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In
this issue: Annual
Meeting This year has seen a surge in chapter development at institutions across the state. Consequently, we have designed our 2004/05 meeting around the theme of chapter-based advocacy. With so many demands placed on faculty, it is all too easy to disengage from our institutions and colleagues. This detachment is often borne out of a mix of frustration, cynicism, and exhaustion. Whatever its cause, disengagement is not something that our profession can afford. Only by acting together can we defeat those who would eviscerate educational quality, curtail academic freedom, and chip away at tenure. A determined and coordinated faculty CAN make a difference at any institution. Upton Sinclair’s classic treatment of American education (The Goose-Step) succinctly stated this almost a century ago: “any time the college professors of America get ready to take control of their own destinies, and of the intellectual life of their institutions, they can do it. There is not a college or university in the United States today which could resist the demands of its faculty a hundred percent organized and meaning business.” As the organization solely committed to the interests of higher education, we believe it is our job to get every faculty 100% organized and meaning business. Want to find out how you and your colleagues can actively improve your working lives? Join us on February 12th.
We are delighted that former AAUP president, James T. Richardson, has agreed to give our luncheon keynote address. Richardson is a professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, and directs the Grant Sawyer Center for Justice Studies as well as the University’s Judicial Studies Program. As president of the AAUP, Richardson was instrumental in arranging the affiliation of the Berkeley Faculty Association with the national AAUP and furthering the Association’s presence in the west – he will share with us strategies based on his work in Nevada, where he and the Nevada Faculty Alliance have been outstanding advocates for the faculty. Breakout
Panel Sessions Contingent Faculty: Moving Forward. AAUP activist Chris Storer and national staffer Erika Gubrium will review AAUP policy and initiatives as they affect contingent faculty. Storer and Gubrium will focus on creating more broadly representative chapters by forging a meaningful space for part-time and adjunct faculty within them. Two AAUP collective bargaining chapters in California — the California Faculty Association and the Faculty Union of the San Francisco Art Institute — have negotiated significant gains for contingent faculty in recent years. A review of their successful strategies will frame the discussion of how a faculty can protect academic freedom for non-tenure track faculty. Gubrium comes to the AAUP following almost a decade of activism as a graduate assistant at the University of Florida. Storer teaches philosophy at De Anza College and is an outspoken activist for contingent faculty members. Storer presently serves on the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Faculty Handbooks: Protecting Your Interests. National staff member Pat Shaw and AAUP activist Linda Collins will provide participants with practical guidance in assessing their own faculty handbooks, especially as they relate to governance structures and basic terms and conditions of employment. This session will also explore the issues of handbook enforcement and modification. Linda Collins is on the faculty of Los Medanos College and served for several years as president of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. She currently chairs the AAUP’s Committee on Community Colleges. Pat Shaw is a labor lawyer by training and a tenacious advocate by inclination. A former director of the AAUP’s Department of Organizing and Services, Pat serves on the Association’s Committee on Governance and has worked with an enormous number of AAUP chapters and conferences on myriad bargaining and governance problems. Shaping Public Perceptions of the Professoriate. CA-AAUP Vice President Graham Larkin and former AAUP General Secretary Mary Burgan will consider the public face of the profession. How do those outside of the academy perceive us and how does this affect our work? This session will explore a number of external threats to academic freedom and the wellbeing of the professoriate with the goal of helping chapter leaders and activists develop a public relations campaign that will be understandable – and better yet, meaningful – to the public at large. The so-called “Academic Bill of Rights” will be on the table for discussion as will a number of other efforts to undermine faculty authority. Burgan — recently retired from the AAUP, having served as the Association’s General Secretary — is currently enjoying a visiting appointment at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education. At the other end of the career ladder, Larkin is a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford whose friendship with Marcus Harvey “encouraged” his involvement with the CA-AAUP. Larkin has been front and center in the highly publicized debate with David Horowitz over bias in the academy and the Academic Bill of Rights movement (see accompanying article). All faculty are welcome to attend our annual meeting. Registration fees are heavily discounted ($15 in advance) for members in good standing. Non-members may attend the whole event, but may not vote during the business portion of the meeting. Contact the AAUP’s West Coast office (800-431-3348) to reserve your spot at the discounted rate. There is no limit to the number of members that a chapter may send or sponsor. Parking instructions, as well as directions to the Faculty Dining Room, will be emailed to those who register in advance and will also be available at the main gate into campus on the morning of the event. Additional information is posted on the CA-AAUP website. Many thanks
to our members and chapter leaders at Mills College in Oakland and
St. Mary’s College in Moraga for co-sponsoring this year’s meeting. Across the country, a concerted campaign to curb the academic freedom and professional autonomy of university and college faculty is gathering momentum under the guise of a so-called “Academic Bill of Rights” (ABOR). First promulgated by David Horowitz and advocated by his “Students for Academic Freedom,” the ABOR calls on legislatures to ensure “fair and balanced” practices in grading, curriculum development, allocation of university funds, hiring, firing, promotion and tenure review. The ABOR campaign has built momentum in several states, and appeared last year in California as Senate Bill 1335. Although SB 1335 died in Committee, it has resurfaced in a slightly altered form as SB 5. The ABOR movement ignores the fact that the vast majority of institutions of higher learning have sound and long-established practices for regulating disputes within the academy. Administrative procedures currently in place have proven sufficient to address any isolated incidents of faculty over-reaching and there is no need to overhaul the entire structure of academic responsibility and accountability, which this bill attempts to do, through an unwarranted intrusion into the classroom. The CA-AAUP’s concern with the ABOR rests on the paradox that this, and any legislation based on such documents, infringes upon “academic freedom in the very act of purporting to protect it.” Inevitably, one result of the statutory enactment of an “Academic Bill of Rights” would be to transfer responsibility for the evaluation of student competence from faculty to administrators, the courts, or some other legislative entity. Legislation such as SB 5 would actually bring political views, party affiliations, and religious beliefs to the fore in the academic classroom. Contrary to the stated intention of its proponents— the ABOR movement is, in fact, an attempt to politicize the Academy. In December, 2003, the national AAUP’s “Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure” issued a statement reaffirming “that decisions concerning the quality of scholarship and teaching are to be made by reference to the standards of the academic profession, as interpreted and applied by the community of scholars who are qualified by expertise and training to establish such standards.” Existing academic freedom protections are the best guarantee that First Amendment rights are alive and well in California’s Higher Education system. Proponents of ABOR legislation are well organized, but rely on anecdotal evidence and unanswerable allegations of faculty bias. Dr. Graham Larkin, CA-AAUP Vice President for Private Colleges and Universities, has exposed the flawed logic behind the ABOR as well as the dangers posed by any real-world implementation of its objectives. In a paper written this past September, Larkin hits on the most troubling aspects of Horowitz’ proposal:
In January 2005,
Larkin and national staff member Dr. Marcus Harvey participated
in a lively debate with Horowitz on a San Diego radio talk show.
