[1] From: Nils Hasselmo <hasselmo@mailbox.mail.umn.edu> (47)
Subject: FOR YOUR INFORMATION from Nils Hasselmo
[2] From: Seth Katz <seth@bradley.bradley.edu> (9)
Subject: Re: 9.624 threat to tenure
[3] From: "A. G. W. Cameron" <acam@cfa.harvard.edu> (101)
Subject:
[4] From: Richard Gordon <gordonr@cc.umanitoba.ca> (220)
Subject: Re: END OF TENURE IN U.S. ? Reply to Dr. Erwin Marquit
[5] From: Dan Olson <dolson@VINES.IUSB.EDU> (138)
Subject: Tenure not being eliminated
[6] From: "Warren G. Frisina" <wgfrisi@emory.edu> (11)
Subject: Tenure not being eliminated (fwd)
[7] From: William E Mishler <mishl001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> (25)
Subject: Re: 9.624 threat to tenure
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 13:57:38 CST
From: Nils Hasselmo <hasselmo@mailbox.mail.umn.edu>
Subject: FOR YOUR INFORMATION from Nils Hasselmo
[This letter was sent to the following on Friday, March 15.]
March 15, 1996
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE
TO: AAU Presidents, Academic Vice Presidents, Provosts,
Academic Deans, and Chairs of Faculties
NASULGC Presidents, Academic Vice Presidents, Provosts,
Academic Deans, and Chairs of Faculties
Editor, The Washington Post
FROM: Nils Hasselmo, President, University of Minnesota
Carl Adams, Chair, Faculty Consultative Committee, U of M
A great deal of misinformation about the University of MinnesotaUs review of its
tenure code and practices has been distributed on the internet in recent days.
As President of the University of Minnesota, and as Chair of the Faculty
Consultative Committee -- our facultyUs top elected post P we want to briefly
set the record straight.
On December 12, 1995, the University of MinnesotaUs Board of Regents adopted a
resolution formally requesting that the faculty and administration review the
tenure code. Shortly thereafter, a tenure review process was begun: a process
that is both faculty-led and governed by the Faculty SenateUs constitutional
procedures.
The tenure review we are undertaking is motivated by two goals which the faculty
and administration both wish to achieve. First, the University of Minnesota
will have iron-clad protection of academic freedom. This point must be
underscored: tenure and academic freedom will always be a pro tected and prized
value of the University of Minnesota.
Second, the tenure code will be changed in ways that will improve its:
1. Clarity -- by more fully explicating its purposes;
2. Flexibility - by recognizing the different employment rights, roles, and
responsibilities attached to different types of appointments; and by introducing
more unit-specific flexibilities, such as, variable periods of probationary
appointments;
3. Faculty and Administrative Accountability - by installing systematic
post-tenure review processes; and
4. Efficiency P by both formalizing and streamlining Judicial Committee
proceedings, and revising rules relevant to removal-for-cause actions.
These four criteria are key to achieving the University of Minnesota's
vision as stated in our University 2000 strategic plan. As such, these
same criteria are also driving our overall review of human resources
policies and, in particular, those that apply as well to our non-faculty
professional, civil service, student-employee staffs.
Since the original misinformation was widely circulated by internet, we ask you
to circulate this letter as widely as possible. Thank you for your assistance
in this matter.
NH:kb
Nils Hasselmo
President
hasselmo@mailbox.mail.umn.edu
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 17:01:32 -0600 (CST)
From: Seth Katz <seth@bradley.bradley.edu>
Subject: Re: 9.624 threat to tenure
I contacted a friend at the University of MN-Duluth campus, who forwarded
the following to me; she says that this is all she has heard.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Seth R. Katz, Assistant Professor seth@bradley.bradley.edu
Department of English Phone: (309) 677-2479
Bradley University Fax: (309) 677-2330
1501 W. Bradley
Peoria, IL 61625
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 14:40:21 -0500
From: "A. G. W. Cameron" <acam@cfa.harvard.edu>
I shall be brief. The fact that the University of Manitoba administration
could so mismanage its affairs as to let the strike develop has already
lowered significantly the credibility of the university as a center of
learning. If the administration should prevail, the following will be the
consequences. First rate scholars will shun the place. Therefore, if I
should see an application for admission to graduate work at Harvard
University from a future graduate of the University of Manitoba, I shall
inform my colleagues that that person is applying from an institution of
poor quality and that the application should get extremely critical
scrutiny. The university administration is inflicting a wound that will
take a long time to heal. First rate students will also shun the place.
