BY KEVIN L. COPE, Treasurer, Louisiana Conference of the AAUP

Whether in William Herschel’s telescopic glimpses of stars, Shakespeare’s character Hamlet’s decision to unravel the state of Denmark, or the votes of faculty senates on their legislative measures, resolution tends to occur quickly, within a fleeting instant. Few stopwatches are fast enough to measure that moment in which a scanner imposes its 600 dpi resolution grid on an image. Despite their instantaneousness, resolutions, the favorite production of faculty governance bodies, enjoy extraordinarily long “before and after” periods. Framing a resolution that elicits majority consent from a group of faculty members can take weeks or even months; implementation of these calls-to-action may take years or, too often, eternities.

There is something to learn from every phase in the paradoxically long and short life of a resolution. Over the last few years, assorted faculty governance bodies in Louisiana have produced two “statewide” resolutions, each of which is both inherently informative and also instructive with respect to its genesis and afterlife. This column will look at these two resolutions in the hope of, first, providing both a template for similar resolutions in other states and, second, learning lessons from the long pasts and futures of these happy moments of statewide consensus.

The first of these resolutions, of 2019 vintage, addresses a familiar story: the severe under-funding of higher education, a disgrace that remains especially pungent in Louisiana, where rankings for quality-of-life and public-good deliverables seldom creep above the lowest ten percentiles. First, the resolution:

A Statewide Resolution on Support for Higher Education

Endorsed by both the Louisiana State Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of Louisiana Faculty Senates

WHEREAS a flourishing higher education system provides the means for making as well as for serving a good society;

WHEREAS the vibrancy of a higher education system correlates with all measures of success, from quality of life to income level to leadership in research and innovation to public health to happiness surveys;

WHEREAS the economic interests of a society and its people are best served by the availability of a proficient workforce, a resourceful citizenry, and the learning required to create, respond to, and maximize emergent opportunities;

WHEREAS the Louisiana Board of Regents estimates that fewer than 16% of the jobs in Louisiana (and fewer in other states) require only a high school degree, which suggests that more than one million Louisiana citizens could not qualify for premium jobs;

WHEREAS Louisiana currently ranks 48th among American states with regard to educational attainment;

WHEREAS the United States continues to fall in worldwide rankings of higher education quality and availability, having slipped, on prominent indices, to as low as 14th or even 26th place;

WHEREAS Louisiana government support for higher education has declined by more than 44% since 2008, the beginning of the “budget crisis”;

WHEREAS the decline in state support for higher education has resulted in concomitant, formidable increases in tuition, thereby discouraging candidate students, especially those from poor or first-time college-going families, from seeking a college education;

WHEREAS Louisiana has one of the largest and most under-served minority populations, a population urgently needing higher-education opportunities;

WHEREAS the drive to replace lost state-supplied resources with philanthropy, grants, and contracts has skewed curricula, resulted in the cancellation of core programs, and produced demoralizing disparities among colleagues and programs, all owing to the uneven and unpredictable preferences of donors, businesses, and granting agencies;

WHEREAS the increasing reliance on tuition, philanthropy, grants, and contracts has burdened colleges and universities with expensive bureaucracies, whether enrollment services offices or foundation management teams or sponsored research departments, the cost-benefit ratio of which has yet to be assessed;

WHEREAS Louisiana universities are in a alarmingly declining condition owing to the decay of infrastructure, the deterioration of buildings, faculty flight, and the diminishing of both pedagogical and research support;

WHEREAS Louisiana leaders have done little to explain to the public the importance of higher education in improving their lives and prospects;

WHEREAS a full-throttle acceleration of state support for higher education is the only practicable way to improve Louisiana’s prospects for the future—the only workable method to produce a qualified workforce, to conceive new ideas, and to uplift our citizenry;

WHEREAS the idea of an educated citizenry is fundamental to democratic values in a republic and is indeed an underlying assumption of the United States Constitution;