Provoked by SB 5, the on-air discussion soon moved to the broader
implications and long-term intent of the ABOR campaign. Since appearing
together “on air,” Horowitz and Larkin have continued their debate
in a number of venues. On his website
While it is
probably fair to accuse the CA-AAUP of striving to defending professorial
interests, those interests are certainly not antithetical to the
interests of our students. Quite the contrary! Our defense of the
profession—and the academic freedom sustaining it—are integral to
the quality of our students’ education. Please visit
our website for more information on the ABOR movement, SB 5,
and the Larkin-Horowitz debate. Revenues and Dues: Board Proposes a Change At its meeting on September 25th, 2004, the Executive Board voted unanimously to seek the membership’s approval to change California from an “integrated” to a “comprehensive” dues state for purposes of national AAUP and California Conference (CA-AAUP) dues collection. Before such a change is put before our members for action, however, the Board wanted to provide the rationale underlying its recommendation. The AAUP currently regards California as an “integrated dues state” which means that the national organization will process any state dues payments made directly to the AAUP by members from California and will then remit those payments back to the CA-AAUP. Conference dues are voluntary and set at a flat $8/member/year. Most large chapters and affiliates (California Faculty Association, Berkeley Faculty Association, Santa Cruz Faculty Association, San Diego Faculty Association, Faculty Union of the San Francisco Art Institute) within the CA-AAUP now pay this flat rate directly for all their members, but individuals who join online, or who use standard AAUP application forms, may not even be aware of the extra voluntary dues. Consequently, the Conference does not include many AAUP members who may, in fact, be keen to support our work and efforts in California. The shift to “comprehensive dues” would bundle the collection of CA-AAUP dues with those of the national organization so that neither members, nor chapters, would need to designate separate payments to these two entities. It would also mean that the CA-AAUP’s modest dues assessments would no longer be optional for members in California. The specific proposal to be submitted to the membership for approval would place the CA-AAUP on the first (lowest) tier of Comprehensive dues. This tier includes 12 other states (IA, KS, LA, MA, MN, MO, NE, NC, OK, PA, SC, and VA); the Board does not foresee any need to advance the CA-AAUP past the first tier of dues. Should that ever become desirable, however, it, too, would need to be approved by the membership. If the membership votes in favor of the transition to comprehensive dues, the change could not be implemented before January 2006. National and
comprehensive AAUP dues are indexed according to a cost-of-living
formula, and so it is impossible to state for certain what AAUP
base dues will be in 2006; for illustrative purposes only, the following
table (“Impact of Transition to Comprehensive Dues”) shows what
the effects of this change would have been had it occurred this
year.
Back to Top West
Coast Office Welcomes Vibrant New Staffer
We would like
to introduce Erika Gubrium who—as the AAUP’s newest professional
staff member—started in the California office on January 17th. Erika
has two Master’s degrees (one in Horticulture; the other, Science
Teaching) and is now working on her Ph.D. in Social Foundations
of Education (University of Florida). Thanks to a National Science
Foundation grant, she has spent the last few years integrating her
knowledge in the fields of plant molecular biology and pedagogy
and has developed educational software for community college biotechnology
classrooms. She has published articles in the fields of molecular
and evolutionary genetics, proteomics, and qualitative research
methodology. In addition to her academic background, Erika comes
to us with a good deal of advocacy and organizing experience. She
has undertaken issues-based community canvassing and worked extensively
on campaigns with graduate assistants and faculty during her years
of activism with the United Faculty of Florida. As directed by the membership at our last general meeting (October 25th, 2003), the Executive Board has drafted several committee charges for approval by the body. That is only half the battle; now we need member activists to assume leadership roles on these committees. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about appointments to our Committees. An update on the CA-AAUP’s various appointed bodies follows. Nominating
Committee Subcommittee
on Contingent Faculty Government
Relations Committee Communications
Committee The
full text of the proposed committee charges is available by
request and will be posted online a week before the February
12th meeting.
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©2005 CA-AAUP
This page was last updated on February 1, 2005.