Does your government think that this will serve the interests of the
citizens of Manitoba?
Yours sincerely, A. G. W. Cameron.
When this message was received other UMFA volunteers posted it everywhere
students were to be found and handed copies out at student coffee shops.
Our students were outraged and horrified and the strike was suddenly
national news. The next day the provincial opposition was demanding to know
what the government was going to do to end the strike. I don't think it was
a coincidence that the government did a rather abrupt turnabout from it's
100% pro-administration stance and appointed an excellent mediator within 2
days of the national news coverage. The strike was over, settled a week and
a half after this message arrived.
So-called Netiquette is a fine line to tow in broadcasting an appeal such
as ours. But we received just 2 complaints about our "irrelevant message",
perhaps because our cause was, indeed, of universal import to the majority
of the academics we reached. For the next episode, which some of you may be
involved in, we would recommend the following, based on our experience, and
some of our fumbling and mistakes:
1. Have a www page established in advance, so you can use it for
communication with each other, your students, and the rest of the world.
2. Compile lists of e-mail addresses in advance. Our appeal could have gone
to an extraordinarily greater number of people if a few address "pack rats"
like me had contributed their address lists. Prepare these lists in a form
directly usable by your e-mail software. Some of our sleepless nights were
spent picking through databases and files by hand, extracting one address
at a time, or writing software to speed it up.
3. Carefully separate e-mail addresses of individuals from those of list
servers. Use the latter sparingly. If you get back accusations of spamming,
be apologetic, saying you thought your issue might be relevant to them, and
take their address off your address lists. It would be better to have a
list, in advance, of the monitors or moderators of list servers and
newsgroups, so you can personally ask them to endorse transmission of your
message on their list, before you submit it. One mistake we made was that
spammers like us sometimes have their messages automatically cancelled no
matter what the subject and we unwittingly overstepped the rules, reducing
circulation. There are helpful people on the newsgroup admin.net-abuse.misc
you can consult first. We didn't, and we should have. I was permanently
removed from one list for inadvertently mailing to them twice.
4. Compile fax numbers in advance, for media and individuals. Although
slower (sometimes we ran our computers 24 hours straight, faxing), the fax
modem is a powerful adjunct to e-mail. With OCR (optical character
recognition) software (which we didn't have), and a scanner for paper
documents coming in, fax and e-mail are interconvertible media. Most media
are also on Internet, but faxing puts a paper copy in their hands
immediately, and gains more attention.
5. Have a list of e-mail savvy volunteers, who get to know each other, who
have equipment at home, and who can handle the onslaught, reply with
thanks, centralize responses, extract the best, and get them out for
publicity via e-mail and fax. We could have used more such people. These
people should be from a broad spectrum of disciplines, to maximize the
number of e-mail contacts. Put them in contact with whoever is handling
public relations.
6. Prepare, in advance, a list of your own faculty members who have e-mail
and/or fax equipment at home, so you know to what extent you can rely on
e-mail or fax for communication with members. We didn't do this, and so
never knew who we were getting through to, unless they replied. Many only
have access on campus. In other words, determine in advance how much use
e-mail could be for communication amongst members. We used e-mail this way
only as a supplement.
7. Keep everything in an archive, and have enough equipment to back it up.
If your strike is of historical importance (and we like to think ours will
be), someone might want the raw day to day exchanges for their data.
Certainly, all of it should end up in your university library's archives.
We did get a request for details of our Internet efforts from a sociologist
in South Africa.
