BY HUEY-LI LI
In the middle of World War II, the AAUP published its oft-quoted 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure in order to “promote public understanding and support of academic freedom and tenure and agreement upon procedures to ensure them in colleges and universities.” In response to the outbreak of the global pandemic in 2020, the Board of Trustees (BOT) of University of Akron officially approved to the Reduction of Force (RIF), i.e., to lay off 96 bargaining unit faculty, 1 law faculty member, 60 staff members and 21 contract professionals including 67 tenured faculty members. To a large extent, the massive RIF at the UA represents a critical and precarious move to abolish tenure and to ravage academic freedom in higher education. Although the global pandemic indiscriminately affects all higher education institutions, only the UA undertakes such a draconian measure to counter the effects of the pandemic. The UA’s fairly uncommon response to the pandemic deserves an open and judicious examination.
In particular, in response to an inquiry regarding the UA’s laying off such a substantial number of tenured faculty during a special meeting of the Faculty Senate, both President Miller and Provost Wiencek cited the 1940 AAUP’s Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure to defend the RIF. More specifically, they argued that the university exists to serve the common good rather than the interests of any individuals including the faculty, staff, contract professionals, and the administrators. From the president’s perspective, the massive RIF without adhering to the retrenchment process specified in the collective bargaining agreement is the only way to save the UA from going into receivership. Although I commend President Miller’s and Provost Wiencek’s attending to the 1940 AAUP document, I cannot help but take note of their misappropriation of the 1940 AAUP document. Listed below is a more inclusive quote from the 1940 AAUP document:
Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights. Tenure is a means to certain ends, specifically: (1) freedom of teaching and of extramural activities, and (2) a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to men and women of ability. Freedom and economic security, hence tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society.
Clearly, the AAUP stresses that both the institution and tenure are the means to the pursuit of the common good. Yet in their misinterpretation of the oft-quoted statement, President Miller and Provost Wiencek not only equated the university with the common good but also assumed that tenure is merely the interest of individual faculty. Doubtless, the university should strive to serve the common good that benefits all in society. However, has the pandemic forced the UA into such an unforeseeable and catastrophic circumstance that the massive RIF is the only way to preserve the UA? Might the UA administrators’ belief in their infallibility dissuade them from exploring viable alternatives to reduce budget shortfall while preserving the UA as an academic institution? Can the UA serve the common good when the administration denied nearly 100 faculty members of their right to due process? Above all, is it worthwhile to preserve a university that fails to recognize tenure as an indispensable means to the pursuit of the common good? In order to inquire into the above questions, it is critical to revisit the UA’s recent struggles with fiscal deficits, ad hoc leadership, administrative transparency, program cuts, and student enrollment decline.
First and foremost, there is no public health emergency at the UA. Rather, the massive RIF aims to address the UA’s fiscal peril before and after the pandemic. Under the watch of the BOT, the UA embarked on immense campus modernization projects (with a price tag of $630 million in total) and accumulated substantial fiscal deficits during the 15-year tenure of President Luis M. Proenza (1998-2014).[1] In response to its growing awareness of the UA’s financial woes, the BOT appointed Scott Scarborough with financial and management expertise to be the successor of President Proenza. To welcome President Scarborough, the BOT, in spite of the UA’s vast debts, generously allocated $950,000 to renovate the presidential home while laying off more than 200 employees. Without adopting a collaborative approach to rebrand the UA, President Scarborough’s two-year tenure abruptly ended without making a noticeable dent on the fiscal deficits in 2016.
Without consulting a broad range of university stakeholders, the BOT appointed Matthew J. Wilson to be the interim president for three months before promoting him to be the permanent president. Regrettably, the BOT’s recognition of President Wilson’s leadership qualities did not prevent President Wilson from searching for greener pastures. President Wilson’s resignation as UA president after his unsuccessful bid for the Presidency of the University of Central Florida ended his short-term presidency at the UA in 2018. Subsequently, the BOT named John C. Green to serve as interim president. Rather than being an inactive placeholder, Interim President Green recommended the elimination of 80 academic programs to the BOT. In the name of extending “the life of the UA,”[2] the BOT approved phasing out the 80 programs and increasing investments in programs, such as e-sports and cybersecurity.[3] In the meantime, the BOT decided to conduct a closed and secretive search for the permanent president in order to attract more experienced candidates. The confidential search prevented the finalists from meeting the faculty, staff, and the community partners on campus. As the beneficiary of such a secretive search, President Miller subsequently acknowledged publicly that he would not have applied for the position if there had been an open search. However, the secretive search prevented the wider university constituents from providing the search committee with their feedback regarding the finalists’ qualifications. It also deprived the finalists of the critical opportunities to meet and learn from the more inclusive university community.
