Peter N. Kirstein

At the American Association of University Professors, Illinois Conference annual meeting on April 28, 2012 at Concordia University in River Forest, there was a comprehensive report on National Louis University’s unseemly and egregious termination of departments with the intent to offer subsequently the same courses, previously taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty, with exploited non-tenured, underpaid adjuncts. Such a cynical assault on the tenure system, with a faux veneer of institutional economic challenges, contravenes the principles of academic freedom, due process and continuous tenure. A tenured faculty member can be removed for a bona fide financial exigency in which the postsecondary institution’s very existence is at stake. Such is not the case here. A program can be eliminated but the AAUP letter indicates NLU’s process lacked shared governance, sufficient evidence of economic necessity and due process in the area of termination.

AAUP is standing tall in this letter as it revealed the wild-west show at NLU in which arbitrary, capricious treatment of faculty is in high gear. Even peripheral adherence to seminal AAUP documents such as its iconic 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and its Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure is abandoned as National Louis wages war against its own faculty with ruthless disregard for justice much less the academic efficacy of their own institution.

I noted with bemusement that National Louis is firing tenured faculty with a one-year severance salary. That is construed as adherence to AAUP guidelines but its planned severance of contingent full-time faculty is in apparent violation of the one-year severance salary rule. I don’t question the solid letter’s accuracy but would merely emphasise that there should be no severance of any kind. No faculty member should be fired in order that the university can basically cheat on its own tenure system and replace those with tenure with contingent faculty. Of course, universities can save money by firing tenured faculty and replacing them with non-tenured faculty. Yet the corporate, bottom-line mania of higher education has marginalised their raison d’etre of providing excellence in education. Putting the best instructors in the classroom is the means to that goal and tenured faculty must have job security to attain that objective. Excellence in education at National Lewis University is being sullied by administrators who are more concerned with “profit” than critical thinking in the minds of their students, many of whom are being trained to be teachers.

May 7, 2012

Dr. Nivine Megahed

President

National Louis University

122 South Michigan Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60603

Dear President Megahed:

Members of the faculty at National Louis University have sought the advice and assistance of the American Association of University Professors. They have done so as a result of actions announced by the NLU administration last month to discontinue numerous academic programs­ four departments (English/Philosophy, Fine Arts, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences), nine degree programs, and five non-degree certificate programs–effective with the fall 2012 term and to terminate the appointments of a large number of tenured as well as other long-serving nontenured faculty members in core academic areas. You are quoted in the press as having stated that the decisions were made pursuant to a “prioritization process” and that “serious fiscal pressures on the university” and a significant decline in enrollment required “tak[ing] action immediately.”

Our Association’s concern about the NLU administration’s actions stems from its longstanding commitment to academic freedom and tenure, the basic tenets of which are set forth in the enclosed 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. That document was coauthored by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities and has received the endorsement of more than 200 educational and scholarly organizations. Derivative principles and procedural standards are found in the Association’s enclosed Recommended Institutional Regula­tions on Academic Freedom and Tenure. We have noted the applicable provisions of NLU’s official policies.

The 1940 Statement allows under extraordinary circumstances for termination of tenure on the basis of a demonstrably bona fide condition of financial exigency. Regulation 4c of our Recom­mended Institutional Regulations sets forth the AAUP’s formulation of criteria and procedural standards in the area of concern. In addition to termination mandated by financial exigency, the Association recognizes that termination of tenured faculty appointments may occur because of the formal discontinuance of an entire program or department of instruction based essentially on educational considerations rather than mandated by financial exigency. (See Regulation 4d.) Educational considerations are “determined primarily by the faculty as a whole or an appropriate committee thereof,” exclude “cyclical or temporary variations in enrollment,” and “must reflect long-range judgments that the educational mission of the institution as a whole will be enhanced by the discontinuance.”

President Nivine Megahed

May 7, 2012

Page Two

Faculty members at National Louis University have questioned the extent of the current financial difficulties. They have noted that the decision to discontinue the affected programs, with the consequent termination of tenured faculty appointments, was not preceded by the administration’s having demonstrated that the magnitude of the budgetary constraints facing the institution necessitated the closing of the programs and departments and the resulting terminations of faculty appointments. They contend that the administration has not come forth with specific figures showing the amount of money its actions will save, and they have challenged the enrollment figures they say have been cited as the basis for targeting these programs.

