Some of us here at UNL AAUP headquarters are old enough to remember when we used to do searches for upper administration. Some of us took part in the Faculty Senate Executive Committee’s interview of Kathy Ankerson for the EVC role. Some of us have likened her to an AI bot of neoliberal higher ed jargon before we were being forced to integrate AI into everything. Some of us have seen firsthand her defensiveness and her inability to handle simple, totally predictable questions from faculty.
Everyone saw those two characteristics on display at the so-called-listening session in January, when she couldn’t word salad her way through predictable questions from angry faculty, she promptly just stopped talking
We are old enough to remember when we pretended to have a search before simply naming Mark Button as EVC. But pretty heavy emphasis on pretend, since we doubt anyone can say they actually participated in that search, which was an internal search that was open for all of thirty seconds. Did anyone else actually apply for it? If so, did you get any sort of interview? Let us know, so we can eat our hat, but we’re pretty sure the hat is safe.
Shared Governance is Dead
Who else remembers when faculty had a say on these positions? Where candidates actually had interviews with faculty groups and made public presentations about their vision and leadership. We bet you also remember a time when an admin didn’t just appoint their favorite yes man, or woman, to the job. We have observed upper administration shut us out of all kinds of decision-making. From who we want to lead us, to whether we should eliminate any programs (and if so, which ones) to how success should be measured, faculty members are not consulted, let alone given a seat at the table.
What does this mean for UNL? Well, it means like tenure, shared governance is dead at UNL.
What is shared governance?
Glad you asked!
Shared governance is the century-old idea that university faculty should have a voice, per the AAUP, “in personnel decisions, selection of administrators, preparation of the budget, and determination of educational policies.”
AAUP guidance on shared governance also states:
The role of the faculty in the selection of an administrator other than a president should reflect the extent of legitimate faculty interest in the position. In the case of an academic administrator whose function ismainly advisory to a president or whose responsibilities do not include academic policy, the faculty’s role in the search should be appropriate to its involvement with the office. Other academic administrators, such as the dean of a college or a person of equivalent responsibility, are by the nature of their duties more directly dependent upon faculty support. In such instances, the composition of the search committee should reflect the primacy of faculty interest, and the faculty component of the committee should be chosen by the faculty of the unit or by a representative body of the faculty. The person chosen for an administrative position should be selected from among the names submitted by the search committee. The president, after fully weighing the views of the committee, will make the final choice. Nonetheless, sound academic practice dictates that the president not choose a person over the reasoned opposition of the faculty.
Let’s break it down, shall we? As Chancellor of IANR and VP for ag and natural resources at the system level, Heng-Moss will be directly involved with academic policy. Faculty, therefore, should have had input, particularly those from departments in IANR. Given her system-level role, we would have expected our friends from the Curtis campus to also have had input. And anyone else in the system who falls under that purview. A committee of faculty should have been convened, chosen either by the faculty of IANR or the Faculty Senate. They were not.
The person chosen should have been included in the names provided to the campus leader by the committee. Again, we can assume not, since there doesn’t seem to have been a search or a committee.
After Heng-Moss’s role in the cluster-firing of 33 faculty members, many with tenure, and numerous staff this fall and winter, we have a hard time imagining any committee of faculty would have approved her for the role.
The Relationship between Shared Governance and Academic Freedom
Ok, but why does shared governance matter? Who has time for one more committee anyway?
WE.ARE.SO.GLAD.YOU.ASKED!
The AAUP identifies three reasons that “the faculty’s voice should be authoritative across the entire range of decisionmaking that bears, directly or indirectly, on faculty responsibilities” (this link requires you to be a member of AAUP and sign in):
- Providing faculty with authority through shared governance is the most efficient means to accomplishing the university’s mission and objectives. Faculty governance and authority is a bulwark from outside influence. Faculty members also have the disciplinary expertise necessary for students to learn and to evaluate their peers for appointment, hiring, and promotion.
- Teaching and research are the central purposes of a university and the faculty that carries out this work “should be viewed as having a special status within the institution.” Shared governance provides the authority for faculty to carry out these tasks with dignity and independence.
- Shared governance is necessary for academic freedom, which includes intramural and extramural speech.
“For each of these reasons, it is also essential that faculty members have the academic freedom to express their professional opinions without fear of reprisal.”
That last bit, though. Do you mean that faculty should be able to express professional opinions about teaching and research and the execution of the core activities of the university without fear of reprisal?
Does that mean we should not be fired for disagreeing with upper admin about whether or not they should game the AAU numbers by shifting faculty positions from tenure-line to professors of practice and lectures? (That number is publications and citations per tenure-line faculty member, so if you have just a few really productive TT folks, your numbers get juiced if everyone else is not TT)?
Yeah. Well. Actually, faculty should be able to express their professional opinion without fear. Faculty are the experts on campus, afterall.
And if tenure and shared governance are dead, so too is academic freedom.
Attacks on Academic Freedom
The death of tenure and shared governance are not the only contributions to the death of academic freedom. Outside influence has been taking aim at academic freedom for a while now.
Did you want to teach sociology in Florida? No, you did not. At least not without a state-approved, heavily censored textbook.
Did you want to teach Plato in your philosophy class in Texas? Again, you didn’t. Because Plato violates race and gender ideology bans imposed by Texas A & M. One could argue about whether that internal ban is because they wanted to, whether the current governor in TX gives them cover, or whether they just have big pick me energy and need to show off their anti-academic freedom cred.
How about art on the migrant experience in Texas? Uh-huh, no.
Did you want to have your university funded at all in Kansas? Whatever is going on down there, it is time to make the little-known slogan, Don’t Kansas Nebraska, happen.
If faculty do not have the protections to teach what we believe is best, what many of our professional organizations recognize as not just best, but necessary in our fields, then we cannot provide high-quality educational experiences. And if we don’t even know what the trigger words are for administrators, or cellphone video happy students, we will self-censor. And if we self-censor, again, we cannot provide a quality education to students. At least not one that raises their consciousness about the world around them, that calls on them to think for themselves, to weigh evidence, to provide evidence for their opinions, to dream about a better world, and to learn the tools to create it.
And that is not an accident.
The last election broke hard on the line of educational attainment, a pattern that has been increasing over the last few election cycles. And targeting higher education is part and parcel of the autocratic playbook.
The hiring of Heng-Moss without faculty input, during a time when shared governance has been shredded by UNL and NU System leaders, in an era of ongoing attacks on tenure and academic freedom, is just one more symptom of where state and federal leaders are trying to take the country.
And faculty should push back. The academy, like public schools, is a site of small-d democracy. Where everything is slow because you have to negotiate among stakeholders with different ideas, experiences, and expertise, and come to some sort of workable consensus. At least in theory. No one said democracy was fast or easy. In fact, it’s pretty clear that founder Ben Franklin thought it was not going to be easy at all when he said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
We will close today, paraphrasing that founder, noted inventor of the lightning rod, and the first president of the University of Pennsylvania:
A University, if we can keep it.
