Draft: Subject to Senate Approval

THE THREE HUNDRED SECOND PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

February 24, 2004

The meeting was called to order by UFS Chair O’Malley at 6:30 p.m. in Room 9204/5 at the Graduate School and University Center. 72 voting members were present:

Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Cooper (CSI), Dreyer (NYCCT), Fridman (KCC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Kuhn-Osius (Hunter), Levine (CSI), Mettler (LaGuardia), Savage (Queens), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were present. 

I. Approval of the Agenda: Professor William Crain (Psychology, CCNY) moved the Resolution on the Miguel Malo Case (see below). The item was ruled out of order by the Chair on the ground that UFS jurisdiction does not include specific campus matters, and that the UFS must defer to campus governance bodies on any such matters. Professor Crain then appealed from the ruling of the Chair, and the ruling was upheld by a vote of 16-23. The agenda was then adopted as proposed.

II. Approval of the Minute of December 2003: The Minutes were adopted as proposed. (There was no meeting in January 2004.)

III. Reports: (Recorded in Reports & Deliberations)

A. Chair - written and recorded in Reports & Deliberations

B. The Chancellor - Unable to attend

C. Representatives to Board Committees - Written

IV. Panel on Time to Tenure, with Professor Morris Hounion, Chair, Status of Faculty Committee - recorded in Reports & Deliberations.

V. New Business -- Items A through D were adopted unanimously by voice vote:

A. Resolution on the ACT Writing Placement Test and the Master Plan

Whereas, the University Faculty Senate has repeatedly raised concerns about the ACT skills tests, including the absence of data on their validity and reliability (see resolutions of April and September 2000, and September 2002); and

Whereas, an analysis of recent CUNY data on the ACT Writing Test, provided to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, indicates that students who receive a score of 6, which is a failing grade, may perform as well in CUNY courses as students who receive a 7, which is a passing grade; and

Whereas, the decontextualized and formulaic nature of the ACT Writing Test contradicts the best practices of writing pedagogy, and fails to reflect the complex nature of the writing process; and

Whereas, developmental writing faculty are having to skew curriculum and instruction towards passing the ACT Writing Test, to the detriment of the courses and the students; and

Whereas, following the request of the CUNY Central Administration, the University Faculty Senate is currently developing input into the 2004-2009 Master Plan; now therefore be it

Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate requests that the CUNY Central Administration, in its development of the 2004-2009 Master Plan, seriously consider and work with the Senate and other appropriate faculty and groups to develop revised writing tests which will more closely align with the best practices of writing pedagogy, with the requirements of CUNY curricula, and with the demands of college academic writing.

B. Resolution Opposing Section 6 of H.R. 3077, International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003

Whereas, the House of Representatives has passed H.R. 3077, reauthorizing the Higher Education Act of 1965; and

Whereas, Section 6 of H.R. 3077 establishes in the Department of Education an independent International Education Advisory Board which "shall provide advice, counsel and recommendations to the Secretary and the Congress on international education issues for higher education"; and

Whereas, the purposes of this International Advisory Board include, "to provide expertise in the area of national needs for proficiency in world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs; to make recommendations that will promote the excellence of international education programs and result in the growth and development of such programs at the postsecondary education level that will reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views on world regions, foreign language and international affairs"; and

Whereas, the membership of this advisory board will consist of seven members, including three appointed by the Secretary of Education, two of whom "shall be appointed to represent Federal agencies that have national security responsibilities, after consultation with the heads of such agencies"; and

Whereas, included among the functions of this advisory board will be to:

"review and comment upon the regulations for grants under this title;

"monitor, apprise, and evaluate a sample of activities supported under this title based on the purposes and objectives of this title in order to provide recommendations for improvement of the programs under this title;

"make recommendations that will assist the Secretary and the Congress to improve the programs under this title to better reflect the national needs related to the homeland security, international education, and international affairs, including an assessment of the national needs and the training provided by the institutions of higher education that receive a grant under this title for expert and non-expert level foreign language training;

"make recommendations to the Secretary and the Congress regarding such studies, surveys, and analyses of international education that will provide feedback about the programs under this title and assure that their relative authorized activities reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views on world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs;

"make recommendations on how institutions of higher education that receive a grant under this title can encourage students to serve the nation and meet national needs in an international affairs, international business, foreign language, or national security capacity"; and

Whereas, the consequence of this advisory board, if not the motive behind it, may be to politicize the awarding of grants and to discourage scholarship critical of U.S. foreign policy in Foreign Language Area Studies, particularly those programs focusing on the Middle East, and

Whereas, freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge,

Therefore, be it resolved, that the University Faculty Senate strongly opposes the creation of this advisory board, and urges the U.S. Senate to remove Section 6 from H.R. 3077 and, therefore, from the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

C. Resolution on the Establishment of a UFS Committee on Facilities, Planning, and Management

WHEREAS, Effective planning and construction of new facilities is important to the

faculty of this university, and

WHEREAS, The University Faculty Senate currently has no consultative mechanism to provide the university and the Board of Trustees with advice on planning of new facilities, and

WHEREAS, The planning of new facilities has, in the past, generated some buildings that have shown to be problematic in their design and construction,

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That the University Faculty Senate establish a Committee on Facilities Planning and Management, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the University Faculty Senate will appoint members to this committee who have engineering, architectural, code compliance, and planning expertise, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the University Faculty Senate request that Emma Macari, Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning, Construction and Management, and other members of that office engage in regular meetings with this committee, and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, That the UFS appoint additional members as appropriate from colleges or disciplines that are affected by construction projects.

D. Resolution on Peer Review and the Editing of Scholarly Publications that are Authored in Embargoed Countries

Whereas, the free flow of scholarly information is inherent in the constitutional protection of freedom of the press, a right established in the first amendment to the Constitution, and

Whereas, the freedom of the press must include the ability of an editor to review and edit what is submitted by authors, and

Whereas, preventing a scholarly journal from editing, reviewing and publishing an article is inimical to the academic freedom that a government should respect, and

Whereas, scholarly journals published by the American Chemical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers are being prevented from reviewing and editing articles authored by people residing in embargoed countries* by action of the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control,

Therefore, Be It Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate condemn the attempt of the US government to interfere with the free exercise of the freedom of the press, and

Be It Further Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate express its support for scholarly societies whose free press rights are being infringed, and

Be It Finally Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate asks other university faculties and scholarly societies to support those societies whose right to freely run academic presses is being infringed and join in this protest against unreasonable action by the Federal Government.

* Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan

Not on agenda, but noted for the record:

RESOLUTION ON MIGUEL MALO CASE

WHEREAS, the rights to free speech and assembly are vital to academic freedom and the effective functioning of the university as a center of learning and inquiry; and

WHEREAS, the arrests of CUNY students and faculty at the Hostos campus on August 15 and 16, 2001 flagrantly violated those rights; and

WHEREAS, access to Hostos Community College was denied to credentialed CUNY faculty and students, including a member of the University Faculty Senate, who was arrested for seeking to enter this CUNY facility; and

WHEREAS, Hostos student Miguel Malo, the past president of the Hostos Student Senate and former member of the Hostos College Senate, was arrested by CUNY security on August 15 while holding up a sign protesting cuts in ESL and bilingual programs; and

WHEREAS, while charges were eventually dismissed against others arrested, more than two years later Miguel Malo was put on trial for exercising his First Amendment rights of freedom of expression; and

WHEREAS, after a mistrial was declared, Mr. Malo now faces the prospect of a second trial and up to a year in jail for his peaceful protest; and

WHEREAS, this action against a student who has committed no crime is poisoning the atmosphere and chilling the exercise of fundamental rights by students and faculty at Hostos College and  throughout the CUNY community; and

WHEREAS, this apparent vendetta brings the City University of New York into disrepute as an institution of higher learning;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED,

1)         That the University Faculty Senate respectfully requests that all charges be immediately dropped against Mr. Miguel Malo;

2)         That this resolution be conveyed to the Bronx District Attorney, Mr Robert Johnson;

3)         That the UFS calls upon the City University administration to issue a clear statement explicitly reaffirming the right to exercise freedom of speech and assembly on all CUNY campuses; and

Proponent: William Crain

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:40 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

William Phipps

Executive Director

THE THREE HUNDRED AND SECOND PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

February 24, 2004

Chair: First, before we approve the agenda, there is a number of people here tonight who are not members of the UFS, and there are some non faculty members, so I want to ask the body is it OK if such people are allowed to stay? / Unidentified – Who are the intruders? / Chair – Visitors, why don’t you say your name and where you’re from? / Good evening, I’m Marjorie Stamberg and I teach at Hunter College International English Language institute. / Jan Norden with CUNY Action to Defend Miguel Malo. / Carolyn Fisher, graduate student in anthropology here at the Graduate Center and Co-Chair of the Doctoral Students’ Council. /Nino Guzman, student at Hostos Community College. /Miguel Malo, Hostos Community College. / Chair – Thank you. So is it agreed by the body that people can stay? Yes. That they can speak? Let’s see how it unfolds. But first of all let’s take a look at the agenda and see if there is anything you want to add to the agenda. The Chancellor is not going to be here, which gives us more time to talk. Anything you want to add to the agenda?