8. Have a contingency plan for an alternative e-mail service, in case your
administration decides to cut off university e-mail accounts, or their
computer gets saturated (as ours frequently did, forcing us to work
overnight).
9. Send thank you's, and wind up letters, only to those who send letters.
We didn't restrict this distribution, and it generated a few more
complaints.
10. Do not broadcast to the students or support staff. Our administration
did this repeatedly to the support staff. One group of pro-administration
students broadcast to long lists of students. Both succeeded only in
annoying and alienating people already stressed by the strike. We
abstained, but we made sure our e-mail and www addresses were on every
single document, flyer, news release, and message we put out.
One problem deserves special note, and that is the decentralized nature of
e-mail communications, especially since all of this can be handled from
members' homes. We always checked our messages to be broadcast with an
executive member.
As President Naimark noted at the press conference, this is the new age of
Internet. Worldwide attention can rapidly be focussed on local issues of
international import. While we hope that never again will a faculty
association be faced with such a battle, we want everyone to know how we
used the Internet to protect academic freedom and helped end our strike,
just in case.
Richard Gordon, Department of Radiology, University of Manitoba
ON104, HSC, 820 Sherbrook Street, Winnipeg, MB R3A 1R9 Canada
Phone: (204) 789-3828, Fax: (204) 787-2080, E-mail: GordonR@cc.UManitoba.ca
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 20:23:53 -0600
From: Richard Gordon <gordonr@cc.umanitoba.ca>
Subject: Re: END OF TENURE IN U.S. ? Reply to Dr. Erwin Marquit
Dr. Erwin Marquit
School Of Physics & Astronomy, University Of Minnesota
116 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0112 USA
Phone: (612) 922-7993, Fax:
E-mail c/o <allan@mnhep1.hep.umn.edu> PLEASE FORWARD TO DR. MARQUIT
Dear Erwin:
Last fall we had a faculty wide strike over the issue of tenure and
academic freedom. Check with our union executive for details:
Ms. Sylvia Johannson
Executive Director, UMFA, University Of Manitoba Faculty Assoc.
80 Freedman Crescent
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 Canada
Phone: (204) 474-8282, Fax: (204) 269-6144
E-mail <faum@ccm.umanitoba.ca>
Worldwide Internet support was a significant factor in our success. I've
attached an article I wrote about it. Perhaps our experience will help you.
Yours, -Dick Gordon
At 6:33 PM 3/13/96 -0800, Alexander Berezin wrote:
>Reposting for general interest as requested
>by the sender. Alex Berezin
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 18:48:14 -0600 (CST)
>From: Frederick Sweet <sweetf@medicine.wustl.edu>
>To: BEREZIN@MCMASTER.CA
>>
>
>
>Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 19:09:53 -0500 (EST)
>[sender]owner-humanist@lists.Princeton.EDU
>[from] Humanist <mccarty@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
>Subject: 9.621 threat to tenure?
>
> Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 09:29:46 -0500 (EST)
> [from]"Warren G. Frisina" <wgfrisi@emory.edu>
> Subject: Tenure eliminated? (fwd)
>
>Greetings all! This seemed alarming enough to warrent wider
>distribution.
>
>I can't verify any of the facts contained herein, but I would appreciate
>hearing from anyone who knows more about the situation.
>
>Warren G. Frisina
>Associate Executive Director
>American Academy of Religion
>1703 Clifton Rd., NE Suite G5
>Atlanta, GA 30329-4075
>
>wgfrisi@emory.edu
>404-727-7920 tel
>404-727-7959 fax
>
>University of Minnesota President Niels Hasslemo and the university's
>Board of Regents are launching a serious campaign to end tenure not only
>at the University, but nationally as well. The threat to tenure nationwide is
>serious enough to warrant strong protests to the president and the Board of
>Regents (address for both: Morill Hall, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
>MN 55455) from all over the country by individual faculty, faculty
>organizations, and professional societies.
