new policy confirms to AAUP "Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure" (to which I link in my next comment).
1. Discontinuation of a program for educational reasons is an AAUP-recognized ground for the termination of appointments of tenured faculty. (See 4d of the AAUP document.)
2. Note also that, contrary to the chancellor's statement that "the chancellor is the final decision-maker on faculty layoffs following review and recommendations from a number of faculty committees", the new Madison policy retains the provision, as recommended by the AAUP in 4e, for governing body review of the chancellor's decision.
It would be useful for those who maintain that the new Madison policy constitutes an assault on tenure to point to specific AAUP recommendations to which the policy fails to conform.
BL COMMENT: The new policy is weaker than the old one. When I have an opportunity (on the road right now), I'll compare it to the AAUP recommendations, but someone else will perhaps do it sooner.
Here is a link to the new UW-Madison tenure policy:
https://chancellor.wisc.edu/content/uploads/2016/04/Education-Committee-Agenda-Item-I.1.l..pdf
Here is a link to AAUP "Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure":
http://www.aaup.org/report/recommended-institutional-regulations-academic-freedom-and-tenure
I posted a comment similar to 3 above on this public Facebook thread, and Dave Vanness in the comments thread convincingly documents that, on point 1, the new Madison policy falls short of AAUP recommendations:
https://www.facebook.com/cnewf/posts/10156566713735538
(At the time of my posting this comment, he hasn't yet replied to my query regarding the relevance of 10.9 of the new policy in establishing my point 2. But perhaps he will have replied by the time you read this comment.)
I just wanted to comment on how hard Leaf Hound rocks….!!! Keep it up!
Instead of #faketenure, I would be more inclined to say #tenurelite. But, after all, we had to file suit just to get a version of #tenurelight!
The administrations everywhere have much more power than they actually need and so that power is going to be (is being) abused.
"[Blank] said … that as long as UW-Madison remains a strong research university, tenured faculty will not be laid off."
This is surely true, read as a material conditional.
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