mortiz055

President Napolitano has placed UC Davis Chancellor Katehi on "investigatory administrative leave." This action follows weeks of debate about the Chancellor's decision to serve on various corporate advisory boards and reports that UC Davis had hired media consultants to "scrub" the internet of reports on the UC Davis Police Department's infamous use of pepper spray on non-violent student protesters in 2011. Here is some of the news coverage. From the Sacramento Bee :  http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article74181532.html From the Los Angeles Times :  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-davis-chancellor-20160427-story.html From Fox40.com :  http://fox40.com/2016/04/27/uc-davis-chancellor-linda-katehi-placed-on-investigatory-administrative-leave/ From Davis Enterprise :  http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=647883&preview_id=647883 We will add information to this post as it becomes available. UPDATES: President Napolitano's letter to...

by Linda F. Bisson, Former Chair, Davis Division of the Academic Senate, 2006-2008; 2011-2012 Rachael E. Goodhue, Chair Elect, Davis Division of the Academic Senate 2016-2018 Dear President Napolitano: We want to express grave concern over a pattern of negativism in the press and social media regarding women Chancellors and senior administrative leaders.  There are strong parallels between the singularly intensive criticism of our Chancellor Linda Katehi and that previously of Chancellors Fox (UCSD) and Denton (UCSC), and of UC Vice President Greenwood. Yet, the activities that are being criticized clearly fall within the standards of UCwide practice.  This pattern is exemplified by a 2006 LA Times article that criticized compensation practices for senior UC executives: those singled out for criticism for “extravagant pay practices, perks and privilege for top executives” are all women.  The intensity of the criticism at the time ended in tragedy for Chancellor Denton....

We post two faculty responses to the letter that the University of California's president--in the company of all ten campus chancellors--sent to the American Anthropological Association to express their "concern about the Association's proposed resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions." The AAA membership vote on the resolution opened on April 15th. Materials on the Association debate can be found at AAA Resources Regarding Engagement with Israel/Palestine. Letter 1, from Professor Fogu to Chancellor Yang, has been endorsed by the UCSB Faculty Association. LETTER 1 To: Chancellor Henry Yang From: Claudio Fogu, Dept. of French & Italian, UC Santa Barbara I am writing to express my concern for your signing—along with the nine other UC Chancellors— a letter drafted by UC President Janet Napolitano, dated April 19, 2016, urging members of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) not to ratify a proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions. I am...

I only skimmed the content of the decree because my eyes were drawn to the mighty list of signatures, at left, that took up half the page.  Had I ever before seen the UC president and all ten campus chancellors joining their signatures to support a cause? I racked my brain for this kind of Senate memory of the 2000s. It came up empty.  All eleven signatures.  UC united! It's the UC United Front. My mind began to wander. I thought of the audiences at the lectures I've given at universities this year.  They seemed generally to agree that the current public university system is broken, and that the fixes I propose should be developed. But they usually don't think that we--faculty, staff, and students--can do anything to implement them.  One reason is that only senior managers speak for the university to the political, donor, trustee, and executive classes. At UC, it's the president alone .  So what can the rank-and-file educators actually do? Here was an answe...

After approximately eighteenth months of unsuccessful negotiation, the Non-Tenure Faculty Association at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign has gone on a two day strike . Since 2014 the Union has been seeking a formalized system of multi-year contracts, guarantees of academic freedom protection, improved grievance proceedings, access to promotion and reappointment, and increased compensation. These goals are similar to those recently negotiated by NTT faculty at the University of Illinois, Chicago. As of this point the University has not agreed to most of these demands . As of this morning hundreds of strikers and their supporters were on picket lines at the campus. As part of a press release announcing the strike, Union leaders explained their decision to engage in a work stoppage this way: “This is a fight to force the administration to recognize the valuable work that non-tenure-track faculty have done at the University of Illinois for decades–work that needs to be supp...

Is there a post-crisis recovery for UC and its university kin?  So far, not so much.  At this blog, we've been forced to chronicle permanent austerity.  The long-term problem was confirmed this week by a Public Policy Institute of California report that reviews the public funding cuts of the past several decades at all three segments of higher education in the state.  (If you are just tuning in, Hank Reichman has a helpful overview of the PPIC and State Auditor reports , and of editorials decrying the long-term state disinvestment.)  There's no news in the PPIC report for our readers, and the Senate " Futures Report" on the UC budget  identified the same trends ten years ago.  But it's good to know the cuts word is now spread around. So the question is, what are Sacramento or Oakland or local campus administrations going to do about it this time?   How about some focused goals for  rebuilding ?  Could we set some goals?  For e...

Somewhere Michael Lewis tells the story about what the boss of a trading floor--perhaps John Meriwether--would do when a trader hung on too long to a losing position, hoping that it would turn around. He would approach the trader from behind, and whisper his version of the old Dusty Springfield song--"wishing, and hoping, and thinking, and praying."   Which meant, dump it, eat your loss, try something else, right the hell now. (Left: Wisconsin System Board of Regents Vice-President J.R. Behling.) This would be good advice for governing boards of universities, who are doubling and tripling down on a losing strategy, which is to elbow their faculty experts further out of educational decision making.  Exhibit A is Wisconsin's #faketenure story that continued today with a Board of Regents Education Committee vote on UW-Madison layoff policy ( materials starting at page 160 ).   They voted the changes through , and the full board is slated to do the same thing tomorrow.  ...