>
>At its December meeting, the Board of Regents set May 1996 as a
>deadline to effect changes in the tenure code in order that they may be put
>into effect in the fall. President Hasselmo in a letter of November 20,
>1995 to Regents Chair Thomas R. Reagan wrote: "Tenure imposes
>rigidities of lack of flexibility... It is assumed that the proportion of
>faculty
>who are tenured must decrease." Hasselmo not only proposed reduction of
>the number of tenured faculty (apparently to under 50% of the faculty), but
>also proposed
>a redefinition of tenure that would make it possible to eliminate faculty by
>dissolution of their departments (by shifting the place of tenure from the
>university as a whole to one's department) or to force individual faculty to
>leave by reduction of their salaries (in Hasselmo's words:
>"partial decoupling of compensation from tenure").
>
>President Hasselmo and the Regents initiated these moves and set a
>schedule for their implementation without meaningful consultation with
>the faculty, seriously undermining the institution of faculty governance.
>The Regents have the power to abolish tenure with or without Senate
>concurrence and recent statements by some adminstrators and regents
>indicate the intention to do so. This is why faculty collective bargaining to
>save tenure is on the agenda today. Aware that tenure is honored at all
>research universities and at essentially all other public institutions of
>higher
>learning, President Hasselmo also recommended that the Regents initiate a
>national discussion on tenure, which one can only interpret as a
>recommendation for dismantling tenure nationwide.
>
>To defend themselves from this threat, a faculty union was formed this
>month, the University Faculty Alliance (UFA). The UFA is now
>soliiciting signatures on authorization statements for collective-bargaining
>reprentation. If sufficient numbers of signatures are obtained, the union
>can request a cease and desist order from the state Bureau of Mediation
>Services to prevent changes in the conditions of employment until a
>collective-bargaining representation election is held. The adminstration is
>attempting to counter this faculty reaction by a widespread disinformation
>campaign in the local media that no serious changes are being
>contemplated for the present, despite the fact that at its February meeting,
>the Regents did not even discuss rescinding its decision to act on tenure
>changes at its mid-May meeting.
>
>Please circulate this news as widely as possible
>
>Erwin Marquit
>School of Physics and Astronomy
>116 Church Street SE
>University of Minnesota
>Minneapolis, MN 55455-0112
>
>(612) 922-7993
On Halting Bear and Professor Hunts:
Internet and the University of Manitoba Professors' Strike
for Academic Freedom
Richard Gordon, Department of Radiology
University of Manitoba, Room ON104, Health Sciences Centre
820 Sherbrook Street, Winnipeg, MB R3A 1R9 Canada
Phone: (204) 787-1383, Fax: (204) 787-2080
E-mail: GordonR@cc.UManitoba.ca
To be published in Negotiations (Canadian Association of University
Teachers Newsletter) (1996).
Last year I received an appeal from an Alaskan naturalist, broadcast on one
of the bionet newsgroups I subscribe to, for help in stopping a bear hunt.
It seems that a particular park was trying to raise money by selling
lottery tickets, at $10 each, for a chance at twelve licenses to shoot a
bear. Knowing that my colleague/wife Natalie Bjorklund (graduate student,
Human Genetics) was following a newsgroup about bears, dealing with
everything from Teddy bears to bear encounters of the third kind, I
blithely forwarded it to her. Through Internet, she thus passed this
plaintive note on to the bear lovers of the world. Soon afterward she
unsubscribed from the group and forgot all about it. Three months later she
got a lengthy message back from the group's monitor on the results of her
post.
Not that we've been invited, but I think we'll stay away from Alaska for a
while. 3000 people sent in their $10, hoping their name would be drawn and
one less bear would be shot. A woman from Germany was so upset, she flew to
Alaska, videotaped the bear hunt, got beaten up, and showed her tape back
in Europe. The Governor of Alaska was inundated with protests from around
the world, and this bear hunt was stopped. The park now promotes it's bears
as attractions to bear lovers instead and is supposedly getting many more
visitors than it ever had for it's annual hunt. Maybe we will go to Alaska
some day.