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – I would like to add under New Business that we will present a very brief resolution with respect to Miguel Malo asking that we recommend to the district attorney the charges be dropped because freedom of speech issues were involved. So I ask that that be added to New Business. It’s an emergency resolution because Miguel Malo will go to trial before the next plenary. / Chair – What’s the date, I’m curious. / Professor Crain – March 8 is the scheduled date of the trial. It might get postponed but it might not, so I’m asking that we be able to discuss that under New Business. / Chair – This is very difficult for me. I brought this up to the Executive Committee and their decision, and it was everybody, I did not vote, but it was everybody’s feeling very strongly that the UFS must act on the resolutions coming from Hostos and the Faculty Senate at Hostos or the College Council. I knew that there had been a resolution two or three years ago, so I called up Betty Errico, who’s their head of governance, and she said it was going to be considered the following day. She then called me back the following day and said it had been tabled for next month. And so at the direction of the Executive Committee and according to the policy of the UFS, I am to act only if Hostos sends me a resolution. I am, with Lorraine Ferguson, the person who got the resolution about Miguel Malo through the MLA. I find this extraordinarily difficult, but it is the policy of the UFS. / Professor Crain – I appeal the Chair. Motions can come from the floor whenever there is not other business on the floor. Emergency resolutions can come according to the UFS regulations, so emergency resolution is in order. It does not have to have permission of the Executive Council. / Chair – I have some people from Hostos. / Professor Crain – Also the people from Hostos are here to speak. /

Chair – OK. Announce your name. A new Senator from Hostos.

My name is Brijraj Singh. I teach at Hostos, I’m a new Senator from there. Hostos would be willing to support a resolution to the effect that the charges against Mr. Malo be dropped. But in the resolution as it has been circulated there are all kinds of other extraneous issues involved which have at best a divisive influence on the campus, and I would not be prepared to support a resolution that includes all those other extraneous allegations and charges. / Chair – You’re saying if the other resolves were dropped. / If there is a resolution that says simply that we recommend that charges should be dropped that resolution would be in keeping with the resolution of the Hostos Senate passed about two years ago and we would be happy to go along with that. / Chair – You understand that this will come after New Business that we have. You’re also from Hostos. Do you want to say something? / Yes. I’m Vanessa Roe from Hostos. / Chair – Also a new Senator. / That’s right. Our Senate, which discussed this briefly at the last meeting, didn’t realize that this was really pending, we didn’t realize that the trial was going to begin March 8, so we tabled it because we wanted to look at the difference between the language of the original resolution, compare it to the language of the new resolution, and discuss a resolution that would speak just to the dropping of the case and not to all the other issues. The sense of our Senate was that we definitely wanted to resolve that the case be dropped but that we didn’t want to clutter it up with these other issues. / Chair – I see.

Chair – I don’t want to spend too much time on this because we have a long agenda. However, how many faculty are here from Hostos? Three delegates, official faculty Senators, are here from Hostos. This has to be moved to New Business. The question is do we put it on as New Business or do we not? Does the body want to vote on that? Does someone want to move to do so or not? / Professor Davidson (Computer Information Systems, LaGuardia Community College) – I will move that under New Business we take up this matter. / Chair – Do I have a second? The motion is that under New Business we take up this resolution. I guess it’s an emergency resolution because of the trial being the first week in March. Oh, it’s March 22! We are going to vote on this. All in favor of adding this under New Business raise your hand. The people who vote must be UFS Senators. People who want to put the resolution on the agenda please vote. 16. Those who do not want it put on the agenda please vote. 23. I’m sorry, it is not going to be on the agenda. Please pick up information packets and when it is referred by the Hostos Senate, we will bring it up and discuss it next time. It will go to the Executive Committee and then to the plenary.

I thought it would make sense to do my Chair’s report in writing. There are copies in the back of the room. I thought you could read it and then if you have any questions come to the mike and ask questions. This would save time. It says Chair’s Report February 24, 2004 Plenary. Academic Integrity Report, Faculty Experience Survey, Lobbying Day, School of Professional Studies, The UFS Spring Conference, The Master Plan, and then there is just some information about articles and things. Wouldn’t you rather all read it than my just standing up here and talking? Or I will, if you want I’ll just read it to you. / [One Senator requested that it be read.] / Chair - All right. You can have the report in front of you, and I will just speak it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Academic Integrity Report – Karen and I met with Vice Chancellor Otis Hill to incorporate the faculty suggestions in the final draft of the report. Useful comments came from Queens College, College of Staten Island, Hunter, Brooklyn, La Guardia, Medgar Evers. The important thing is the XF grade has been eliminated. You spoke very strongly against the XF grade and we heard you. The report will be presented to CAPPR in May there is no March or April meeting of CAPPR and the Student Affairs Committee which I think meet in June and to the Board in June. So at least that’s done. Local colleges should develop their own policies that are in concert with this and are more specific.

Faculty Experience Survey - This is an idea that was put forth by the UFS because there is a Student Experience Survey that is used to evaluate Presidents; we thought a Faculty Experience was needed so that we could evaluate the Presidents. A committee made up of Dean Savage, Ken Sherrill, Al Levine, Karen Kaplowitz, and me, and also the Dean of Institutional Research, David Crook, designed the survey. Some of the questions are taken from the national study of post-secondary study so that the results may be nationally normed. However, this is the problem. The Chancellor decided he had to ask his own questions and one of those questions was on time to tenure. Quite a tussle ensued, but it was finally decided with the help of the Executive Committee that we would go forth with this. However, there were three conditions. One was that his questions would be labeled "additional questions written by the Chancellor." Number two, that the survey would be postponed until we had the panel at this meeting; and also at the FGL meeting we encouraged governance leaders to hold meetings on their campuses about time to tenure, about the proposed change in the tenure clock from 5 to 7 years. Also, it was decided that I should write a letter to the faculty outlining some of the reasons for and against this. The survey will be piloted I believe in March because we want to see if there are any questions that simply don’t work. This should go out if David Crook finishes it, he has not yet finished, in the end of April; it may not go out until the fall; I’m hoping it will go out this spring. We will own the data and it will be used in the annual performance review of the Presidents. Any questions so far on that?

Professor London (Political Science, Brooklyn College) – Susan, I wanted to get clear on the survey issue and these questions that are going out from the Chancellor. We all know, and this is going to be discussed later in fuller detail, that the Chancellor has made it clear in several different fora that he is going to pursue a change in time to tenure and he’s drafted legislation and that’s going ahead. So that’s one concern. I mean it doesn’t appear to be much good faith here that he’s proposing to ask questions on the one hand while on the other hand he’s already moving ahead with an agenda that one supposes that those questions should comment on or inform. So I question whether or not we as a body want to be party to that bad faith effort. It seems to me that there is ample reason for us not to be part of what is clearly a process that is not on the up and up. That’s number one. And number two is the questions themselves. I don’t know what the questions are. If they involve terms and conditions it may well be inappropriate for the UFS to ask such questions. I don’t know where the decision on this stands but I would perhaps offer a resolution at this point and move that until further study those questions not be put on the survey. / Chair – The resolution would have to be written and submitted to the Executive Committee. This was a decision of the Executive Committee.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – There’s a very complicated context to this and the original plan was, had we had the plenary in January, which was cancelled because of snow, for the Status of the Faculty Committee, which has been charged since September with studying the issue of tenure and time to tenure, to bring a resolution to this body, because the Executive Committee wasn’t going to have time to meet. Remember that the Chancellor one day came out and said, "I’m going to do this," and we didn’t have all that much time to respond. That’s unusual but… So we were going to bring a resolution which basically would reflect I think what Steve’s concerns were, because basically what the Chancellor was doing is he was strong arming the Executive Committee and saying to us, "we don’t care, your people, Dean, Alfred Levine, Ken Sherrill, Susan and Karen," who have been working with David Crook on this for a year to create a survey that was designed for us to give input into the evaluation of Presidents; that was the design; all of a sudden he decides he wants to put in his question on tenure, which is irrelevant to what the purpose of the survey was to be. We had worked on this survey, a very important survey. Our people had put in their time, free time, they didn’t get paid for it, volunteers, our colleagues, and now the Chancellor insists that if we do not take these questions on the survey he is not going to run the survey and we can’t get the data and so forth. / Chair – He would run the survey by himself. / Professor Friedman – Whatever. So we are basically being held hostage by the Chancellor. To me this is over the line of some of the stuff that he has done previously. This is the background on this. Yes, ultimately last week, after a lot of going around, the Executive Committee finally decided to go with this "deal." Not all of us supported this. It wasn’t unanimous but it was majority, so we’re going with it and I think that this body certainly needs to know the full context, which now hopefully you know some of at least. We don’t have a resolution today, the resolution that we were going to bring, because the Executive Committee asked us not to, but we could have a resolution on such a thing and I personally don’t think anything is ever too late, especially since the Chancellor is going to do what he’s going to do anyway and we’re going to make a fuss and raise a ruckus anyway.