WHEREAS the globalization of culture, business, innovation, and research will require ever more highly trained workers, leaders, thinkers, innovators, and reformers;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the faculties of Louisiana colleges and universities call on the state to develop a vigorous program of reinvestment in and funding for higher education;

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that these same faculties ask Louisiana’s governmental leaders to call on the expertise, good will, and inventiveness of Louisiana’s higher education faculty members as the aforementioned program of reinvestment is prepared and implemented;

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Louisiana’s college and university faculty members ask Louisiana’s leaders to undertake an extensive informational and advertising program to help the citizens of Louisiana understand the significance of higher education in their lives;

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Louisiana lead rather than follow the other American states in the attempt to raise the worldwide standing of our higher education institutions;

AND THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Louisiana’s higher education faculty affirm that college and university education, which is among the most important of public goods, should become a primary concern of Louisiana’s governmental leadership.

Very little in this resolution could be accounted controversial. Who would dare oppose the creation of an educated citizenry? Yet the devil—who also has a few good points, whether wry wit or the virtue of persistence—is in the details. Sponsored by two organizations that are themselves abstracted from a veritable galaxy of faculty senates, activist groups, and assorted solo crusaders, the measure reminds everyone that we have yet to work out ways of coordinating the activities of diverse faculty groups so as to pursue common goals. Beleaguered organizations, whether the AAUP or the many state and regional faculty associations around the country, are reluctant to admit the existence of other, potentially rival organizations. In the case of this resolution, a core group of Louisiana faculty activists who belong to every one of the various faculty advocacy groups has been unable to find any one coalition of members who will bring this resolution to a larger public audience. More positively, however, the resolution continues to enjoy a long afterlife. Those same hard-core faculty activists have routinely cited it in any of a thousand public forums and have been able to deploy it as an instructive example of what faculty can accomplish if they organize. The resolution was, is, and will continue to be an educational and recruitment tool with many applications other than its obvious purpose, invoking more financial support.

Two years later, Louisiana’s most ardent faculty leaders decided to try again, this time advancing a statewide resolution calling for a faculty presence on the profusion of higher education management boards that festoon our state. Louisiana has no less than five management boards for four systems plus the state as a whole; it hosts a population explosion among “supervisors” and “regents” that would have staggered Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, and maybe even poor old Thomas Malthus. This herd of board members has admitted a few women and minority members as well as a handful of students, but no faculty members will be found browsing in a field overhwelmingly dominated by lawyers and captains of industry.

The text of the resolution:

Joint Resolution of the Louisiana Conference of the American Association of University Professors and the Association of Louisiana Faculty Senates

“Improvement through Participation: Louisiana’s Higher Education Management Boards”

Whereas the citizens of Louisiana have established universities as repositories of expertise—as resources for the teaching of our people, for the betterment of our life, for the advancement of our economy, and for the discovery of truth and knowledge;

Whereas Louisiana universities, per their mission statements, jointly cover a very wide range of disciplines and professional pursuits, from health care delivery to music history to astrophysics, and more;

Whereas the leadership of institutions that are dedicated to the cultivation of expertise requires familiarity with the culture and expertise of those whose profession is the production and dissemination of knowledge;

Whereas the management Boards of public institutions—the Boards of Supervisors for the University of Louisiana System; the LSU System; the Southern University System; and the Louisiana Community and Technical Colleges System along with the State Board of Regents—are the appointed deputies of the Governor of Louisiana, regulating higher education on behalf of the State executive branch;

Whereas the membership of these five Boards is overwhelmingly comprised of persons drawn from a very small range of professions and vocations, most notably business, finance, and law, and whereas those few—no more than half-dozen—Board members with experience in education are former administrators rather than rank-and-file faculty members who belong to only two of the five Boards, those of Southern University and the LCTCS;

