Different Strategies for Hard Times

We are close to being done with labor negotiations, one way or another.  This is a time to find the survivable middle ground in the positions staked out by different constituencies.  But as we try not to implode in the endgame, it's worth thinking about how we started and how this whole thing might have played out differently.  There are a host of possibilities; after the break I link to two that I think show an interesting spectrum.

Bargaining Report 2: Financial Exigency

The sticking point here is what is technically called "RIF", i.e., Reduction in Force. As all will likely know, the administration's imposed terms outlined a procedure for laying off tenure-track and tenured faculty. The imposed terms were silent on what conditions would have to be met to allow for such layoffs. The Chancellor repeatedly said that SIUC was not attacking tenure and would only layoff tenured faculty in the case of financial exigency. But it took months and considerable pressure from the FA for her bargaining team to come close (close) to saying as much in contractual language, rather than leaving any such protections buried in BOT policies that the board can change at its discretion.

As far as I can tell, the administration's policy has changed little since the Chancellor's last email, at which point her bargaining team had agreed to contractualize board policy as of July of 2011. This was a meaningful move on their part--though it is fair, I think, to point out that this was mainly a case of the administration's bargaining position starting to catch up to the Chancellor's public statements. The administration's position here is relatively little changed, I believe, since September 30, when Randy Hughes sent out this bargaining update in response to an email from the Chancellor I quote and attack here.

The FA's interest here is in ensuring that SIUC has a transparent and accountable process for handling financial exigency. The FA is open to any process which meets this interest, and after the break I'll explain the evolution of our bargaining supposals on this. Now rational people can debate how best to make this process transparent and accountable, and can also name other interests (to be effective, for example, a financial exigency process would have to enable SIUC to make deep enough cuts to survive).
But let's just pause briefly to ask ourselves this. When should SIUC figure out this process? Should we allow ourselves to operate under the murky and confusing current SIUC policy (which more or less remains that I outlined in my earlier post on tenure)? That's apparently the administration's position. But if we encounter a bona fide financial crisis worthy of the term "financial exigency", we're going to need all the transparency and accountability we can get. Otherwise the moral damage to the institution will be even greater than the mere financial damage. Indeed, it seems to me that we risk fatal damage to trust and morale should a financial exigency be handled badly, as one following the current murky process could well be. The damage done in 1973-74 lasted for years, after all (and may perhaps not yet have been entirely healed), and back then there was no real financial crisis to manage.

Many folks have spoken strongly about the damage a strike could do to SIUC. A strike is a serious matter, but were the FA to strike, one thing it would likely be striking for would be a decent, mutually acceptable financial exigency policy. In my view the risk we face through badly handled financial exigency far outweighs the risk of a strike.

The Chancellor's latest email on tenure

The Chancellor sent out two emails relevant to bargaining today. I here tackle only the second, that about tenure. While there is some news here, there is less than meets the eye. I know that many readers of this blog want this all to be over (trust me, I share this desire). Even in union stalwarts like yours truly, there's a little part that wants to believe that the SIUC administration never had any interest in gaining the sort of "flexibility" (a.k.a. power) for itself that can only be had by undermining tenure. We want to believe. We want this all to be over. It isn't. We are making small positive steps. That's good news. But we'll only continue moving in the right direction if we continue putting pressure on the administration--and pressure has been the only way we've made what progress we've made so far. First pressure, then progress. Progress doesn't remove the need for pressure, as the Chancellor says it should: progress is the result of pressure.

The pace of bargaining has picked up over the past few days, and the major topic of conversation has indeed been the procedure for laying off tenured faculty ("RIF", i.e., Reduction in Force--the next best thing to R.I.P.). My understanding is that both sides have made meaningful modifications to their prior positions. That is, after 460 days, bargaining seems to have broken out at the bargaining table. Is it any coincidence that the administration made the new proposal the Chancellor trumpets here two days after a strike authorization vote passed by 92% to 8%?

I have seen neither the administration’s full current proposal nor the current FA proposals (which are themselves in flux, as the FA attempts to provide the administration with multiple ways to meet the FA's interest in ensuring any declaration of financial exigency is on the level).  Randy Hughes is working on an official response, with input from the bargaining team: his response will be better informed on the details involved, including on how accurately Cheng has characterized the administration’s proposal of 9/30. My own first take on this after the break.