Moreover, faculty members have questioned the adequacy of faculty participation as called for in AAUP-recommended standards-by the faculty as a whole or by a representative body of the faculty-in the discussions that preceded the administration’s announced actions, in setting the criteria for terminating programs, and in singling out the particular ones for discontinuance. You have stated in letters to the NLU campus community that the consultative process which led to the actions “was fully collaborative, including faculty, staff, and others in a shared governance model,” and that the “recommendations for program closure were supported by NLU’s Faculty Senate Academic Planning Committee and the full senate.” Faculty members in the affected programs, however, along with many of their colleagues, have questioned whether the process was genuinely consultative or respected the basic rules of governance at the university. They point out that the faculty members who served on the “prioritization” task forces were all chosen by the administration, and they allege that these bodies were “given incomplete and faulty data to make decisions based on criteria … and targets that were … predetermined” by the administration. According to these same sources, the specific recommendations on program closures and appointment terminations were formulated without meaningful faculty involvement. In addition, members of the faculty in the affected programs report that they were neither consulted about nor alerted to the impending actions, and that they were not given the opportunity to propose money­ saving reforms. We understand that on May 4 the Faculty Association, meeting in special emergency session, voted overwhelmingly to call upon the administration to “rescind its letters of termination to all tenured faculty members” and “reverse the elimination of departments.” It also called upon the administration to “make available financial data that have been used as the primary rationale for cutting faculty, but that faculty have not seen.”

* * * * *

Under the Association’s recommended standards, “Before the administration issues notice to a faculty member of its intention to terminate an appointment because of formal discontinuance of a program or department of instruction, the institution will make every effort to place the faculty member concerned in another suitable position.” We understand that courses in English, mathematics, and the other terminated departments that the released tenured professors have taught or are qualified to teach will continue to be taught as general education courses, and indeed such courses were previously scheduled for the 2012-13 academic year (and presumably beyond). We understand further, however, that the faculty members being released have not been afforded opportunity to teach these courses. The administration is reported to have stated that adjunct faculty will be engaged to teach most of them, contrary to the above-quoted standard.

President Nivine Megahed

May 7, 2012

Page Three

Association-supported standards further provide that faculty members whose appointments are being terminated are entitled to an on-the-record adjudicative hearing before a body of elected faculty peers. In such a hearing, it is incumbent upon the administration to demonstrate that the stated grounds for the action are bona fide and that every effort is being made to relocate displaced tenured faculty members in suitable positions elsewhere within the institution. UNI’s policies appear to be silent on the right to a faculty hearing, and thus affected faculty members presumably are not being afforded in this regard the academic due process to which they are entitled under Association-supported standards.

* * * * *

With regard to the amount of severance salary being paid to the professors whose appointments are being terminated, Regulation 8 of our Recommended Institutional Regulations assures the tenured professor faced with termination of appointment or nontenured faculty members with two or more years of full-time service a year of notice or severance salary unless moral turpitude is involved. NLU policy appears to afford tenured faculty members the option of receiving severance salary that is in essential conformity with this standard. However, long-serving faculty members who are on a “terminal letter of appointment” and whose entitlement to tenure has not been recognized should receive the same amount of notice, yet the administration has apparently not provided it.

* * * * *

A subcommittee of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has for the past year been developing refinements of our recommendations on program closures for financial reasons. When notified last spring that program cuts and terminations of appointments were to take place at constituent institutions of the University of Louisiana System, Professor Michael Bérubé , the chair of that subcommittee, issued the enclosed statement, with its wide distribution encouraged by Committee A. After pointing to apparent departures from AAUP-supported standards, Dr. Bérubé notes that the UL System “appears to be going well beyond anything that can be justified by economic hardship, launching a capricious assault on tenure as well as minimal standards of job security for the untenured. Faculty nationwide should be advised that the UL System has effectively nullified its tenure procedures; and students in the UL System, and their parents, should be advised that maintaining the quality of core liberal arts programs is no longer a priority of the UL System administration.”

Last September our Association authorized a formal investigation of program discontinuances and the resulting terminations of tenured appointments in the UL System, an ad hoc investigating committee made site visits in November, and its report was published in April. In June our Committee A may recommend to the AAUP’s annual meeting that it impose formal censure on the administrations at two UL System universities based on the findings in that report. Last month an investigating committee was also authorized with respect to the University of Northem Iowa to

President Nivine Megahed May 7, 2012 Page Four

inquire into issues that are virtually identical to those addressed in the UL System report. Our committee is on the UNI campus interviewing concerned parties as this letter is being written.

* * * * *

We appreciate that the information on which this letter is based has come to us almost entirely from faculty sources at National Louis University, and that you may have additional information that would contribute to our understanding of the decisions that have been made and the process that has been followed in reaching them. We would therefore welcome your comments. Assuming the essential accuracy of the facts as we have recounted them, we urge that the administration rescind the notices of termination that have been issued and that any further action be in accordance with the procedural standards we have set forth.

We would welcome your prompt response.

