Weekend Economists Go Out with a Boom August 24-26, 2012

[Demeter]

9. Detroit’s Wayne State University Looks to Destroy Tenure

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11049-detroit%E2%80%99s-wayne-state-university-looks-to-destroy-tenure

Wayne State University in Detroit has proposed a new contract that would radically redefine the terms for eliminating faculty. The school would be the first research university to effectively abolish tenure, said officials of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), opening the door for other campuses under pressure from cuts in public spending to try similar moves.

Traditionally, tenured faculty could be removed only after undergoing an extended peer review or in cases where the university is facing extreme financial stress. The contract language management proposed in late July, however, would effectively remove peer review and centralize the power to terminate faculty in administrators' hands. When the university's chief negotiator, James Green, was asked if the new terms would amount to eliminating tenure he replied, "It would have that effect, yes."

University President Allan Gilmour, a former top-level executive at Ford, quickly denied the charge. "Faculty tenure is an important aspect of academic freedom," Gilmour told reporters, "but it cannot be a place to hide for those whose performance or behavior is poor."

Wayne State enrolls nearly 32,000 students, 89 percent of whom are from metro Detroit, and has almost 3,000 faculty members. About a third are tenured or tenure-track. Faculty are represented by a joint AAUP-Teachers (AFT) Local 6075. The proposed contract would allow the administration to remove faculty in cases of "the substantial curtailment or discontinuance of a program which removes any reasonable opportunity for using a faculty member's services," a "failure to meet professional responsibilities," a "failure to perform academic assignments competently," and a "financially based reduction in force."...Management also wants a provision limiting faculty members' political freedom, by allowing professors to be terminated for "intentionally causing injury to persons and/or damage to property, forcibly interrupting the normal daily teaching, research or administrative operation of the University or directly inciting others to engage in such actions." This kind of vague language would leave the door open to disciplining or eliminating tenured faculty who participate or assist in organizing protests on campus, such as the recent Occupy protests that swept campuses and cities across the United States last fall, or the ongoing student strike in Quebec....Other universities have been experimenting with terminating tenured faculty, including the eight-campus University of Louisiana system last year. Florida State University tried to lay off 21 tenured faculty two years ago, but the move was blocked by an arbitrator.

MORE AT LINK