Another cartoon

Rather busy around here, as you might guess, but to provide some new content I'll just post another of the cartoons by an anonymous faculty artist.

One Tuesday news item

Lot's of press coverage, letters to the editor, etc. leading up to the votes--too much for me to keep track of this morning, though I may return to this tonight.

One misleading summary of something FA President Randy Hughes in the DE this morning (unless Randy mispoke, which I rather doubt, on a matter of this importance) deserves quick correction. Here's the misleading bit:

Hughes said under the terms the administration imposed on the union in the spring, a faculty member could be laid off when deemed necessary if the university declared a state of financial exigency.

The last clause--if the university declared a state of financial exigency--is not in the imposed terms. All those terms say is that if Board deems fit (for whatever reason), it could lay off tenured faculty with 30 days notice (and, after a two year period of unpaid limbo, permanently terminate them). The Chancellor has insisted that the BOT would only do so in the case of financial exigency, but that's not in the imposed terms, and it needs to be clarified in contractual language. 

Again, the argument is not about whether the university can lay off faculty in the event of a bona fide financial exigency. Under the traditional understanding of tenure, as codified by the AAUP, universities do indeed have such a right, if they follow the proper procedures and allow for adequate faculty involvement in the process. The problem is that SIUC's current policy, even under a very charitable reading, fails to meet this standard. See my earlier post on SIUC tenure policy for the details. 

The Chancellor's false reassurance about tenure

I've just learned how something the Chancellor said in her email from last week is confusing some faculty.  The Chancellor made the following misleading comment in her email.

In fact, it is important to note that both bargaining teams tentatively agreed to the contract articles governing tenure and academic freedom last February. These articles remain virtually unchanged from the prior collective bargaining agreement. Based on these agreements, it is a little puzzling that these issues are still being raised in statements to the public.

Watch out whenever someone begins a sentence with "in fact".  I commented last week on the academic freedom issue: the Chancellor herself goes on to admit that there is disagreement about distance learning, but she failed to connect that issue with academic freedom, either through ignorance or in an attempt at misdirection.

Her comment about tenure is more seriously misleading--it is so divorced from reality that it didn't even register with me. The article agreed to spells out procedures for awarding tenure. Both sides have indeed agreed that those provisions need no substantial revision.  The disagreement, which is very real indeed, is about how to fire tenured faculty. I'd call this another golden fleece if I didn't feel that this statement, which is clearly intentionally disingenuous, and clearly meant to provide faculty with false assurance of the Chancellor's position and to falsely imply that the FA was lying about the very fact of disagreement, was too serious for that sort of cute moniker.

Unless the Chancellor truly finds it "a little puzzling" that faculty are concerned that her terms allow her to fire tenured faculty with 30 days notice, her statement here is the most irresponsible falsehood I've heard her utter so far.  It ought to at least be possible for the sides to accurately portray where the areas of disagreement lie. We expect both sides to make their own case and attack that of their opponents. Well and good. As I've noted elsewhere, SIUC tenure policy is a muddled mess, allowing rival interpretations. But denying that there is any disagreement about tenure is utterly irresponsible behavior that is unworthy of the leader of a university.

You should, in short, be reassured by the Chancellor's email only if you don't think being fired after you are tenured is something to worry about.

Tenure as a social contract

Here's an aspect of the tenure debate the blog hasn't covered yet. All the talk on campus and off has focussed on how valuable a thing tenure is for faculty, how it protects their job security and their academic freedom. But we faculty also know that tenure doesn't come easy, that faculty have to pass a rigorous test, and that other faculty are forced to make difficult decisions on many tenure cases. The Chancellor, to be fair, herself alluded to this aspect of tenure when she noted in her last town hall meeting that tenure was an "earned status", though she characteristically did not mention the faculty's central role in awarding, or denying, tenure. But her actions are undermining that earned status.