Sincerely,

B. Robert Kreiser Associate Secretary

BRK:id Enclosures (sent via surface mail)

cc: Mr. Richard M. Ross, Jr., Chair, Board of Trustees Dr. Christine J. Quinn, Provost Dr. Walter Roettger, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Dr. Alison R. Hilsabeck, Dean, National College of Education Mr. Thomas R. Bergmann, Vice President of Human Resources Professor Timothy Collins, Chair, Faculty Senate Professor Michelle Turner Mangan, Chair, Senate Finance Committee Professor Todd Price, President, NLU Chapter AAUP Professor Michael Harkins, President, Illinois Conference AAUP Professor Peter Kirstein, Chair, Illinois Conference Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure

New York State education commissioner John B. King has removed (New York Times) some confusing, nonsensical questions about a pineapple racing a hare from an eight grade standardised test. The New York Daily News carried some of the narrative and egregious questions that I posted below. Eight graders, talk about child abuse, have been puzzled and upset about the lack of clarity and obfuscation  of material that these questions represented. I read the passage and the questions and I am struck by the arrogance and arbitrary power that testing architects have. They are out for financial gain and to destroy teaching, create a national agenda, close “low-performance scores” schools and the like. I have no idea what a pineapple without sleeves is. When I took the SAT and other standardised tests, I frequently believed many of the multiple choice questions could be answered or a single question. I also resented time restraints; I felt pressure and could not relax. Thinking should not be governed by an ersatz twenty-four second shot clock. Thinking and creativity should not be chained to time and speed.

It turns out that Illinois is one of several states that presented questions of Daniel Pinkwater’s rabbit v. pineapple race. This guy is also in on the take and big bucks are the corruptible seed of education in this country. State education commissioners, who themselves should be fired for monitoring these absurd mind-numbing exercises, should be replaced by antitesting direct action advocates who won’t allow such abusive testing to occur. Pearson, the world’s largest textbook and education materials company, has skin in the game here. They got $32 million to publish and construct these tests. No, the money was not used for faculty salaries, computers, chairs, renovation of classrooms, but for this assault on learning and critical thinking.

Understand, the testers are in this for the cash and to root our progressive instruction in the US. Standardised testing I have previously described is a form of fascism. Big bucks, big stakes, careers destroyed, students’ progress halted, teachers purged. We need more than removal of some questions that are unanswerable and meaningless; we need to extirpate this scourge from this country. RESIST THIS ORWELLIAN ATTACK ON THE MIND AND THE DEMOCRATIC VALUES OF INDEPENDENT THINKING WE PROFESS TO SUPPORT!

by Daniel Pinkwater, from New York Daily News April 21, 2012

In olden times, the animals of the forest could speak English just like you and me. One day, a pineapple challenged a hare to a race.

(I forgot to mention, fruits and vegetables were able to speak too.)

A hare is like a rabbit, only skinnier and faster. This particular hare was known to be the fastest animal in the forest.

“You, a pineapple have the nerve to challenge me, a hare, to a race,” the hare asked the pineapple. “This must be some sort of joke.”

“No,” said the pineapple. “I want to race you. Twenty-six miles, and may the best animal win.”

“You aren’t even an animal!” the hare said. “You’re a tropical fruit!”

“Well, you know what I mean,” the pineapple said.
The animals of the forest thought it was very strange that tropical fruit should want to race a very fast animal.

“The pineapple has some trick up its sleeve,” a moose said.

Pineapples don’t have sleeves, an owl said

“Well, you know what I mean,” the moose said. “If a pineapple challenges a hare to a race, it must be that the pineapple knows some secret trick that will allow it to win.”

“The pineapple probably expects us to root for the hare and then look like fools when it loses,” said a crow. “Then the pineapple will win the race because the hare is overconfident and takes a nap, or gets lost, or something.”

The animals agreed that this made sense. There was no reason a pineapple should challenge a hare unless it had a clever plan of some sort. So the animals, wanting to back a winner, all cheered for the pineapple.

When the race began, the hare sprinted forward and was out of sight in less than a minute. The pineapple just sat there, never moving an inch.

The animals crowded around watching to see how the pineapple was going to cleverly beat the hare. Two hours later when the hare cross the finish line, the pineapple was still sitting still and hadn’t moved an inch.

The animals ate the pineapple.

MORAL: Pineapples don’t have sleeves
Beginning with paragraph 4, in what order are the events in the story told?

A switching back and forth between places

B In the order in which the events happen

C Switching back and forth between the past and the present

D In the order in which the hare tells the events to another animal

The animals ate the pineapple most likely because they were

A Hungry

B Excited

C Annoyed

D Amused

Which animal spoke the wisest words?