Professor Savage (Sociology, Queens College) – We worked on this survey for a long time and our interest in actually getting this up and running had to do with copying a lot of questions from that nationally representative survey of post-secondary faculty, so we stole a lot of question from them so we would have comparability with a large representative national data set that gets asked every 3 to 6 years. Part of the interest that I personally had in this is that I wanted to get a reaction from the campuses on various working conditions, on quality of academic life, quality of working life from the various campuses, because I suspect that based upon what people have been telling you over the years there are some rather striking variations from campus to campus and we wanted to use this to go ahead and focus on, highlight, those campuses that really were not providing really good working conditions, very good quality of academic life. This would be one way to do it and if we had control of the data we would be able to really go ahead and shine a spotlight on that. When the Chancellor said that he was going to ask his questions no matter what and he was going to run the survey on his own, the choice that we were faced with was not to ask the questions that we really originally wanted to ask or to go ahead and let him run this survey on his own and we wouldn’t see that data, he wouldn’t ask our questions by the way, and so we decided probably it was OK to go ahead and do this. / Chair – Or we would run it ourselves. Speak to that issue. / Professor Savage – Or we would run it ourselves and then we looked around for somebody to run it. Everybody looked at me. I’ve done a number of these large surveys and I’m chairing a department. We have 3,000 enrollments, 800 members, 60 faculty members; I was not going to do it. Nobody else showed up, and the postage alone would be $10,000. The thing is that, you know, we could not do this and it’s also possible that if we do it it won’t really have the results that we hope for, but my idea in doing this would be that we would be able to highlight best practices around the University and really focus on the people that were not providing the best practices, and that I think we can still do.

Chair – Let me just say I fought very hard with the Chancellor and did a lot of talking with the Executive Committee. I do think it makes sense to go forward. I also think that the UFS is separate from the Union. I love the Union, I work with the Union, but the UFS is separate and has a separate role. The UFS developed this questionnaire and should, I think, send it out, own the data, and then use the data to help evaluate the Presidents. I was very impressed with the work of the committee, and those people who do know something about surveys. Al Levine can’t speak tonight, physically, but I think it’s important to go ahead. I said to the Chancellor, "What happens if everyone votes against your tenure extension?," and he said, "I’m going to do it anyway." Well, look, if we want to stop something we can, or if we don’t want to stop something, we don’t have to. We need to educate ourselves, and that’s what the UFS needs to do. Two more comments and then let’s decide what the body wants to do.

Professor Lewis (English, York College) – I agree with you, Susan. I think that this should be something that comes out under the auspices of just the UFS. On the other hand, I think what Steve suggested makes a lot of sense, not as a partnership on this with the Union but having the Union do separate seminars or meetings with the faculty on different campuses just to allow an airing of the tenure issue and the way it’s being handled, and this way we keep the autonomy you wanted for the actual survey from the UFS and we’re using the Union to help create a broader debate. I think that’s a good way to approach it. / Chair – I think the Union is encouraging campuses to hold meetings on the issue of the proposed extension in time to tenure.

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – I was going to ask for a little more discussion because I don’t know how I feel about this entirely, but this is an interesting proposal from the Union. The fact is that the Chancellor did hijack our survey for his purposes and it’s very offensive, as you suggested yourselves, and it would be nice to find a way out of that, and perhaps the Union’s proposal or something related to that could allow us to do that. I mean he really did fulfill my worst fears about this survey, which is that it would be used for purposes inimical to its original idea, and that’s what’s happening. So I think we should talk about it a little bit more. / Chair – OK. I don’t think it’s going to be used for much of anything in terms of the time to tenure question.

Professor Friedheim (History, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – Susan, you said the UFS and the PSC are separate entities. True. The UFS and 80^th Street are also separate entities, but we’re in a position we’re allowing 80^th Street to compromise this poll. If I understand what Steve said correctly there’s a possibility of the Union at least funding the mailing. The Union has that database. If just seems to me that there should be further discussion about this. The questionnaire has already been compromised by 80^th Street. Why not consider another option? I don’t know which way I would necessarily go on this but …/ Chair – I sit on the Executive Committee of the Union, and there is not enough money in this year’s budget to pay for the survey.

Chair – One more and then I think we ought to make a decision about what we’re going to do with this survey. I don’t know if there is a resolution or whatever. First let’s hear Manfred.

Professor Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – I don’t think we can make a decision tonight because first of all Steve’s offer is contingent on approval by the Union itself. Steve is an officer and I think he made it clear that it has to be cleared by the Union’s Executive Council among other things, maybe even the Delegate Assembly, I don’t know. So I don’t think we can come to a resolution tonight. I think Steve’s offer, contingent on approval by the Union, is extremely generous and extremely helpful. We ought to discuss it in the Executive Committee, and that’s where we should go with this and discuss it further with the Union. / Chair – So we should refer this back? The Executive Committee decided to go ahead with this. But is the decision that it will go back to the Executive Committee for further discussion?

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, Graduate School)– The last speaker made a motion to refer to the committee. I second the motion. / Chair – All in favor of referring the survey back to the Executive Committee for further discussion raise your hand. It will go back to the Executive Committee for further discussion about whether it makes sense to have a Union partnership or organize a boycott of that question. That’s what will happen.

Moving on, Lobbying Day - Some people have signed up, there’s room for one more if anybody wants to join us. School of Professional Studies - I think I would rather not have a discussion about that tonight because we need to move to the panel on tenure. The UFS Spring Conference, April 23 at John Jay College of Criminial Justice, is on the proposed change in time to tenure. The Master Plan - this is draft two of suggestions. This came out of five focus groups that we held. First we generated topics, then we had five focus groups. Then Robert Kelley and Dean Savage wrote up all of the minutes and from those I took sixteen recommendations. The Executive Committee has made some suggestions and I’ve incorporated them. I’ve talked to the Co-Chair of the ESL Discipline Council, and she’s made some suggestions, but it needs more work. Martha has suggestions on SEEK changes, but I haven’t yet incorporated them. But what I would like you to do is take a look at this and then get back to me about changes, things you want added, whatever. It will come back to the Executive Committee. I think Martha’s upset because she would like it to have just two or three things and more of a focus. No? Why don’t you say your reaction because I couldn’t incorporate it because it came so late.

Professor Bell (Educational Services, Brooklyn College) – Unfortunately I had a grant going out and I made it a priority. I really think that our proposal for the Master Plan is one of the most important things we’re doing this year, or any year, and we shouldn’t undersell. We spent a lot of time with focus groups and soliciting faculty opinions. I think what we have to do is really organize it, get it sorted out by areas and topics, get a direction, and try to be proactive in setting a faculty direction for the University. And so a list of bullet points sort of listing from the focus groups, but I think it needs an overhaul so that it comes as this is our plan, not just some bullets to dribble into whatever they do and to be written off but something we’re proud enough to send as a book from us; here’s their Master Plan and here’s our Master Plan. Whether it’s combined into theirs, whatever they combine is fine, but we’re going to be up there talking to the Regents as this Master Plan has hearings, we should have our point of view out there too. / Chair – Thank you.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – I want to add too that the focus group ideas are creative and stimulating but at the same time I agree that they should be distilled under a few major points and it should be voted on by the body, these major points. We don’t set policy by focus groups; we set policy by vote by the body. / Chair – What I’ve done is to give it out and the people will give me feedback. What you’re saying is that maybe at the next plenary we come in with something that’s a little bit more focused and less random. Essentially what I did was just lift what came up through the groups. Vote each one up and down as a group? Then we can amend and change if there are things that you think just don’t make sense. The Master Plan Draft is in the back of the room. Make sure you take a look at it, and if you can bring it through some governance bodies or consult with them, that would be good.