Our University of Manitoba administration had proposed downsizing by firing
of individual professors, with "past performance" irrelevant. Each of us
felt vulnerable. I was walking the strike line with Dan Gietz (Human
Genetics), on the smaller Medical/Dental campus, devoid of police, traffic,
the press, and undergraduates, and low on donuts and pizza, certainly in
comparison to Strike Headquarters. Our posterboard signs declaring
"Preserve Academic Freedom" were falling apart, soaked in the early winter
sleet. We had our own warming room in the Maryland Hotel nearby, a hotel
with a reputation we joked about, but with our 3 week adrenalin surge, the
beds there apparently weren't used.
Dan had heard from a colleague at the Mayo Clinic that our strike hadn't
been on the news in Rochester, so why don't we let people know about it by
Internet? We agreed to try it, after I related our experience with the
bears. Natalie wrote up a short appeal, designed to fit on a single
"screen". Dan sent this out to a few selected newsgroups, and I sent it to
about 1300 individuals whose e-mail addresses I had accumulated. Here is
what we distributed on October 24:
SUBJECT: CANADIAN PROFESSORS STRIKE FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
On October 17, 1995 Professors at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg,
Canada, went on strike in a bid to stop their administration (fully
supported by a Conservative provincial government) from destroying academic
freedom at our university. This strike is not about money. UMFA (University
of Manitoba Faculty Association) has already offered to accept reduced
wages sufficient to meet the difficult financial circumstances. The
government is demanding the right to downsize by laying off staff in any
department in an arbitrary manner. The proposed changes to our contract
would allow the administration to fire individual professors who are
challenging conventional wisdom, academics who speak out on public issues,
and faculty who criticize the administration.
WE ARE A TEST CASE AND IF WE FAIL, YOUR UNIVERSITY COULD BE NEXT. PLEASE,
GIVE US YOUR SUPPORT.
For more information please consult http://www.xpressnet.com/umfa
Letters of support to umfa@xpressnet.com
Letters of complaint to: Premier Gary Filmon FAX: 204-949-1484 or
premier@leg.gov.mb.ca
please cc: umfa@xpressnet.com
In the meantime, Richard Bochonko (Mathematics & Astronomy) and Len
Kaminski (Social Work) had set up a World Wide Web site for our strike, and
updated it daily. They included digitized photos of the bus driver who got
out of his bus on principle, because he wouldn't cross our picket lines,
the Minstrels of Redundancy, three music students and their prof, who sang
us inspiring songs tailored to our battle, and pointers to the University
of Manitoba Administration's www page (they did not reciprocate). Anyone
consulting our www page, and through ours, the administration's, could get
a balanced, up to date view of how the strike was going, and full
documentation.
The results were overwhelming. At strike headquarters we accumulated about
300 pages of support letters from all over the world. (About 50 can be seen
on our www page.) Many were from our own students. Some spoke of similar
impending challenges to academic freedom, as in Hungary and South Africa.
Many were from colleagues across Canada, especially other faculty
associations, who also sent representatives to join us on the strike lines.
The Society for Mathematical Biology, the Board of the Senior Faculty
Association of Tel Aviv University, and the American Association of
University Professors, for example, formally supported us.
We have only a vague idea how many messages went directly to President
Naimark and Premier Gary Filmon. We know Naimark's computer account was
saturated. Everything we got we forwarded to them, and to many key people,
such as all the Provincial Ministers, opposition members, the University
Board of Governors, and the local and national press, either by e-mail or
fax modem.
Our www rose from 67 accesses on October 18 to a peak of 3852 accesses on
November 6, the day after mediations started. 83% were Canadian in origin;
17% were from around the world. The strike was settled on November 10.
After the press conference announcing the agreement, President Naimark told
me what a huge impact the worldwide Internet assault had on him, and after
enjoying the bear story, gave me a lift to strike headquarters. Publicly:
"Naimark said the administration had been feeling the pressure exerted by
professors from across Canada and the rest of the world. 'You don't ignore
the opinions of respected academics from around the world,' Naimark said of
the support that was shown for the striking faculty members." (Winnipeg
Free Press, November 10, 1995, p. A3.)