A The hare

B The moose

C The crow

D The owl

Before the race, how did the animals feel toward the pineapple?
A Suspicious

B Kindly

C Sympathetic

D Envious

What would have happened if the animals had decided to cheer for the hare?

A The pineapple would have won the race.

B They would have been mad at the hare for winning.

C The hare would have just sat there and not moved.

D They would have been happy to have cheered for a winner.

When the moose said that the pineapple has some trick up its sleeve, he means that the pineapple

A is wearing a disguise

B wants to show the animals a trick

C has a plan to fool the animals

D is going to put something out of its sleeve

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/talking-pineapple-question-state-exam-stumps-article-1.1064657#ixzz1sg9y3aEl

The movement of testing to determine teaching effectiveness is not dissimilar to totalitarian regimes that require a national curriculum agenda. This mania is sweeping the land of the free. Let us recall that the No Child Left Behind and similar efforts in postsecondary education are an attempt to standardise teaching and create a robotic teacher corps paying homage to tests over which they have no control. If enough faculty and supine unions go along with this disgrace-under the guise of assessment of student learning-then all instruction and pedagogical methodology will be driven by test writers in state capitals, congressional committee staff meetings and even worse by state and local school boards.

http://rogueoperator.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/fascism.jpg

Professors and teachers are being purged, fired and suspended whose test scores are not up to an arbitrary figure. Tenured teachers are being hounded out of secondary education and laid off. This is more than merely casting a “pall of orthodoxy over the classroom” (Keyishian v. Board of Regents). This is to control and censor teachers through totalitarian means that is similar to fascism. There is no question about this. The mania toward standardisation of education is not to educate but to prevent or severely restrict teaching that questions the ethos of American capitalism and racism. Stuffing tests down the throats of students gags the teachers and forces them under threat of position forfeiture to teach to the test. It could compel a return to the canon of white male exclusivity; to abandon the questioning of the god delusion; to force teachers to denounce Darwinian evolution and embrace the voodoo of Creationism and intelligent design (moronic design for those who advocate such nonsense); it is to prevent radical-in-your-face-outside-the-lines teaching that is needed to replenish democracy and restore economic redistributive justice.

The Spelling Commission of the war criminal, neo-fascist George W. Bush days, is why the Republicans and many “liberal” cohorts are so hypocritical. They want less government, less regulation and less interference (it was interposition during the days of James Meredith and Elizabeth Eckford) except when it comes to freedom. If it comes to freedom, then the state should compel contraceptive denial; if it comes to freethinking professors inspiring action-oriented students, the state says halt and instead TEST TEST TEST. On the one hand you have Republicans who want to abolish the Department of Education–which might serve the public interest–but simultaneously erect all these metrics and qualitative standards to weed out inspired teaching under the false mask of outing incompetent teaching. Simultaneously, these purveyors of faux educational standards, slash aid to education, cut school lunch programmes, eviscerate collective bargaining rights of teacher unions and abolish tenure without which creative teaching is impossible.

So the die is cast and the battle lines are drawn. Resist the testing, resist the creation of a national curriculum in which government and their acolyte think tanks take over the educational system. Tear up the tests, barricade the doors and teach, liberate, and free the minds of our students so when they become leaders, we can finally destroy poverty in this country and end the racism of the new Jim Crow. Teach peace and resistance to this horrid militaristic, monstrous country –its leaders not its people–and go for it in the classroom! Rip up and in Garrisonian style burn the standardised tests and defend yourselves and your students from this egregious effort to destroy democracy and the educational system of the United States.

The New York Times is reporting on the latest cancer of conformity sweeping higher ed. It is the standardised test–the mestatisising of No Child Left Behind from secondary education to higher ed. Orwellian enemies of critical thinking and intellectual diversity include such self-proclaimed “education organisations” such as the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability and Voluntary System of Accountability. They are leading the way for this destruction of student learning through national accountability testing. They want national testing of millions of college students to allegedly rank those universities and colleges that are doing the best job in student outcomes. Of course such efforts to determine what and whether students learn cannot be done by bureaucrats devising a fill in the blank questionnaire with number 2 pencils.

You see these folks want a national curriculum. They want to cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom in which students, instead of reading Marx and Engels and the epic works of Howard Zinn, Gar Alperovitz and Noam Chomsky are being forced to adopt a national canon. The tail, endless testing, will wag the dog, what books, which teachers which syllabi will be acceptable. All this testing, all this standardisation of outcomes is nothing more that an attempt to destroy academic freedom in the United States, create robotic students, eliminate critical thinking, extirpate questioning authority through the drumbeat of mindless, endless, senseless testing.