Whereas a much greater level of vocational, ideological, and socioeconomic diversity characterizes the governing Boards of Louisiana’s independent and religion-affiliated colleges and universities, which include in their membership architects, activists and social reformers, restaurateurs, artists, priests, and medical personnel, to name but a few of the participating professions;

Whereas a greater level of vocational diversity is also found among the management Boards of those prestigious institutions that routinely outrank Louisiana universities according to assorted metrics and rating services;

Whereas, although the contributions of all Board members are highly valued, a Board that is dominated by one profession or cluster of professions lacks the breadth of expertise needed to serve the expansive interests of higher education—a problem noted by prominent commentators writing for accoladed publications who have drawn attention to the potential conflict of interest between business-dominated Boards and the university mandate to probe, critique, and transform the status quo;

Whereas the thousands of faculty members of Louisiana colleges and universities possess an enormous but largely untapped treasury of disciplinary and educational knowledge as well as front-line experience in Louisiana higher education;

Whereas faculty members have made repeated attempts to establish channels of communication with both the management Boards and the executive branch of Louisiana government, whether through two meetings with the Governor’s Chief of Staff or whether through forums conducted under the aegis of ALFS (the Association of Louisiana Faculty Senates) or whether through testimony before legislative committees or whether through an assortment of personal contacts;

Whereas Louisiana’s higher education management Boards enfranchise student members but not faculty members;

Whereas the neglect of faculty advice and the unfamiliarity of management Boards with academic standards and practices have led Louisiana into the ignominious position of leading the nation both in total number of AAUP censures and the rate at which AAUP censures are imposed;

Therefore be it resolved that the Louisiana Conference of the American Association of University Professors, in partnership with the Association of Louisiana Faculty Senates, asks Governor John Bel Edwards to conduct a review of the qualifications required for appointment to any of Louisiana’s higher education;

Therefore be it resolved that the Louisiana AAUP and ALFS encourage Governor Edwards to include experiential, vocational, and educational diversity as a criterion for appointment to management Boards;

Therefore be it further resolved that the Louisiana AAUP and ALFS ask Governor Edwards to create formal channels for regular input to state higher education officials from Louisiana college and university faculty members;

Therefore be it further resolved that the Louisiana AAUP and ALFS ask Governor Edwards to take the necessary steps, including legislative action if required, to include Louisiana faculty members on Louisiana higher education management Boards.

And therefore be it further resolved that the Louisiana State Conference of the AAUP will appoint a committee to introduce this resolution to Governor Edwards, either by preparing a suitable cover letter or arranging for direct delivery.

Again, Louisiana faculty members welcome the benevolent, purposive plagiarizing of a resolution that is probably needed in many states. With respect to the back story of the resolution, it can be observed that few efforts of faculty governance could be more thoroughly prepared or anticipated than this call for at least a minimal faculty voice in higher education management. The resolution emerged after years—decades—of pleading with officials at all levels of state government for help in overcoming a bizarre situation in which the most qualified, most highly trained population in the state, the faculty, are fully and exhaustively excluded from decision-making processes, and that to a degree that would seem strange even in industry, which usually allows at least token labor representation.

What is going wrong with respect to the future history of this resolution is also what is going right. After the usual difficulties in finding a group of faculty members to deliver (and explain) the resolution to legislators, board members, and the governor, faculty leaders decided to ask one very experienced colleague who routinely sojourns among lawmakers to present the resolution to the Commissioner of Higher Education, hoping that she, as a self-styled advocate for the marginalized, might become its advocate. That mission was accomplished; a civil dialogue ensued; and now we wait—and have been waiting for several months—for something to happen. Although that delay is frustrating, the resolution has nevertheless become an official state record. It is there, it is a statement that by law cannot be erased, and, sooner or later, some response will be required. In the meanwhile, and per the first resolution, faculty leaders throughout Louisiana continue to use this resolution as a recruitment and teaching tool. We have not been deterred; we are on the public record; and we are, perhaps most importantly, doing something, even in the midst of the pandemic. We hope that many other state organizations will do the same.