Experienced faculty readers will know how difficult tenure decisions can be. SIUC does in fact have pretty rigorous standards for tenure, at least in my experience, and we routinely turn down colleagues--essentially, we fire our colleagues--who have made and could continue to make real contributions to our programs. You know how it works: most often the tough cases are when a colleague is a fine teacher and does their share of the department's service work but hasn't published enough. We cast such tough votes precisely because tenure is supposed to represent a lifelong commitment on the part of the institution; this major commitment justifies high standards and tough votes. We uphold our side of the tenure system. But the administration is now, in at least two ways, undermining this system; they are, in my view, breaking the social contract we in academia have lived by for generations. After the break, I'll attempt to explain why.

Cheng's Counteroffensive

After a long silence, the Chancellor is again speaking on union issues, in a comment in today's DE and in an email.  I'll here try to respond to major points in order.  The full text of Cheng's email is pasted at the end of this post. 

1. The Chancellor has decided to start an unseemly fight about meeting times. I don't think it is in anyone's interest to spend our energies bickering about who turned down more dates. And if you do choose to go this route, at least get your facts straight: the Chancellor has failed to do so. But the whole issue is basically a red herring, and it is based on the false premise that meeting with the other side is all one needs to do to negotiate in good faith. While the pace of meetings can and will presumably pick up, the problem has never been that one side or the other is unwilling to meet, rather that the meetings thus far have not made sufficient progress. But below the break, before moving on to substance, I will squabble back. Skip to 2 if you'd rather avoid this silliness.

Tenure 2.0: Financial exigency and tenure

In an effort to finally wrap up my quixotic attempt to understand what's going on with tenure around here, I attempt below to explain SIUC's current policy on financial exigency and tenure. (For my earlier efforts in pursuit of this Great White Whale, click here and here). Bona fide financial exigency is but one of the reasons that tenured faculty can be terminated; the others include just cause and program termination. I suspect that financial exigency is the most worrisome in the present climate, and so concentrate on it here.

Also missing here is analysis of the FA's proposed policy for handling financial exigency. Suffice it to say that that policy calls for still more rigorous adherence to the AAUP principles than any SIUC policy past or present. I would be very happy indeed were that proposal adopted. 

Let me also say that there is considerable daylight between my analysis here and that given by the FA in its own "Fact Sheet" on tenure. For some of the reasons why, see the "Simplifying and Charitable Assumptions" I list at the end of this post. My own analysis is considerably more charitable to the administration position, but still reaches rather troubling conclusions . . .

1. SIUC's current policy on financial exigency and tenure is a mess. Messy policies allow for varied interpretations and promote mutual suspicion. 
2. Current SIUC policy fails to meet three of the four procedural guidelines outlined by the AAUP.
3. In the event of a financial exigency, these failures would seriously undermine the status of tenure and the status of faculty at SIUC. 
4. Absent contractual protection, SIUC's policy on financial exigency could be further changed in order to provide the administration still more flexibility to fire tenured faculty. 

Tenure 1.5

[Some of what follows will require correction following Jonathan Bean's calling my attention to an SIUC policy page I hadn't checked--details in the comment stream.]

This won't quite amount to my no doubt widely anticipated second posting on tenure (to follow up on the post I did on AAUP tenure policies), but I will emphasize some good points from yesterday's op-ed in the DE on tenure, while also clarifying something I think that op-ed left unclear.   Plus I'll make a newish point of my own: that the administration's actions on furloughs presage possible action on tenure.

Yesterday's op-ed, by Richard Fedder, a Carbondale attorney, squarely nails what I take to be the central point: that the imposed terms are an effort to undermine tenure. So the scenario he outlines, in which the administration decides to go after a given program (or professor), and claims financial justification for doing so, is all too possible.

Fedder also makes a very important point indeed about intentions and legality. The Chancellor has said that she has no intention of undermining tenure. But her bargaining team has, to the best of my knowledge, not budged one inch from the imposed terms that have led many on campus, myself included, to conclude that her terms, if not her intent, undermine tenure. And if you end up being that laid-off tenured professor, her attempts at reassurance won't help you pay the bills any more than tenure without a job will.

If the Chancellor meant what she said when emailing the faculty about tenure (there's a link to her email after the break), it ought to be relatively easy to design contractual language outlining the proper process to be followed in the event of a bona fide financial exigency. To the best of my knowledge, though, the administration bargaining team has shown no interest in doing so.