This mania to test college students to out universities who allegedly are not teaching well, started with Margaret Spellings in 2006: she was war criminal and mass murderer George W. Bush’s education secretary. Her report, the Spelling Commission, used the 1% language of “value added,” “student’s academic baseline,” and other Wall Street type patois of quantitative metrics to impose this centralised curriculum through the back door of inposed quantitative assessment of student outcomes.

Well let me tell the testers, the Orwellians, the education “reformers,” the advocates of the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silence, the standardisation of education, what they can’t do. They can’t test my students! They can’t impose their right-wing agenda on me. We need students who will be rebels, revolutionaries who will overthrow, peacefully, this racist, warmongering country with its death penalty, Robert Zimmermans, persecution of LGBTS, Fox News, economic inequality and lack of national, socialised medicine.

Testing does not measure critical thinking, ethical outcomes, resistance to the canon, the capacity to question authority, knowledge of progressive views that reject the capitalistic evil of this nation.

Testers: it is not your purview to determine how postsecondary institutions educate. It is not for you to use the centralised state or coalition of certain universities to dictate to individual institutions how to measure learning. No: it is for faculties as defined in the AAUP Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities of 1966 to effectuate, and implement on their own campuses the curriculum; this should reflect their vision, their dreams, their definition of what learning is and how it should be measured. The deal is not to perpetuate an assembly line of non-thinking college graduates but to promote intellectual critical thinking that challenges all authority: even the testers who have never been in the classrooms of those they deem unable to teach well and get excellent outcomes.

Nota bene! I will never monitor or proffer any instrument in my classes that is written without my consent and approval. You will not get into my classroom through the sub rosa goal of student conformity through more testing. You will not silence me through the mania of Orwellian, ex cathedra testing. I stand between you and my students and you will lose and I will win. I draw the line and take my stand!

Signed: one of the 101 Most Dangerous Professors

The Illinois Supreme Court in a lawless act of judicial incompetence, CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION, LOCAL No. 1, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, Appellee, v. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO et al., Appellants  is denying basic human rights to tenured faculty. Specifically, a reactionary, anti-education majority is allowing the Chicago Public Schools to fire tenured professors and not rehire them as staffing openings occur. In a 5-2 decision that reflect the judicial activism of antidemocratic jurisprudential vandals, tenured faculty laid off in 2010 are not to be given priority in when vacancies appear. Note the two justices who demonstrated objectivity and appropriate judicial temperament were Justice Mary Jane Theis who wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride. The other five should resign and stop imposing their right-wing agenda on the citizens and CHILDREN of Illinois.

The five cronies who wrote or consented to this decision are obviously ignorant of basic American law and in particular as it applies to education in the US. 1) Tenure is an obligation on the part of an academic institution to grant a teacher annual contracts until retirement. 2) The purpose of tenure is to protect the students. To protect them from mindless patriotism, prosyletising or indoctrination by the state and teachers who are too afraid to question the canon and enslave themselves to mindless testing. 3) The justices of the Illinois Supreme Court should read the US Constitution and they will see that federal appointees to the bench have tenure. It is to protect them from political currents that can blow heavily around a courtroom. If federal judges have tenure, then so can teachers. 4) Tenure is a means of protecting academic freedom: the freedom to teach in one’s own name, the freedom to publish without fear of censorship or coercion; the right to engage in extramural utterances despite Garcetti v Ceballos and criticise and condemn injustice and maladministration as they see fit. 5) A tenured faculty member can only be fired for cause and the appointment is permanent after an initial probationary period.

More than 60% of 1,300 teachers who were laid off in 2010 had tenure but according to the Chicago Tribune only about 400 were rehired. None of the laid-off teachers were fired or discharged. Their competence and skills were not an issue and Justice Theis wrote they have “recall rights.” While financial exigency or programme termination is indeed acceptable in laying off tenured faculty in higher education and derivatively secondary ed, the American Association of University Professors has established guidelines for higher ed that should prevail in the public schools as well. In its Recommended Institutional Regulations for Academic Freedom and Tenure, AAUP requires that a college or university attempt to find a suitable alternative position before firing a tenured faculty member due to financial exigency. The faculty member should also be allowed the opportunity to relocate into another area of the institution or in this case a school district even if it requires “a reasonable period of training.”

Of particular relevance is the AAUP requirement that an institution not “make new appointments except in extraordinary circumstances…The appointment of a faculty member with tenure will not be terminated in favor of retaining a faculty member without tenure.” Also AAUP states specifically that the elimination of a tenured-faculty position resulting from a financial exigency “will not be filled by a replacement within a period of three years, unless the released faculty member has been offered reinstatement.” This is basically an assertion of recall rights as Justice Theis referred to in her brilliant dissent.