Finally, in the March issue of CUNY Matters there’s an article on the UFS Fall Conference on the Patriot Act in the University. We have made CUNY Matters. And finally I want to acknowledge the Senate Digest, which will be coming out soon with an article on CUNY’s EPA agreement written by Manfred, a profile of Phil Pecorino - you all want to read that - and then the budget and also a column on the proposed change in tenure. It should be out shortly thanks to Lenore Beaky.

Let’s move to the panel. Morris Hounion, who’s the Chair of the Status of the Faculty, is going to chair it, and we have four faculty members who will offer the arguments. Peter Hogness has just arrived and he would like to take some photographs? No. Somebody wants to take photographs. And we also have a Clarion reporter here. First, the body has to agree that they can be here and that Peter can take pictures. What Peter suggested is if you really don’t want to have your picture taken, you can raise your hand. I guess first we have to say is it all right that the Clarion reporter is here and the editor of the Clarion is here. So moved. Second. All in favor. Now is there anybody who really doesn’t want their picture taken? You can raise your hands and Peter will look. One negative vote.

Professor Hounion (Library, NYC College of Technology, Chair of the Status of the Faculty Committee) – Good Evening. Welcome to the University Faculty Senate Tenure Panel. For this past year 2003-2004 one of the committee’s charges was, and I quote, "to gather information from the relevant council of Presidents, of COPS, subcommittees, and other relevant individuals and bodies, about a significant change the Council was studying, lengthening the time to tenure beyond…" it says 4 years but I guess it’s 5 years. That’s our charge and the committee has met a number of times this past fall and also in the winter to discuss and research this issue. We have read literature, consulted the minutes of certain COPS committees and subcommittees that are considering this issue, and also have called on the expertise of authorities on this subject. Recently of course, as you know, CUNY Counsel Rick Schaffer posted a document indicating that the University desires to revise this, the New York State legislation, in order to change tenure clock, and in fact there are copies of that document back there on the table. Of course he has given reasons why he and the Chancellor, because it’s the Chancellor’s initiative, think this is a good idea. So tonight’s panel will address the topic of time to tenure and examine these arguments by Counsel Schaffer, and we have four speakers, some for the proposed change, or some might have questions about it, and two will be definitely against. The question is should CUNY extend the tenure clock from 5 to 7 years? We’ll start I guess with a yes, and then a no, and then a yes and a no, so we’ll have the four speakers, and we’ll try to have a time limit of five minutes for each speaker; Susan Farrell from the Status of the Faculty Committee will be the time keeper and she’s very strict. After the four speaker we’re going to turn it over to you. We have two microphones and we’d like you to come and give us your ideas, questions, comments, and I’d like to mention that we welcome comments from newer senators, newer faculty, because since this change affects you, starts according to Schaffer’s document January 2001, this is definitely something that will concern you, so we’d like to hear what your reactions for or against are. Please save your remarks until the last speaker.

Let me introduce the four panelists starting from the far end. We have Dean Savage, Chair of the Sociology Department at Queens College, and then we have Anne Friedman, PSC Vice-President for Community Colleges, Professor of Developmental Skills at BMCC and member of the Executive Committee, who is also the liaison to the Status of the Faculty Committee. Then we have also from the Status of the Faculty Committee Professor Kathleen Barker, Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Medgar Evers College. And then next to Kathleen is Stefan Baumrin, Professor in the PhD Program in Philosophy from Lehman College and the Graduate Center. So I’ll call on the first speaker, and that will be Dean Savage.

Professor Savage (Sociology, Queens College) – The first thing is that I’m mildly positive. I don’t really have strong feelings one way or another at this point, but if I were asked I would say yes, I’m in favor of this. I think that especially we’ve talked about it at my college with the various Chairpersons and other faculty members and they’re basically in favor of a longer tenure clock for a number of reasons: It’s very heavily focused on research. They think that it takes time to get scientific research up and running, to get that book in the humanities. They would like to go ahead and spread it out a little bit. In some cases, in all cases, if we’re writing for letters of outside recommendation to professors at colleges that have a 7 year tenure clock, we try to remind people to qualify a request for an external letter by saying, "you know, we have a short tenure clock," but if it’s not your system you don’t really understand about short tenure clocks and they look at it and they say, "It’s probably OK for you guys;" that’s basically the tone of some of the things that you get. We’d like to get around that to some degree. I think that another thing that the faculty wanted to know in our discussion is what’s the tenure package? So I went ahead and gathered some data, we got it from the Provost for Queens, and I summarized it in a handout that I had there at the back. The good news is that the tenure rate in the last 10 years is running about 85%; actually in the last 5 years it’s 93-94%; in the past it was as low as 67%. I did the data for my own department for the ‘70’s and then I just didn’t remember it quite so well, but there was blood in the hall every single year. It was terrible. At 50% tenure rate we had some nasty, nasty people actually doing the tenure business. So now I’ve got the tenure thing corrected to a certain degree, we’ve got it up to 90%. The President fondly says that we never hire anybody who’s not good enough to tenure. That’s almost but not quite true. I’m much more concerned about another problem, and one of the things that I’m not against in terms of this discussion is that it allows us, the faculty, to go ahead and highlight other problems. In the handout for Queens we did a little study on faculty hemorrhaging at the junior level. The majority of volunteer departures at Queens College are junior faculty that come there, sniff the wind, say, "this is a heavy teaching load, maybe we got too much on our plate, maybe the housing costs are a little bit high, maybe the salaries aren’t quite good enough," they go instantly back on the market again and they’re going away, and to very nice places you’ll see, and so we’re using this to great effect on our campus. The Provost has been just a little bit more flexible on what those starting salaries really are, and I think that maybe we could use this occasion to focus, as Barbara Bowen does in her letter, on what CUNY needs to do on our individual campuses to make the quality of work, to make the research infrastructure, to make the teaching load manageable so people can actually get tenure. And the faculty might, by really focusing on this time to tenure question, go ahead and discuss it and come up with a number of suggestions. One of the things that my faculty at Queens is saying over and over again is that if you’re going to lengthen the tenure clock two things will be really nice. Right now 5 years, come up for tenure, you’re out the door 3 months later if you don’t get it. That’s inhuman. How about a 6 year tenure clock and a grace year, which is so common in so many other places. That would be a much better way to handle people who are not successful in their candidacy for tenure. Another thing: if you’re going to make it 7 years, you’ve got to relax the standards on early tenure; you cannot expect to bring people in from other kinds of places already with a post doc and then 2 or 3 years maybe teaching experience somewhere else. This is the kind of hires we’re getting, and not seriously consider them automatically for early tenure. That’s what I have to say.

Professor Hounion (New York City College of Technology) – Thank you, Dean. Now on the other side we have Kathleen Barker, who’ll talk against the time to tenure proposal.

Professor Kathleen Barker (Psychology, Medgar Evers) - Good Evening.

The committee on the Status of the Faculty has asked that I speak for five minutes on the Chancellor’s most recent proposal to extend the time to tenure. I am going to address two issues that were linked by CUNY’s counselor Schaeffer in his memo: time to tenure and work/family issues. The Committee asked that I provide a few findings from a primary analysis of the Dept of Education’s survey of faculty and institutions (NSOPF).

Here are a few key points about public institutions and faculty holding doctorates in a national context.

r From 1992 to 1998, tenured faculty at public institutions declined by only 2% but the percentage of faculty who were not on tenure track increased by over 15%.

r 24% of public institutions reported a substantial increase in replacing full-time faculty with part-time faculty.

r Almost 20% (19.4%) reported substituting contracts for tenure.

r Slightly more than 8% of public institutions (8.3%) reported downsizing tenured faculty.

r On the matter of what is the norm in terms of the probationary period, the average period is 5.48 years but there is wide variance (SD = 1.7) with the largest category of institutions reporting a maximum probationary period of 6 years:

r Finally 12.8% of all public institutions reported formally changing their tenure standards, half of these upward. However, if you analyze those who both formally and informally changed standards, 14% reported creating more stringent standards.