As discussed above, the BOT, as the governing body of the UA, does not appear to have in-depth knowledge of the operation of the University. Rather, they entrust their chosen presidents to exercise managerial discretions, ranging from the immense physical transformation of the UA campus during President Proenza’s tenure, to President Scarborough’s rebranding the UA as the Ohio’s Polytechnic University, to Interim President Green’s massive program cuts, and to President Miller’s RIF. The integration of the BOT’s fiducial authority with the President’s executive power, eroded shared governance with the faculty, and the RIF is consequence of that loss of shared governance. More specifically, President Miller and Provost Wiencek claimed that they adopted a collaborative approach to work with the deans and department chairs in determining the faculty to be included in the RIF. However, it is unclear why they decided not to collaborate with the Akron-AAUP, the sole collective bargaining representative for the faculty, in the creation of the RIF list. Moreover, due to unstable leadership 2014-2020, many of the interim/acting deans and department chairs were appointed by the immediate past presidents and provost without consulting the faculty. An ad hoc administrative team does not represent the faculty’s points of view. These administrative team members did not make any effort to collaborate with the faculty when working on the RIF list in their respective units. To a large extent, the creation of the RIF list appeared to be a clandestine operation. The administration did not produce any policy documents regarding the procedural guidelines and criteria for the RIF list before they presented the final version of the list to the BOT. Provost Wiencek cited the benchmarking data from the Delaware Cost Study to assert that the RIF will not affect the quality of education at the UA. As of today, the UA Administration has yet to share the benchmarking data analyzed by the Delaware Cost Study. The secretive nature of the RIF led to fear among the Bargaining Unit Faculty (BUF) who were aware that the ad hoc administrative team, in the absence of shared governance, could make arbitrary decisions to place any of faculty members regardless of tenure status and seniority on the list.[4] The UA’s Negotiation Team also treated the RIF list as such a top trade secret or a scandalous undertaking that they compelled the Negotiation Team of the Akron-AAUP to sign a non-disclosure agreement before sharing the list. In the name of protecting the privacy of the RIFed faculty, staff, and contract professionals, the UA Administration presented the BOT with a RIF list indicating only “positions” without identifying specific faculty in these positions. In view of the magnitude of the RIF, one cannot but question why the BOT approved the RIF without reviewing procedural guidelines, criteria, and the benchmarking data when the core of the BOT’s responsibility is to ensure the UA’s provision of quality education.
Furthermore, President Miller claimed that the massive RIF is “the only course we could take to secure the future of this institution.” Yet he did not offer any explanation of why the viable alternatives (e.g., equitable and reasonable cut in athletic spending, steeper pay cuts for the BUF) will not secure the future of the UA. Nor did he offer a justification of his Administrative team’s taking 10% salary and benefit cut while the 178 RIFed faculty, staff, and contract professionals must take 100% cut.[5] Notably, the UA administration’s apocalyptical yet erroneous projection (i.e., 20% student enrollment decline and the $ 20 million decrease of State Share Instruction) already casts doubts on the legitimacy of their invoking the force majeure provision in the contract.
More importantly, the black box operation of the RIF violates the procedural as well as substantive due process of the termination of employment. The Akron-AAUP had to file a class action grievance and compelled the administration to finally provide each of the RIFed faculty member with the rationale and criteria for placing them on the RIF list more than 1 month after the BOT’s vote. The sketchy rationales and criteria appeared to be assembled after the BOT’s vote on July 15. In view of the inconsistency among varied criteria provided to the RIF faculty, it is critical to consider the plausible ulterior motive and systemic prejudice embedded in the RIF. For instance, “carrying a higher salary in comparison to other faculty in the same unit” as the reason to layoff some faculty members with the most seniority in their units is simply a form of age discrimination in disguise.
As the beginning of the fall semester approached the UA Administration struggled to hire less qualified part-timers, rehire some RIF faculty as adjunct faculty, and impose added teaching load on non-RIF faculty in order to deliver courses previously scheduled to be taught by the RIF faculty. In view of such impetuous behavior, one cannot but question the UA administration’s commitment to serving the common good when the massive RIF inadvertently put optimal course delivery students at significant risk especially in the midst of global pandemic.
In the middle of World War II, the AAUP pointedly affirmed that “freedom and economic security, hence tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society.” In the face of a global pandemic in 2020, the UA administration took the unnecessary and unjustified action of laying off more than 25% of its teaching force including tenured faculty. To the UA administration and the BOT, tenure is a merely personal-property and personal-interest which can be sacrificed in order to save the UA from its financial trouble. However, academic freedom and tenure are not personal goods. Joan W. Scott made a distinction between freedom of speech and academic freedom. To her, freedom of speech “is defined as private property, belonging to an individual. In contrast, academic freedom is a corporate right that covers those who produce and transmit knowledge. The one is about individual self-expression, the other is about collective contributions to the common good—they are not the same.”[6] The faculty as scholars and teachers are responsible for producing, validating, and transmitting knowledge for the pursuit of common good. Academic freedom is a collective freedom shared by the faculty. Without the protection of tenure, the faculty, are at-will employees who can be removed without good cause from higher education (just as the case of RIF at the UA) and cease to function as the means to pursuing the common good. The UA’s attempt to ignore tenure protections makes it indistinguishable from proprietary educational institutions that simply focus on the pursuit of private good.
Tenure has played a key role in empowering the faculty to focus on the provision of quality education that benefits students and safeguards the democratic ideal—equality and justice for all. Tenure is an indispensable means to counter political McCarthyism, administrative corruption and mismanagement, academic orthodoxy, and demagogic populism. Undoubtedly, the RIF at the UA challenges the university faculty’s trust in the administration’s commitment to collaborating with the faculty in the provision of quality education. However, it is also the critical time to rekindle the administration’s and the faculty’s collaborative and collective commitment to safeguarding shared governance, instituting administrative transparency, and cultivating fiscal prudence in order to serve the common good.
Guest blogger Huey-li Li is professor of education at the University of Akron.
Notes:
[1] https://www.beaconjournal.com/article/20150814/NEWS/308149140
[2] https://buchtelite.com/35225/news/university-of-akron-to-eliminate-80-degree-programs-expand-efforts-in-others/
[3] Although the BOT claimed that their decision was based on the faculty-driven Academic Program Review, the original purposes of the year-long Academic Program Review were “to offer the best possible education to students and to determine the most effective use of the University’s resources.” Moreover, the BOT’s decision does not reflect an apprehension that slashing academic programs actually entailed further student enrollment decline and the increase of fiscal deficits.
[4] https://academeblog.org/2020/07/26/the-university-of-akron-hit-list-who-are-we/\
[5] When taking in/voluntary retirement and separation into consideration, the more accurate number of employees should be 280.
[6] https://www.aaup.org/article/knowledge-common-good