The Illinois Supreme Court should apply these regulations for post-secondary education to secondary education. Tenure is a sacred trust that our students need. To viciously and arbitrarily use your power to deny tenured faculty the right of return is a violation of their contract, a violation of best practices and an unseemly, arbitrary disregard of the obligation to protect tenure and its underpinning of the structure of progressive education in the United States. Shame on you and your autocratic use of power.

I urge the Chicago Teachers Union to appeal this decision to the Court of Appeals, seventh circuit that has a tradition of upholding the law and respecting the Constitution of the United States: qualities that the Illinois Supreme Court, or at least a majority, lacks. The vigilante Ill Supreme Court is merely joining the liberal-moderate attack on tenure as a means to protect incompetence and careerism. No, tenure is not perfect; it is not intended to create a lifetime appointment for the sake of the teacher. Again the purpose of tenure is to protect society and its students from the winds of change that can blow heavily and force one to kiss the flag, the Air Force Academy, the imperialistic ways of America and the racist canon of white American exceptionalism.

Fourth Update: 1520 hours CST February 18, 2012

See below for an announcement made by the St Xavier University president. Let’s not gloat over the former vice president for business and finance’s misery. She will suffer mightily for stealing nearly $900,000 from the tuition-driven university. I think the sentence is way too harsh but was within the plea agreement. She agreed to serve 37 to 46 months in prison and United States District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer basically gave her a sentence right down the middle that was NOT even close to the “near maximum penalty” as claimed. Well do the math and I am right! Forty-two is as close to mid-range as one could get unless Susan had been sentenced to forty-one and a half months! Had it gone to trial, she might have been convicted and sentenced up to ten years. This way she does three and a half, if not less, and then walks.

Susan made a lot more money than professors do here. So she was greedy and insensitive to the fact that she was one of the higher paid members of the St Xavier community and financially quite comfortable. She could have stolen the money and at least used it in a socially beneficial manner. I doubt if the money were used for charitable purposes.  Certainly the money she stole could have gone into student scholarships, student relief funds or library acquisitions. At least one of her children got free tuition so Susan was spared many of the financial burdens the middle class suffers. As I recall, she earned her MBA degree in the Graham School of Management at St Xavier. I presume she received free or reduced tuition or perhaps “self-refunded” in her behalf. No, don’t even think about it. A university cannot and will not revoke a degree unless actions related to the pursuit of that degree–plagiarism, bribing a professor, cheating on an exam–would undermine the academic credibility of an institution. As far as I know, there has been no charge to that effect and the faculty would have an interest if such action were contemplated on any campus.

However, let’s put this in perspective. I do not know if she got free or reduced tuition or got a “refund” through other means! Susan was talented, knew the place from stem to stern, beautified the campus, redid the faculty offices, was usually accessible and frequently on campus. She was respected widely. She has many good attributes and qualities and one should not go overboard in vilifying her. I hope she can get out of prison early on parole and get on with her life.

I don’t know what a just sentence is but I say abolish the prisons, abolish the structure of class warfare in this country and move toward a higher ethic where jails and prisons are phased out. Should non-violent criminals do time? If so what is justice for such crimes? SXU got the money back and this harsh sentence is hardly a deterrent for other thieves. Folks will steal if not at the Chicago university then elsewhere unfortunately but Susan hopefully will ponder and ruminate over the meaning of her life and responsiblities to others. I would visit her in prison if the site is near Chicago. I bear no animosity toward her nor do I feel satisfied with the outcome. I just don’t like prisons and folks being dumped into them. It is not the answer but then again, it is hard for me to argue with absolutism that illegal acts are inherently beyond the realm of punishment by confinement. How about house arrest?

What will we learn from this? I think another “painful chapter” in the history of St Xavier University is the treatment of most of our faculty who are adjuncts. They have a moral, legal and ethical right to form a union. That right cannot be denied on any grounds that are ethically responsible in my opinion. We need to end this outrage and afford them the rights that most other Americans have not to mention full-time and portion of full-time faculty at SXU!: the right to organise, bargain collectively and pursue better pay and work conditions. A union does not have the right to a contract. So a university does not have to enter into one: it does have to bargain however in good faith. So let’s renew ourselves in the wake of the Piros debacle to examine our own ethical shortcomings and treatment of our fellow women and men. Let the Piros event remind us that those who have much need to share with those who have less: such as those receiving $2300 for a university-level course and no benefits!

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

This is President Wiseman’s Statement sent by email to the faculty and others on February 17, 2012:

Susan Piros Sentenced for Embezzlement 

Ms. Susan Piros, former Saint Xavier University Vice President for Business and Finance, was sentenced yesterday by Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to 42 months in prison for embezzling more than $850,000 from this University over the course of a decade. She will begin serving her sentence on April 2, 2012. Our written impact statement, filed with the Court on January 24, and the oral impact statement delivered by me yesterday afternoon on behalf of this Community weighed heavily in the decision to impose a near maximum penalty on Ms. Piros.