Given that CUNY will hire an unprecedented number of faculty over the next few years, the issue of time-to-tenure is important in a number of contexts and the Committee wanted to raise the following questions for discussion, broadly labeled "potential unforeseen consequences":

r Is there empirical evidence that lengthening the time-to-tenure results in heightened academic excellence? A recent white paper released by the academic senate at USC concluded there is no such evidence. I could not find such evidence in a literature search as well.

r Will this initiative result in more stringent tenure standards for those seeking tenure?

r If standards increase and workload remains the same, will this initiative result in a new tier of fungible, disposable assistant professors? We don’t have an answer tonight to this, but it is compelling given our history with part-time faculty.

r Will the legislature demand post-tenure review?

r Will CUNY be able to recruit talented faculty? A longer probationary period coupled with a consuming course load will make recruitment difficult in some discipline

Increasing the time to tenure is the most straightforward technique for increasing expectations for productivity. Of keen importance in the context of the Schaeffer memo, caregivers (not female faculty) will have a longer time to show productivity. But is the 7-year clock a methodology to increase expectations of greater productivity across all faculty regardless of sex or family concerns? Therefore, a reasonable question is:

r Are issues related to work-family conflict resolved by extending the tenure clock?

We are highly skeptical of such a claim. Under a 7 year clock, standards will probably increase yet work-family conflicts will remain. Some point out that extending the tenure clock for everyone also penalizes those who elect to be childfree.

It is critical to unbraid the issue of work-family conflict in discussions of tenure while it also remains important to understand how work-family conflicts impede the lives of many faculty, mostly due to the ideal worker norm.

The ideal worker is someone who, in climbing the career ladder, gives their all to the job. For sure, the professoriate is an occupation that esteems the ideal worker. Researchers have argued that such a system results in discrimination against women because they avoid asking for, for example, schedule adjustments, particular class meetings times, maternity leave because such requests violate committed ideal worker norms. Bob Drago of PSU and his colleagues point out, however (whose brief report was provided to you tonight as a handout) that although women are more likely to experience such discrimination, men who take on substantial caregiving responsibilities will experience the same career difficulties.

Our final question: Can we re-direct the conversation about tenure toward the conditions of employment that junior faculty face? We have addressed this tonight in the hope that the Senate and Chancellor decide to initiate a much needed study of tenure and work-family issues at City University.

Conclusion

Extending the time to tenure has originated with the Chancellor’s office with minimal, if any, input by faculty. Extending the tenure clock is not an automatic solution to productivity of faculty. Opening this issue up at the level of the legislature, however, will make it appear that CUNY is meeting demands for, and "advancing" toward, greater productivity with the longer clock as evidence.

Given findings at Pennsylvania State University and elsewhere that even with progressive policies on the books, work-family conflicts are not addressed, as well as the changing nature of the professoriate, most clearly viewed in the number of female graduate students in the pipeline for academic positions; and the fact that even the Chancellor, was reported to comment in a COP meeting that "this subject needs additional examination (COP minutes, 5/5/03), the Status of the Faculty Committee is asking the Senate to consider asking CUNY to launch a full-scale study that is specifically aimed at work-family issues. A study along the lines of the one conducted at PSU or USC would be useful for the short and long-term planning of faculty resources for the City University.

References

American Association of University Professors (2001). Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work. http://www.aaup.org/statements/REPORTS/re01fam.htm (last accessed February 15, 2004)

Drago, R., & Colbeck, C. (2003). The Mapping Project:  Exploring the Terrain of U.S. Colleges and Universities for Faculty and Families. Technical Report funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:s0bEisNVehAJ:lsir.la.psu.edu/workfam/MAPexecsummary.doc+Drago+final+report&hl=en&start=2&ie=UTF-8

Drago, R., Crouter, A.C., Wardell, M., & Willits, B.S. (2001). Final Report to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Faculty and Families Project The Pennsylvania State University. Work-Family Working Paper #01-02 March 14, 2001. http://lsir.la.psu.edu/workfam/facultyfamilies.htm

Mason, M. A. (1988; 2d. ed. 2001). The Equality Trap. New Jersey: Simon & Schuster; Transaction Press.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2001). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2001). 1999 National study of postsecondary faculty (NSOPF-99). Restricted Faculty and Institution Files. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Professor Hounion (New York City College of Technology) – Thank you, Kathleen. And now Stefan Baumrin will give his view on the time to tenure issue.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, Graduate School) – Couple of his views. First of all I would tell you that I’m here to replace Al Levine, part of whose voice is missing. I left the room and you got up and spoke! But he’s not responsible for any of the things that I have to say. The idea of tenure in the United States, in American academic life, comes from a proposal by Arthur LoveJoy, and John Dewey, and they made the proposal in order to have a tradition of conferring membership on the academic cooperation that was the continuing body in each institution. The main change, which occurred in the teens, was this proposal that institutionalized membership on the part of the faculty. People who joined the institution, untenured people - and there was no such thing as non tenure-bearing lines, every line was a tenure bearing line - joined the institution and were generally severed because of poor teaching, which was life in those days, and also because there was hanky panky of various sorts. I doubt that very many people were severed for failing to produce significant scholarship because in the old days people were really smart and they knew how to produce things, and if you look in the libraries you’ll see a lot of very bad books got published; it was a lot easier to get published in those days without it actually being very important work. Standards - as all of you know, the younger you are the more you know - have increased. Somebody as dull as I would probably not be able to get tenure at this institution today, unless I really got my act in order. Now the tenure in the institution is a leftover from the regulations of the school board for tenure in the schools, and so they were until 1968 3 years. Very few of us in this room are 3 year veterans, then for those few of us who got tenure under 3 years it was really a question of how you could be collegial with a bunch of very bad people, unpleasant, disgusting, mean, garrulous, awful people. The best way was to stay out of their way. The second best way was to take them to lunch all the time. And if you came into the institution with prior research you were going to get tenure, no problem. Then they took that away in 1968 because they hired too many people. They took it away and made it 5 years and all of a sudden the standards went up and people had to perform, and it wasn’t enough to wine and dine your colleagues, you actually had to do something. It takes time in an institution with such a heavy teaching load to do things, and so it turns out that in my view the longer the period the better. You can prove you’re a good teacher in a nonce; also you can improve your teaching if you’re no good, but if you are good it’s easy to prove you’re a good teacher, and you can prove that you’re collegial or not very quickly. But getting significant work out in a very competitive world is difficult. And outside reviewing, once you ever used outside reviewing, you need a different level of production. Outside people think we are not so terrific with our heavy teaching load. They don’t credit teaching because they can’t see it; they don’t credit University or college service; they want to see a reviewed paper, a reviewed book, very narrow-minded. The longer the better. Also, it’s true, Professor Bowen is entirely right that the University does not support research; we know that; it never had; and with a longer period for tenure it might be the case that we could get out of them pre-tenure sabbaticals and maybe even some research funds. You might be skeptical.

Professor Hounion (New York City College of Technology) – Thank you, Stefan. And now, last but certainly not least, Anne Friedman will give us her views.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – I’m going to win anyway because I have a broken foot. I’m just going to raise some questions that I think we need to consider. Some of the questions are a bit rhetorical and some are kind of sarcastic, and some of them are very serious questions. Isn’t it ironic or incongruous that in his memo Schaffer argues for faculty who make significant contributions to their field through research, emphasis added, yet he cites no research to support this claim? Doesn’t the Chancellery have an obligation to prove its own case in a scientific way? Is it not disingenuous to argue that this change is in the best interest of faculty when the Chancellor decides unilaterally to go to the Legislature without credible research and without discussions with faculty? Why must the faculty scramble, as we always do, to pull together a forum like this and for us to do the research, his research? And will we be surprised when the Chancellor uses this very plenary discussion to claim that he widely consulted with us on this issue? Is it not insulting and patronizing for 80^th Street to proclaim that extending the tenure clock will have a positive effect on women faculty as related to the biological clock? Why are we, compared to Yale, Columbia, Michigan, in an argument for extending the tenure clock and why aren’t we compared to Yale, Columbia, and Michigan when we talk about teaching loads, and class sizes, and childcare opportunities, and sabbaticals, and science labs? Then we’re ignored or dismissed, "no money, no money." So lots of questions, and the big one has been asked already, where is the research and where are the data? Does this administration really care about research and data? Did they listen to all the research and data presented when 200 people testified against the Master Plan amendment in 1999 that eliminated remediation from the senior colleges? Did they compare us to Yale, and Michigan, and Columbia, and this one and that one then? No. Is this proposal really designed to help Presidents make more informed decisions or to really keep junior faculty dangling over the abyss of an uncertain future for two years longer? And what have been our experiences with CUNY’s recent spectrum of Presidents and what have been their professional relationships with us? For example, what might we really expect when we apply for early tenure, or what will we really expect in terms of academic freedom for those extra two years? And why now, what’s the rush? We just won in our collective bargaining agreement a provision for 12 hours of reassigned time faculty for new faculty to do their research and writing. Maybe we should wait a little bit, 3 years, 5 years, see if that helps. No, somehow there’s a rush. And what is our insurance that the bar won’t be raised. Two more years, I say one more book. Why did Schaffer’s memo state that colleges may have to make the tenure decision based on manuscripts accepted for publication rather than published and reviewed work? Sounds to me like you got to have that book out there in hand professor, so that Goldstein can, whatever, wave it around, and accepted manuscript is not good anymore. That sounds to me like raising the bar. So how about some of these ideas. How about a study to back up this proposal, maybe a Schmidt report on time to tenure at public universities. They love the Schmidt report. How about reducing course loads, providing childcare for parents, not just women, how about lighter administrative and committee burdens for junior faculty, lower class sizes, start-up packages for labs. And let us not be naïve here; if we allow this University to open up the tenure stature at the State Legislature at this time, with this Governor, in this Senate, in a national context where the drive to abolish tenure is so clear, and so strong, and so dangerous, we are going to get ourselves potentially into some really serious business. What kind of a university are we going to leave for the people who are coming up after us? I think we really need to think about some of those things very, very seriously.

