Excerpts from Our Recent Letter to Our Administrators

By -

I add to David's fine essay the thought that members of the university administration who act unilaterally and without regard to due process may be a fourth major threat to academic freedom. In that regard, let me include the following in this discussion.

After stating the particulars of a case in which a faculty member on tenure track was fired without the due process required by policy, we ended our recent letter to UVU administrators with the following more general statement:

Issues like this make a difference in our ability to act responsibly as faculty and administrators of the university. We hope to continue to work with you on matters of academic freedom and due process, and trust that this case can be dealt with in a speedy and fair manner.

Finally, this case follows a disturbing pattern we have noted previously. Professor Hyunme Lee, for instance, also from the Art Department and also under the deanship of Kathie Debenham, was not given due process in her tenure deliberations, a fact that was recognized by your administration after we made the case and which was duly remedied (although by that time Hyunme had decided she no longer was willing to work for the university or in that department). Further, when Professor Lyn Bennett was accused of bias, in successive years, by a candidate for a job in the History Department, she was twice removed from the search committee by Pat Forbes, with no chance to face the accuser or defend her actions. Dean Yells wrote a letter after the fact to Professor Bennett defending her right to be on the committee, but your administration has still not issued an apology or admission of mishandling the case. Your response was that a policy should be written on faculty grievance procedures. Although the Senate is currently considering such a policy, the actions taken against Professor Bennett were still violations of her academic freedom and haven’t been addressed.

In light of these three cases in the past two years, only one of which was resolved, we recommend more careful attention to faculty rights under policy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A REPORT ON THE UVU “FINAL INVESTIGATION REPORT”: THE CASE OF PROFESSOR MICHAEL SHIVELY

By -
This week I read Utah Valley University’s Final Investigative Report on Professor Michael Shively, dated July 31, 2019. With a set of appendices, it is a public  document, filed in a lawsuit against UVU by the family of Professor Michael Shively (Case 2:20-cv-00119-DB-PMW Document 17-1 Filed 03/26/20; Utah Federal District Court).  I discuss the Report here because it reveals serious flaws in a procedure that should afford due process to members of the faculty while also enabling the University to dismiss faculty when there is proven cause. A UVU Faculty Senate Committee, of which I am a member, is currently writing a new policy on “Faculty Remediation, Sanction, and Dismissal for Cause.” Mistakes made in the Shively case can help us as we develop guidelines that are more reasonable than those in the earlier policy and more conducive to a mutual sense of trust and collegiality. Professor Shively passed away on August 19, 2019, never having seen this report that discounts ma
Read more

Statement on the Suspension of Professor Mike Shively at UVU

By -
Image
Mike Shively training on the San Marcos River for the 2019 Texas Water Safari (courtesy of the Shively family) Our colleague, Professor Michael Shively, passed away on the evening of August 19, 2019. Mike joined the UVU faculty in 1992 with advanced degrees in anatomy and veterinary science. He served as President of the Faculty Senate and as Department Chair. He was the Faculty Athletic Representative, a role he relished as he played his trumpet at many athletic events. Over the course of his teaching career he taught thousands of students in his anatomy and physiology classes and was honored with numerous teaching awards. Students found his demanding classes key components for admission into medical, dental, and nursing schools.  Although “Rate My Professors” is an imperfect source, it is informative to see what students posted there about Mike’s anatomy class. Five recent, representative examples:  AWSOME, 5 out of 5 rating Anatomy is the hardest class you will prob
Read more

Begging the DEI Question

By -
On January 19, House Republicans voted to pass HB 261, Rep Katy Hall’s diversity, equity, and inclusion bill. Their votes suggest that they did not pay attention to Andy Larsen’s thoughtful analysis of the issue (Salt Lake Tribune, January 13): “One of the most popular anti-DEI studies is full of problems.” Or perhaps they were simply more interested in the politics of the issue than in careful analysis in the service of Utah’s students.  Larsen writes that the question the bill purports to answer is what to do with the “DEI bloat in academia,” as reported by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2021 (and in a flurry of subsequent pieces there). After pointing out serious methodological problems in the report (“it’s an insane way to draw conclusions”), Larsen concludes his analysis: “In the end, the anti-DEI folks have a problem: Their argument just isn’t that well-considered. They’re using shoddy methodology [and] they don’t address the research that led to DEI programs in the fi
Read more