This event draws to a close one of the most painful chapters in our history. But it also begins one of the most painful chapters for the family of Susan Piros. Let us go forward into our future knowing that through all of this, we have never faltered in serving our students. And in keeping with our Catholic and Mercy tradition, let us go forward as well with a collective prayer — especially for her children. They also suffer now as victims of her conduct.

Sincerely,

Christine M. Wiseman, J.D.
President

Norman G. Finkelstein returned to DePaul on January 16. It is a university with one of the worst academic freedom reputations in the US. Matt Muchowski in In These Times, a progressive and nationally known Chicago newspaper, has covered the story and linked my blog in his article to the DePaul Three: women who were denied tenure that is being contested in the court of law.

In November, I gave a paper at the American Association of University Professors “Shared Governance” conference in Washington, D.C. In the paper I addressed many instances of academic freedom violations in Illinois including those at DePaul. This was the reference I made to Dr Finkelstein:

“Illinois Conference Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has encountered egregious violations of shared governance as it struggles to defend academic freedom and tenure. Illinois in some ways is ground zero in the academic freedom wars as one person’s name confirms: Norman Finkelstein who was denied tenure because of his criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. He was fired and persecuted in a hate-filled campaign driven by the powerful, well-connected Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz.”

I also spontaneously declared with a very senior, staff person there from the academic freedom office, that AAUPs lack of intervention in this case was shameful and that DePaul should have been censured by AAUPs Committee A on Academic Freedom. I am chair of the Illinois Committee A and I will be forever ashamed and embarrassed that AAUP refused to engage and defend a victim in the single most important academic freedom case since the McCarthy Era. A settlement means nothing because one cannot settle injustice. One cannot settle the loss of tenure and an academic career. AAUP has consistently accepted settlements as the final act. They are the final act alright: one of injustice, persecution and the destruction of academic freedom.

In Muchowski’s article Doctor Finkelstein is quoted as saying why the  2007 settlement does not allow him to move on:

Asked why he was “reopening the wound,” Finkelstein replied, “I did not reopen the wound. The wound never healed, and it can not heal. I can not move on. DePaul destroyed my professional calling. There’s no where else to move.”

I have told many in writing and in lectures that I have not gotten over this case and that it continues to haunt and upset me that DePaul would allow such an egregious persecution and destruction of one of their professors who dared defend Palestinian rights and oppose their suffering at the hands of the State of Israel. Having myself been through a similar travail but without loss of position, I can attest that universities forget their mission. I know how feckless universities are when they allow external forces to silence, intimidate and marginalise professors of conscience who become academic prisoners of conscience.

I will continue to remind those within the sphere of my remarks and work, that the Finkelstein case is symptomatic of the lack of academic freedom and the faux toleration of dissent and progressive values in this country. This case must never die and DePaul should as Dr Finkelstein suggested offer an apology and return him to campus as a tenured faculty member and end the shame that future generations will continue to perpetuate in memory:

“DePaul’s plot to deny me tenure had nothing to do with my faults,” Finkelstein said. “In fact, and ironically, it viciously attacked me and destroyed my career because of my virtues. Which, although few in number, they still found threatening…Citing the precedent that had been recently set where DePaul president Fr. Holtschneider reversed a denial of tenure for chemistry professor, Quinetta Shelby, Finkelstein made a proposal to DePaul’s administration and board of directors: “if you acknowledge your wrongdoing in my case, if you apologize for the wrongdoing, and grant me the tenure that I earned, and that I deserve, then I would consider the matter closed.” So far, the administration has not taken Finkelstein up on this offer.”

Recently in the Namita Goswami case, it was apparent the cancer of oppression, McCarthyism and in this case racialism had spread to the Department of Philosophy who expelled one of their greatest stars for daring to stretch the ethnocentric white parameters of “continental” philosophy to the developing world. The saga of oppression on the Vincentian Chicago campus raises questions to what extent does the university honour and adhere to its own charism? It cynically and appallingly through the arrogance of Dean Chuck Suchar, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, claimed Dr Finkelstein had violated Vincentian values in a new version of religious McCarthyism.

