POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

United Academics AAUP/AFT Local 4996 is calling for the immediate resignation of Jim Johnsen, President of the University of Alaska.

All are invited to sign this petition regardless of United Academics affiliation so feel free to share this message with others.

To sign the petition, please click here. Don’t delay . . . Please sign today!

Here is the text of the petition:

We, the undersigned, call for the immediate resignation of the University of Alaska System President Jim Johnsen for the following reasons:

1. Jim Johnsen has failed in all areas that matter to the academic mission of the university system. He has presided over a disastrous decline in state funding to the university system, continuous declines in enrollment, drastically sinking employee morale, alarming increases in faculty and staff turnover, the loss of specialized accreditation of initial licensure education programs at UAA, the short-sighted elimination of critical and healthy academic programs affecting many stakeholders, a decrease in University of Alaska credit rating, and many other failures of leadership that are too many to mention here.

2. By seeking a leadership position elsewhere during this time of extreme distress while the university system is suffering an existential crisis and our students, faculty, staff, and the Alaska community at large yearn for exceptional, transformative, and long-term strategic leadership, Jim Johnsen has demonstrated that he is more willing to invest his efforts in advancing his own career than in leading the university system through these difficult times.

3. In Jim Johnsen’s recent interviews with the University of Wisconsin, he was unable to provide adequate examples of what he has done to promote diversity, despite working for much of his career in leadership positions in a state where these issues are important, pertinent, and desperately need to be addressed.

While each item listed above is of major concern when considered individually, all three taken together lead to the inescapable conclusion that the immediate resignation of Jim Johnsen is essential. It is clear that new leadership is needed for the University of Alaska System.

P.S. You may recall that Jim Johnson was the topic of a recent post to this blog, “AAUP Wisconsin Statement on UW System President Finalist.”