Professor Hounion (New York City College of Technology) – Thank you. I’d like to thank all four panelists for their excellent presentations and now I want to turn it over to you. Ask questions, comments, state your name, college, but try to be as brief as possible because we do have a lot of speakers here. Alfred Levine is first? We’ll start with Alfred.

Professor Levine (Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island) – I support extending the maximum period to 7 years. I remember in the 1970’s college Presidents firing excellent teachers because in the 4 year probationary period they could not develop sufficient scholarship. I remember one particular person who went on to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering and we lost her because she couldn’t achieve what was demanded in the 4-year period. We had lost excellent faculty by our short period. But I would like to suggest some changes in the Chancellor’s proposal. I support a maximum period of 7 years. I support ending the current stigma about early tenure. If a person who may have 4 years experience at another institution or serving as a post doc can demonstrate sufficient scholarship, teaching, and service in a period of two year or three at CUNY, why shouldn’t that person be brought up in a normal fashion? Why should that person have to go through a special procedure, which is the current policy? I would like to see us change the policy so that there is no stigma associated with being brought up at any point within the maximum 7-year period, and in particular I’d like to see us give credit to the work being done by our junior faculty before they arrived at CUNY. Thank you.

Professor Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – I’m somewhat divided. On the one hand I support the proposal because for science faculty at research active departments they cannot get the research going within the 5 years. They’re currently being judged on what they do here and not what they have done before they came for the most part, and so for several years they can’t really publish very much that work that originates here. This has led to some interesting situations when new faculty members went out, given the laboratory, and couldn’t do any research for the first 5 years, and then were stuck, and special solutions had to be devised for them. I suspect that some of this comes out of that. On the other hand, having served on Tenure and Promotions Committee, I know that one important measure is how many papers have you published per year? And if you raise the number of years of course the number of papers will go up. That’s an increase because it means a longer period of time. That’s I think what the Chancellery really wants out of here. So I’m divided. On the one hand, given our high teaching load it’s going to make it extraordinarily more difficult, on the other hand, for a subset of our faculty it’s an important thing to have. On the third hand, what Anne Friedman just said about the political ramifications really concerns me. But I have a modest suggestion. Stefan said that the longer the period the better. What the Governor might come up with is a longer period, how about 10, 20, 30 years time to tenure? That would be a great solution from the Governor’s point of view perhaps, but with that I leave you.

Professor August (Hostos Community College) – I’m one of the untenured junior people, so I wanted to respond, and I have written a letter. I’m actually looking forward to the time when many people get tenure so I will actually have an opportunity to do scholarly work in research. My experience as an untenured faculty member is that I’m totally coerced into doing all the work that senior faculty is not doing and it is almost impossible to do anything. I come from the Graduate Center, I’m trying to do research, and the 4 years that I’ve been untenured I haven’t been able to begin to do anything. Regarding the prestige institutions that you speak of in this letter, I have a mentor at the University of Michigan whom I’ve been speaking with in terms of this and he gives me a kind of comparison that we can have: Their teaching load is 6 to 9 hours a year; my teaching load is 27; that’s 300% more. In the first year of teaching there a faculty member has a reduced load. In the first three years of teaching there is no committee work and no administrative assignments. The semester before tenure there is no teaching and no administrative work because you have to prepare your portfolio. My position at my college is that most of the people are coming in at the age of 30 or 40, not 25. They’ve already done this many years of adjuncting, they’ve done 10 years at the Graduate Center, they know the college very well, they’re very familiar with all the administrative work. My experience: I have minimum two committee meetings a week, I have about a 6 hour administrative job that I have been trying to get rid of in 4 years that no tenured person will take, I am not given anybody’s time for this work, I have 33 students to advise a semester, besides registration, I am coerced to present at PDIs and attend PDIs almost every Friday, so I miss most academic things that I would like to do. I think it’s really important for the Union and this group to find ways to shelter junior faculty from coercion and to find way so that they can actually do the professional things, and so we can find out if they actually are the kind of people that we want to hire. Really no one will know until I get tenure, if I get tenure, whether I can do research and whether I can write books. I can assure you. Thank you very much.

Professor Barnhart (History, Philosophy and Political Science, Kingsborough Community College) – Actually, I thought the panel was remarkably unanimous. I expected a vicious fight and it turned out that you were all saying, "well, you know, it could be a good idea but." I actually started the way I didn’t expect. I thought there would be more negative. In any case, it seemed to me that if that were the case then maybe the following consideration would be worthwhile. It’s a proposal that seems as though it’s got legs under it and it’s going to happen anyhow. If it’s going to happen anyhow then we want to shape it in a way that it works for us. If we oppose it we’re not going to be in any position to help shape it. I suggest that it might be worth not necessarily cooperating entirely but in fact using it as an opportunity, as was suggested before, to raise issues that obviously bear on quality of life in terms of the whole tenure process. I will say that in the humanities, I can’t really speak for the sciences, I am told that it requires a great deal of time as Manfred suggested to get things published, in the humanities it’s just as bad. I’ve submitted papers to journals and have been told yes, we’ll publish it, but it will be a couple of years from now, and the better the journal the longer I’ve had to wait for it to come out. So it isn’t just a problem with the sciences, it’s a problem in the humanities as well.

Professor London (Political Science, Brooklyn College) – I have some actual data, results from a study that I’m doing, to report, but before I do that I can’t pass up the opportunity to respond to what Michael just said and also the previous speaker. I spent today in Albany, we had a very big team of lobbyists there from the PSC, and this is one of the issues that we’ve discussed with legislators. And I can tell you that this has no legs whatsoever. A rather high placed legislator got it right away and said, "what, you want to give people more time with no time?" I think that was apropos of what you said earlier. I can tell you that what’s happening is I think the Chancellor wants to create that illusion, but in fact we heard from legislator after legislator that they saw this as completely inappropriate for the Chancellor to come with this proposal without discussing it with the PSC and without discussing it with the UFS, and that this is a matter of State Law, it’s a public policy issue and there will be no change, I believe, if this community, meaning this body as well as the PSC, does not engage fully in meaningful discussions. So I think that’s something that I can report to you from today’s discussions. Secondly, I agree with a lot of what was said on the panel, particularly that we need to turn this into a discussion about how to support our faculty. I think that’s the constructive way forward here. And one of the things that we need to do first is to find out if there is a problem in terms of time right now. So these are just preliminary results from a study that I’m doing and I’ll publish this when I get more results in. I don’t want to be too technical here, so I’ll just try to be very brief. What I did is I looked at all the faculty who began in any full-time title, both tenure and non-tenure bearing title, in 1998 who are still here in 2001 and then looked at what happened to them over the next three years. And I found out that there were 234 faculty in this population and out of those 234 88% either had achieved tenure or were still on tenure bearing lines in 2003. 12% had departed, that’s 29 people, 16 after the fourth year and 13 after the fifth year. The concentrations of where those people left from were nursing and education, very few in the sciences. There’s more here and I’ll be happy to publish this. But I think what this shows and what panelists have called for is that we need to have real research and we really need to understand this. There are two documents in the back. One is a letter from Barbara Bowen, it’s actually a scoop on the Clarion, that’s going to be Barbara’s column on the next Clarion on this issue and it will get around the University, and then there is also another issues sheet that we put out that raise relevant issues, especially the fact that what this measure does is actually circumventing collective bargaining. Legislators understood this. This is dealing with terms and conditions and what we need to do in this round of bargaining is we have proposals on the table to increase sabbaticals, to increase research time, to support faculty, and I think that’s the direction that we need to go and to turn this discussion. / Unidentified – Did you find big variances by campus in the tenuring rate? / Professor London – I have not analyzed that yet.