Terry Falconer, our Vice-President (Administration), expressed concern, on
national CBC Radio on November 3, that our Internet efforts were harming
the reputation of the University of Manitoba. He and our students were
particularly disturbed by the strong statement out of Harvard:
--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:18:14 -30000
From: Dan Olson <dolson@VINES.IUSB.EDU>
Subject: Tenure not being eliminated
Fellow list members,
I too read the post about the possible elimination of tenure at
the University of Minnesota. I was quite surprised so I forwarded
it to a friend of mine who works in public relations at the
Univ. of Minn. asking, "can this be true?" She sent two replies,
one, including a letter from the Univ. Pres., Hasselmo. If you
don't want to read all of the stuff that follows, the point is that
the Univ. of Minn. is not on a campaign to do away with tenure and
not everything one reads on the internet is undistorted truth. I know
its lengthy, but it may help set the record straight, or at least
make it straighter.
Dan Olson
Sociology
Indiana University South Bend
dolson@vines.iusb.edu
(219) 237-4235
The two replies follow:
Dan: Thanks for sending me the message from Erwin Marquit, who is
claiming that President Hasselmo and the regents are out to abolish
tenure. I had heard rumors about this internet rumor but hadn't
actually seen the message.
The short answer is that it isn't true. As with many untruths, it
combines some facts with some distortions (and I believe Erwin Marquit
knows the distortions are distortions). It is part of a campaign to
unionize the faculty, but I don't know why it serves the faculty's
purposes to discredit the University of Minnesota in the eyes of
faculty across the country.
What is true is that the University has a tenure system that is about
as strong (and inflexible) as a university could possibly have. The
regents, the administration, and the faculty governance leaders are
looking at some possible changes, but nothing that would even come close
to abolishing tenure.
Right now It is hard to take away anyone's tenure, even when the faculty
member is a convicted felon (this has happened). Also, a few years ago when
the University closed its Waseca campus--a two-year agricultural campus--
tenure was interpreted to be University-wide and jobs were found for the
faculty in other parts of the University. (This has worked out very
well, better than might have been expected.)
Erwin Marquit has held his tenure, BTW, despite the fact that he is a
physics professor whose primary research interest for years has been
Marxism. Of course his tenure should be protected, and it will continue
to be.
One problem at the University is that the Medical School has many tenured
faculty members whose salaries were paid only partly with state funds and
the rest from clinical revenue. Now for a variety of reasons, including
drastic changes in the health care market, that revenue just isn't there
and the Medical School projects a deficit of $8 million. They may have
to say that tenure doesn't guarantee the total salary.
President Hasselmo has been an ardent supporter of tenure for his whole
career and still is. Some of the regents want to look at the question of
whether tenure should be in a unit (department, college, this isn't clear)
or University-wide. The president and the faculty leaders are arguing
strongly for University-wide tenure. I can't say for sure what's going
to happen on this one, but any revision of the tenure code has to come
out of the Faculty Senate before going to the regents. A proposal to
change to unit-based tenure doesn't have a snowball's chance of making it
through the Faculty Senate, I'll tell you that. And even if the regents
wanted it (and it isn't clear that most of them do), I can't see them
going against the faculty on this.
Some excellent universities do have unit-based tenure, and nobody says
they don't have a tenure system. But the other reality is that, even
though their tenure codes allow for dismissing tenured faculty when
programs are closed down for financial reasons, it never happens. And it
isn't going to happen at the University of Minnesota either.
I might lose my job (not that I'm feeling an immediate threat), but the
tenured faculty members aren't going to lose theirs. One of my colleagues
jokes about how we'd better start training in the faculty to answer the
phones, because they'll be the only employees the University has left.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Maureen Smith msmith@mailbox.mail.umn.edu 612-624-2801
University Relations 6 Morrill Hall 612-624-6369 fax
University of Minnesota Minneapolis MN 55455
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dan again:
You may be hearing more about this than you wanted to know! I forwarded
the queries to my boss and a couple of other people, and someone suggested
that I send copies of the letter President Hasselmo sent to all faculty.