On the other hand some of what Fedder says about financial exigency doesn't quite ring true to me--and it is devilish details like this that have tied me up in knots and kept me from posting my own take on this issue sooner. More on that after the break. More also on how the "administrative closures" policy sets a precedent of sorts for lowering the bar on firing tenured faculty. I'll also provide links to the main documents on tenure in case you want to engage with the details yourself. It's great fun!

On Tenure: The AAUP Standards

This is the first of what I expect will be two postings on tenure. In this one I give a distilled version of the AAUP position on tenure, a position that originates with the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure agreed upon by the AAUP (American Association of University Presidents) and the Association of American Colleges (AAC, an association representing college presidents, which is now the AACU--The Association of American Colleges and Universities). These principles have subsequently endorsed by over 200 academic organizations and associations. Some of the procedures I outline come from subsequent AAUP documents, which haven't been as universally endorsed. I'll try to make clear which is which. For some readers this stuff will be old hat. But it wasn't for me (as I discovered when engaged in a rather spirited dispute with a persnickety anonymous commentator).  And the details matter.

For the purposes of these posts I am simply going to assume that the AAUP principles, which have long been the norm at respectable American universities and colleges, are the standard we should aim to uphold, though no doubt some will question this--and other institutions have undermined these principles in recent years, so SIUC would have some company, if not particularly good company, were it to go that route. A second post will discuss the current status of these principles at SIUC.

ACLU Meeting on Academic Freedom and Tenure

Rich Whitney will give a talk on Academic Freedom and Tenure: What does the Constitution Protect? at the annual meeting of the Southern Illinois Chapter of the ACLU.  The meeting will be held at 7:30 pm on September 7th in the Lesar Law building on the SIUC campus. Further details are available via an online announcement here.

Attack on tenure at Ohio University

Ohio University, a rather good public university that has sometimes been listed as one of our peers  (and, if I recall aright, it cleaned our clock by most measures) has instituted a new plan that looks like a pretty clear attack on tenure.  Or so at least is the argument presented by members of the local AAUP chapter. Ohio University has formally committed to hiring NTT rather than TT during the current crisis.

Such trends aren't limited to Ohio University, and should put us on guard.  Thus it is hardly an example of paranoia when the FA scrutinizes the new "imposed terms" and the threat they pose to tenure by making layoffs of tenured and tenure-track faculty far easier.

UIC moves toward unionization; tenure at risk in Nevada

A couple of stories to help view our situation in its wider context.

UIC faculty are moving toward unionization though it has yet to be seen whether a majority of faculty support this. Here's the AFT story on the move, which claims this would be the first public research university in Illinois to unionize. Oops. (Already sent them a comment.)

An Inside Higher Ed story details how many faculty at state universities in Nevada view changes to the state's policy as an attack on tenure, though state education officials deny this.

Cheng: Terms don't undermine tenure

Just as today's tornado warning expired, the Chancellor sent out an important email to faculty in which she "wish(es)to reassure you that the rights and protections of tenure as defined by the SIU Board of Trustees Policy (See SIU Board Policies, 2.C.e.2.b) have not changed". Perhaps hearing the contrary in the Chronicle of Higher Education precipitated her email. On her reading of the imposed terms, their only function is to:

stipulate the minimum amount of notice the University can provide to the Faculty Association and any affected faculty prior to a reduction in force and provide the structure for reductions in force in the event such a reduction in force becomes necessary (something we all hope will never come to pass)

Fuller analysis of the this will have to wait till later. After the break, my own quick first take, links to the relevant documents, and the full text of the Chancellor's email (in case you aren't on her faculty email list).

FA: Imposed terms would destroy tenure

A new FA "Fact Sheet" makes the argument that the administration's imposed "Reduction in Force" language would essentially end tenure on this campus.

These terms would make for a radical change from the prior contract, which allowed for layoffs of tenured faculty only in the event of program elimination or "just cause" (i.e., serious misconduct). The last contract even included a side-letter saying that the administration would not lay off faculty on the grounds of financial exigency. Now they are claiming the authority to lay off faculty even without the messy PR and fiscal consequences of declaring a financial exigency. If you can be laid off at the sole discretion of the administration, your tenure isn't worth a damn.

Tenure is an essential part of academia as most faculty understand it. These terms, therefore, are poison. If not withdrawn or massively modified they will result in a strike. I think it's as simple as that.