Professor Erickson (Queens College) – Just maybe a couple of other side issues that are germane to this topic that haven’t been raised yet and that might also be considered. If this tenure business goes forward in any way perhaps many of you are not aware that it is the policy of the University at this point that if someone has tenure at another institution and is hired by CUNY they do not carry that tenure to CUNY, which is not the norm at other institutions, except if they already possess the rank of full professor. It’s the only condition under which someone can have tenure. That is I think something that ought to be looked at. People are coming in about Governor Pataki or the Chancellor perhaps would like a 30-year tenure clock or something like that, I would point out that many of the Ivy League schools have a kind of situation where in fact they string people along for 10, 12 years often. That’s not so unusual but it is done by contract, as I think you know, with no guarantee of tenure at the end of it. I would also like to mention some amusement I learned that about the time I came to CUNY, over 30 years ago, the standards were lower, but according to your statistics it was harder to get tenure back then. Three years before I came three of my colleagues got Guggenhaims in the same year. But seriously, I think there is a good reason to consider the extension of the time frame. I can speak for example of my time as Dean when the faculty committees actually voted against a wonderful faculty member whose book was completed but not published but had been accepted. They voted her out and frankly I had to go on a campaign around the campus and we were able to save her and next year she got a Presidential Teaching Award. So there are I think some issues here for the good of our faculty and therefore for the good of our students that are involved. Also, on the other side, we should remember that some kinds of grants have age limits, and perhaps extending the tenure clock might cause some people to take their time a little bit too leisurely and in the end perhaps have to forego some possibilities for outside research and support. And also I am concerned about the political danger that other people have said. Thank you.

Professor Fergenson (Bronx Community College) – I just want to report that this was a topic at our last departmental meeting last Thursday and in my department nobody was for this proposal. Of course the emphasis at a two-year college is on teaching and we feel that certainly there is ample time to assess a professor’s teaching ability. One colleague I spoke to this morning was very concerned about an issue, and I’d like to ask the question. What will happen to people who have CCEs? How will they be affected by this, because she has been at our college long enough to have a CCE and now she’s going to complete a PhD, she wants to switch on to a regular line so she can be tenured, a tenure-track position. And so will those years towards the CCE be applicable for her? / Professor Friedman – No, I don’t think so. I did that myself. I was hired as an instructor and then got my CCE and then when I finished my doctorate you get a new appointment on an Assistant Professor line and then you start all over for tenure. In my case it took me 10 years to get tenure but I had the security of the CCE. If it’s 7 it’s going to be another 7 years. / Professor Fergenson – Well then, for that answer I think that’s another argument against the proposal.

Eckhart Kuhn-Osius (Faculty Governance Leader, Hunter College) – I don’t want to speak to the politics of the policies and the governance issues, because I think those are abominable, but to talk about the content of the matter. At first I thought, well, why would anybody do that? I guess they must have thought that the old tenure process kind of tenured some people who are unworthy in some way, so they’re trying to be tougher on us, and then of course I hear Chancellor Goldstein and he actually wants to be nice to us, at least he said, and he wants the junior faculty to have more time to teach and to serve on committees, to become more well-rounded etc. If this is really true I think we should at least ask for three things, and that is A, a very strongly worded statement by him from his office regarding the expectations for tenure, and another question if he really wants to be nice is addressing the issue of the current continuing contracts, because people will be on one-year contracts for 7 years run in and be reviewed (tape interruption)

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, Graduate School) – (tape interruption)…a point that was just made about the Chancellor’s attitude on a very serious issue. This is not a political point; this is sort of a deep point. In some of the institutions in the University, possibly sometimes it’s department by department, the heavy emphasis on research productivity, which is communicated by senior faculty to junior faculty when they come, so clearly marks that institutional life that they cannot voluntarily serve on committees. There is just no way they can do what you [addressing Professor August] did, I think what you’re doing is suicidal, but they simply can’t do anything like that, and given the opportunity, with some protection from senior faculty, they just don’t join. Now the consequence of not joining in the institutional life is that they set a pattern for themselves that when they do become tenured we’re not going to see them here at the Senate, we’re not going to see them serving on faculty committees. These people are institutional outsiders; they take their salary and they run away. This is a serious negative in our University’s life. So, for a person like me, I came here believing I joined an institution as a lifetime job, a 24 hour day lifetime job, I gave out my telephone number and everything else; I was shocked to discover there were people who didn’t do that, and in those years that I’ve been here more and more people don’t do that. There should be 50 Bill Crains (if he would keep off our neck). And Steve, he voluntarily does a survey he doesn’t have to do. And Dean is a Chairman, he’s got all these people to worry about and he’s still coming and giving talks. You don’t find younger faculty like that. Those few younger faculty, I love you! Those few younger faculty are a disappearing asset, and the Chancellor genuinely made this point. Whether or not deep in his heart he believes this I don’t know, but he did express it and I thought it was a very important thing that his view get communicated to us.

Professor Lewis (English, York College) – Two points. Number one, in contrast to what Stefan was saying, there are junior faculty who have a different reality. There are people who come to the University or to a specific college and extra curricula beyond their teaching load is mandated as part of their job. I had to take over the student newspaper, the television studio at one point and a whole bunch of other things. I wasn’t alone, there were other people doing this, and to some degree work in the community and work even in the University becomes almost mandated as part of your job. It doesn’t excuse you from producing articles and books, if that’s part of what’s needed for tenure. What’s really criminal about all this is that the University has a lot of these expectations with no sort of real-life support system to get to the end results they want you to have. Last semester I took my first sabbatical in 27 years and stupidly only took 6 months to work on a book on the book publishing industry, so I’ve become really expert on not only getting published but how the industry works. Since I’ve been back on campus I’ve had about 10 to 15 untenured faculty members literally collar me in the hall and saying, "how the hell do I get tenured, what do I do? I’m not tenured but how do I get published? How do I get to a publishing house, what is there beyond academic publishing, differentiate, how do I get their attention, what do I do?" There is no mechanism in this University that I see that is readily available to all junior faculty teaching them the alternatives of how to get published in various kinds of magazines or journals or with book publishing. It seems to me that should be an automatic part of the training right from the beginning. The other thing that’s part and parcel to this is something that Steve mentioned. If we’re not going to be able to win the battle of whether there’s an extension or not, if this becomes a fait accompli at some point, then we should have a much more fully developed program that we put forth to the University that they have to get behind in order to inform people how to take advantage of their time and be productive in a way that’s going to get the results that everybody needs to get.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) – I’d like to make three somewhat unrelated points. We’ve been debating on both sides of the issue here and people have been offering rational examples and rationales that make a lot of sense on either side, but I don’t think we’ve put enough emphasis on the shameful way this is being run through, and it seems to me that we almost need to oppose this proposal on procedural grounds, whether it has merit eventually or not. That’s my first point. My second point is to be, maybe somewhat like Anne Friedman, just because of my paranoid nature, suspicious. The University now tenures people at roughly the same rate as the national norm. If they want to change the time to tenure my suspicion is it’s because they want to raise the bar and lower the number of people they tenure. That is their past history and it shows that. And then there is a third area. We’ve talked a lot about needing more research on this but I think there is kind of a gray area where you don’t exactly get research except maybe in an anecdotal way. Let me give you two examples. I’m trying to keep an open mind about this issue, and one thing that is certainly a problem in the University, it’s a major problem in my department, is that we’re hemorrhaging junior faculty. What would be more attractive to a junior faculty coming in: a 5-year tenure clock, a 7-year tenure track? Do we know that? Do we have any sense? You work hard for 5 years, is that more attractive or is having an extra 2 years more attractive? I don’t know frankly. And remember, these are the people we’re concerned about, not necessarily what we think on this issue. Or another thing, and I think Stefan touched on this, if you have a 5-year tenure clock people have to work so hard that often they go into semi-retirement when they get tenure. May it not be better to have a 7-year clock and get people used to working in the institution and then they’ll continue to do that kind of as second nature. These are questions that are not exactly hard research questions but questions that we need to investigate.