Here it is:
TO: All University Faculty
Dear Colleagues:
This year's paradox is how we can have an exemplary review of tenure policies
when there are so many unanswered questions and so many conflicting
interpretations in circulation.
In a February 12 meeting with department chairs, FCC Chair Carl Adams made the
following observation:
"Across the country, most of the 200 peer institutions of the University are
looking at tenure, so this is not unique to Minnesota. Some would say, in
fact,
that the way Minnesota is approaching the discussion is exemplary for faculty:
it is a faculty-led effort. Both the administration and the Board have said
there is a constitution in place and it will be followed."
I am one of those who does say that our process is exemplary, especially
because
we have started, as our traditions and governing principles require, with
faculty initiative.
I am also one who hastens to add that "exemplary" doesn't mean easy. We
simply
cannot honor our traditions and governing principles by starting the review
process with a detailed proposal that dots every "i," crosses every "t," and
addresses every question. Developing such a proposal must start with the
faculty and that's been in process for the past several months.
In the meantime, our own on-going discussions and any number of internal and
external press reports have raised questions, offered lots of interpretations,
and sparked debates and concerns. Issues have been clarified or clouded; take
your pick.
In my editorial in the February issue of Kiosk, as well as in my legislative
testimony and other conversations, I have tried to make it clear that tenure
must and will be protected, the best protection for tenure -- and academic
freedom -- being an understandable tenure system that works effectively and
efficiently.
In his several written communications with the faculty and his oral
presentations to the Faculty Senate and the two forums on tenure, Professor
John
Adams, Chair of the Tenure Review Working Group, has described the
thoughtful, carefully selected changes that would provide that kind of system
and that kind of protection, principally through a new compensation plan and a
post-tenure review plan.
Neither my comments nor the Working Group's will answer all the questions or
assuage all the concerns. That can only happen after the detailed proposals
for
language changes are publicized and debated, and that will begin with the
March
14 open forum for faculty, continuing at the April 18 meeting of the Senate
and
the two additional Senate meetings in May.
We will make every effort to publicize the proposals and the meetings where
they
will be considered. I urge faculty to participate as fully as possible.
Cordially,
Nils Hasselmo
President
Nils Hasselmo
President
hasselmo@mailbox.mail.umn.edu
_____________________________________________________________________________
Maureen Smith msmith@mailbox.mail.umn.edu 612-624-2801
University Relations 6 Morrill Hall 612-624-6369 fax
University of Minnesota Minneapolis MN 55455
_____________________________________________________________________________
--[6]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 16:17:05 -0500 (EST)
From: "Warren G. Frisina" <wgfrisi@emory.edu>
Subject: Tenure not being eliminated (fwd)
Having circulated the original alert about the University of Minnisota,
in which I asked for verification, I thought I ought to pass along the
following response that challenges the original description of the situation.
Warren G. Frisina
Associate Executive Director
American Academy of Religion
1703 Clifton Rd., NE Suite G5
Atlanta, GA 30329-4075
wgfrisi@emory.edu
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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 10:16:07 -0600 (CST)
From: William E Mishler <mishl001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: 9.624 threat to tenure
On Fri, 15 Mar 1996, Humanist wrote:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 624.
> Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
> Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/
>
> [1] From: Frederick Sweet <sweetf@medicine.wustl.edu> (7)
> > Minn ?
>
>
> Responding to "9.621 threat to tenure?"
>
> it would be useful to circulate the e-mail address of:
>
> University of Minnesota President Niels Hasslemo
> and
>
> university's Board of Regents
>
> Thanks.
>
> F. Sweet
> tenured (so far) in St. Louis
>
>
>
hasselmo@mailbox.mail.umn.edu