I had blogged on this before and had posted their federal complaint. At the time their attorney wanted me to delete one of their names, Penny Silvers. That is why only two were cited by name. This is their federal lawsuit for justice and ending academic misogyny at DePaul. DePaul has the worst academic freedom record in Illinois and one of the worst in the nation. Its caving in with such cowardess and venality to the ruthless, hatefilled Alan Dershowitz campaign of scorched earth destruction against Norman Finkelstein showed the utter contempt that the institution has for creative, brilliant, and justice-oriented faculty. The Namita Goswami case was another example of both racism, and sexism as well. It is not just the administration but entitled, elitist liberal faculty such as those in the Department of Philosophy, (some in that department) who are part of the problem.

http://fightacademicdiscrimination.bbnow.org/

While the country remains obsessed about anti-Semitism, a quality certainly to be condemned, it ignores Jews who are persecuted for daring to introduce Palestinian topics that do not equate idolatry with Israel as the sole manifestation of patriotism. In case after case from Norman Finkelstein to Terri Ginsberg, professors, many of whom are Jews, are persecuted for their beliefs and advocacy for justice and the elimination of apartheid that is sweeping the Holy Land. If one proclaims to be ever vigilant for anti-Semitism, one should be equally vigilant when Jews are expelled from campuses because they dare to seek the truth in a manner that alienates the conformist impulses of the society. Let’s stop being vague here: American Jewish intellectuals who dare move beyond the narrow nationalistic confines of their religious peers, end up on the streets without jobs or a career. This has to stop!!

North Carolina State former adjunct, Dr Ginsberg

Professor appeals ruling on lawsuit over NCSU job

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. — A professor who says her remarks about a Palestinian film cost her a job at North Carolina State University wants the state Supreme Court to review her case.

Lawyers for Terri Ginsberg filed an appeal this month of a ruling by the state Court of Appeals, which dismissed her lawsuit.

Ginsberg says her remarks in support of a Palestinian filmmaker at a public screening of his movie left her frozen out of consideration for a tenure-track job.

The appeals court ruled in November that Ginsberg failed to prove her remarks had anything to do with the university giving another candidate the job.

Ginsberg’s appeal argues that the court’s decision could harm free speech in academic settings.

FAR AWAY BUT NEAR

Idan Lando is not alone. In North Carolina they also don’t want to hear all views.

http://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/1.1580658

In her email, Professor Ginsberg included a translation.

by Nirit Ben-Ari

Ha’aretz

2 December 2011

In the fall of 2007 Terri Ginsberg arrived at the University of North Carolina as a visiting professor. The department told her that by the end of the year there would be a job opening, and, if interested, she could be a leading candidate. During the first semester Dr. Ginsberg, author of the book

Holocaust Films: The Political Aesthetics of Ideology (published by Cambridge Scholars), helped curate a film festival on campus. Among other films, Ticket to Jerusalem, by the Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi, was screened. Ginsberg told the audience about Masharawi’s background, thanked them for coming, and said that by showing up they demonstrated support for the Palestinian cultural perspective, especially that which promotes Palestinian liberation. To her great shock, after the screening she was invited to a clarification meeting, and after a short time was told that she was no longer a candidate.

Dr. Ginsberg sued the university for denying her right to free expression and equal protection, but the court accepted the university’s claim that there was no connection between the speech and the sudden decision to cancel her candidacy. The court was convinced that the reason was relevant: the position required a specialization in European cinema, but Dr. Ginsberg had switched to studying Middle East cinema. Dr. Ginsberg claimed in response that, before the speech, the university was quite excited about her academic publications, which included articles, four books and a thesis, all dealing with German cinema.

Ginsberg appealed to the court of appeals, but the appeal was rejected a week ago. This week she told

Ha’aretz: “I plan to appeal to the supreme court of North Carolina in order to prove that the university rejected by candidacy because of my solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

(Idan Lando is a professor at Ben-Gurion University. A few months ago he was called up to do his military reserve duty. He refused to serve and spent two weeks in military prison. The University then docked him for two weeks pay.)

I attended the 7th circuit oral arguments for Northeastern Illinois University Professor Loretta Capeheart this morning, December 8, 2011, in the Federal courthouse here in the Loop. She is a tenured professor of justice studies at the Chicago university. The federal courthouse is near the Alexander Calder giant flamingo sculpture. Oral arguments lasted about forty minutes in an ornate and opulent room that reminded me more of a palatial setting than a people’s setting for justice.

I would have liked to have seen Dr Capeheart’s earnest and capable attorney more aggressively assert that Garcetti need not apply to academicians and that the entire case law on this issue is a sham and a fake. Justice David Souter’s dissent in the case expressed grave concern that this rape of the First Amendment free-speech provision could extent to public-university academicians. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote, who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion indicated that the case did not apply de facto to university professors and that such a decision could await further rulings:

“Second, Justice Souter suggests today’s decision may have important ramifications for academic freedom, at least as a constitutional value.  See post, at 12–13.  There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence.  We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.”