Professor Savage– One thing that came to mind that you were making I believe your second point, which is why are they actually doing this, my understanding is that they came at the request of some 4 year college Presidents primarily, and one of the things to remember, this was a point made by some faculty at some of our discussions at Queens and I don’t know how true this is around the system, but at my campus the faculty primarily make tenure decisions; it’s rare when a President overturns a positive recommendation of the Faculty Committee. And so if the faculty want to go ahead and pay very close attention and see that people do the committee work and also really pay attention to teaching and give credit for exceptional teaching where that really seems merited, I think it’s within the faculty’s power, at least at my institution to go ahead and do that, and in fact we’ve been campaigning to give more credit to teaching recently and we’ve had some success. I don’t know if this is true in the other campuses. So one of the pieces of data that I would urge people on the various campuses to collect, or have Steve London collect, or get from somewhere, is what is the pattern in terms of the faculty tenuring candidates and what is the pattern in terms of the President tenuring candidates and who overturns whom on this. Sometimes it goes in ways that might surprise you. / Unidentified – Just one thing I’d remind you of is the President does have the right to turn people down, and this may be part of a larger scheme. / Of course he does, sure. And he does it but very rarely at my institution. / Very rarely at most institutions but this may be a change that’s in the wind that’s behind us.

Professor Friedman– I just want to make a request. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do this tonight but I really find it interesting, and there may be very good reason for this, that I haven’t really heard anybody addressing the issue of how good this is going to be for women, particularly those during the child bearing years, and if we don’t hear about it tonight I think that there is something that we need to hear about from women and men, particularly of child bearing years, and perhaps those of us who have been men or women who had children along the process, or some of us who still are children. We have to address that at some point. / Professor Barker – I think it might have been the third point of the last speaker talking about Presidents denying tenure. A potential scenario, not necessarily a likely or unlikely one for that matter, is that Presidents easily can be rewarded or punished for granting tenure. This doesn’t, as far as I know, go on at the University right now, but it certainly goes on with other universities, colleges and their Board of Trustees. Boards of Trustees get very upset with tenure rates.

Professor Moss (York College) – I’m an untenured faculty member and I’m not exactly thrilled about the proposal to increase the tenure clock. I had two years of full-time substitute experience at another CUNY College prior to coming to York, I also had three years of tenure track experience at a SUNY College, and I decide to come to York because I did see it as a step up and still do. However, with five years of previous full-time experience I was told none of that counts towards tenure because substitute experience full-time at CUNY doesn’t count and SUNY full-time tenure track experience doesn’t count. Certainly if we increase the tenure clock to 7 years we should revisit that. Also, I was hired under a contract in effect that I had a set 5-year tenure clock. If it’s increased to 7 years it’s kind of a breach of contract, although I’m not a lawyer, so that should be considered as well. Perhaps current employees could be grandfathered out in some way.

Professor Baumrin– I am a lawyer and it will not be retroactive, even though they’d like it to be retroactive it won’t be because that’s in fact a violation of the due process clause of the Constitution of the United States. So don’t worry about this. You’ve got enough to worry about.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island and The Graduate School and University Center) – I really don’t have much to add to this but I just want to underscore a couple of remarks made in passing. It is my understanding based on conversations that the Chancellor did design this in response to at least three college Presidents, mine being the spearhead, and she’s public about it, so I’m not letting anything out of secrets. Her argument is based on - I don’t know, what is it almost ten years now at the College of Staten Island? - an effort to do to two things: one, to be fair, and I think she is honestly fair; secondly, to in fact raise the reputation of the college; she is frankly anxious to make it a tier one institution. She has devoted herself and led the faculty into creating Master’s and Baccalaureate programs, which stand up with the older ones, and the younger faculty we have hired as you said have been under tremendous screws with people like me to perform in the scholarly fashion. However, we have in fact worked out ways for them to do service, modified, limited and so forth, so that we don’t end up with this business of a group of people entirely off in their own basement studies and laboratories. Tomorrow we’re going to run a public meeting on this subject, so I don’t know what the outcome is going to be, but today I did do some inquiries; you wanted data from a college, this is a college. A significant number of people up for their second and third year appointment in this institution have found a dozen ways to interrupt the count to tenure. They go off for a semester at no pay, or they go on scholar incentive awards, which is a quarter salary, or they get outside grants and go away for a year, or when they’re getting close to the fourth year they find some way to be an adjunct somewhere else to interrupt the count, because they are doing this job of getting that book out. And I can tell you in my field, Modern European History, the publication of books has plummeted this way since the ‘50’s and 60’s. It is almost impossible to get a publisher to put out anything that has nothing to do with the Nazis. The problem is that people doing research who have got this quadruple scholarly research in a number of the humanities fields now do not have the kind of reading public they once did. I have campaigned to get a different kind of scholarship recognized, and we should perhaps add this to the pot, and that is work on internet publications, because this is an outlet for a certain amount; I mean reviewed work on internet publication; this is an outlet for certain higher publication where the standard Oxford University Press doesn’t exist anymore. / Unidentified – Computer Science mainly publishes on the net. / Professor Cooper – All right, but I don’t think CUNY appointments and P&B committees are really up on this yet. I don’t think we have done a good job of educating them, and we’ve raised this for the last five or seven years repeatedly. My only major problem with this whole thing is that it’s presented too rigidly. The business about mothers is insulting. It’s parents, it’s parental leave that’s given at most of the colleges that the Chancellor is comparing us to. At the Ivy League colleges now all young faculty of either gender who happen to become parents are given a paid semester. I know this has been instituted at Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and at three or four others, and a male father can take it as well as the mother. And if we’re talking about supporting young parents and so forth it’s got to be parents, not just the female parent. The other thing I understand is that there is a move afoot in order to increase the accessibility of the daycare centers to faculty, because it’s now almost always for students, and this is a crucial thing to push as well. But in general I’m not nervous about the 7 years in the way other people are but I don’t believe it should be rigidly enforced. I think people should be given some kind of an option.

Professor Hastick (Social and Behavioral Sciences, Medgar Evers College, Executive Committee) – I have a fifteen-minute speech but I’ll boil it done to one minute since most of what I wanted to say has already been said. Number one, I applaud the call for more research, and I have some specific point I wanted to raise on that but I’ll save it. The nine points need to really be reviewed again to add more weight to other areas in addition to scholarly research and so on. I suspect there are a lot more faculty on several campuses, mine included, who spend an inordinate amount of time advising, counseling, time on task with students, and not enough selfish time writing etc. The Vice Chancellor’s letter really concerns me. He talks about making it retroactive to what, 1991, 2001, which means tomorrow there’s no time for debate on this. And lastly, the governance issue. Again, there’s another example where we have not been sufficiently consulted, given input, and we’re told that this is supposed to be in our favor but we haven’t really had the chance to have input, to study it, to look at the implications and to come up with a plan. So I’m calling for a plan from us. And I applaud my colleagues, particularly who called for more research. Thank you.

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – We have not been not sufficiently consulted; we have not been consulted at all. In exchanges from faculty governance leaders on Friday with the Chancellor, the Chancellor announced with some fanfare that there will be a town meeting in April to consider this issue; March 16, sorry. But when Sally Mettler asked a question about this he told us all, "well, there won’t be a vote and the subject of the town meeting on March 16 is implementation." So we have not seen anything. Some of us have seen these COPS memos since last spring but most people have not known that this was happening until Vice Chancellor Schaffer’s memo a few weeks ago. And the Chancellor tells us we are only going to be discussing implementation. Another thing that Stefan also heard the Chancellor say was to describe the process at Baruch over the years in which faculty going for tenure are told "don’t participate in committees, don’t worry about your teaching, you can deal with that in five minutes, do your research." So what is the solution to that? Adding two more years simply adds emphasis on the research; nothing in Schaffer’s memo refers to anything else except research. It’s very clear that that’s the purpose, so that the solution exacerbates rather than ameliorates the problem if that is perceived as a problem, and I would have thought that it would be. If junior faculty will not work on their teaching and they will not join committees then they’re sure as hell not going to do that once they have tenure.

Professor Hounion (New York City College of Technology) – Thank you. I thank all of you for your comments and also our four panelists. Thank you all very much.

Chair – This was an absolutely superb discussion. You know it will all be recorded in the minutes, so we’ll have a whole transcript of this, and also there’s been quite good discussions on the listserv. Before you disappear we do have some resolutions. Let me announce just once again March 16 at Baruch the Chancellor is having his town meeting. It’s either 3 to 5 or 4 to 6. You ought to go there and express your opinion. It happens to be the UFS Lobby Day, so some of us won’t be there. This initiative was initially suggested by Edison Jackson, Jennifer Rabb, and Marlene Springer. They are the three Presidents that are most interested in this extension to the time to tenure.

We have four resolutions. They’re a bit apple pie like, motherhood and apple pie, but I would really like to get them passed.