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Detroit’s Wayne State University Looks to Destroy Tenure
Aaron Petkov
Wayne State University in Detroit has proposed a new contract that would
radically redefine the terms for eliminating faculty. The school would be
the first research university to effectively abolish tenure, said the
faculty union, which mounted a protest. Photo: Aaron Petkov.
Wayne State University in Detroit has proposed a new contract that would
radically redefine the terms for eliminating faculty.
The school would be the first research university to effectively abolish
tenure, said officials of the American Association of University Professors
(AAUP), opening the door for other campuses under pressure from cuts in
public spending to try similar moves.
Traditionally, tenured faculty could be removed only after undergoing an
extended peer review or in cases where the university is facing extreme
financial stress.
The contract language management proposed in late July, however, would
effectively remove peer review and centralize the power to terminate faculty
in administrators’ hands.
When the university’s chief negotiator, James Green, was asked if the new
terms would amount to eliminating tenure he replied, “It would have that
effect, yes.”
University President Allan Gilmour, a former top-level executive at Ford,
quickly denied the charge. “Faculty tenure is an important aspect of
academic freedom,” Gilmour told reporters, “but it cannot be a place to
hide for those whose performance or behavior is poor.”
Wayne State enrolls nearly 32,000 students, 89 percent of whom are from
metro Detroit, and has almost 3,000 faculty members. About a third are
tenured or tenure-track. Faculty are represented by a joint AAUP-Teachers (
AFT) Local 6075.
The proposed contract would allow the administration to remove faculty in
cases of “the substantial curtailment or discontinuance of a program which
removes any reasonable opportunity for using a faculty member's services,”
a “failure to meet professional responsibilities,” a “failure to perform
academic assignments competently,” and a “financially based reduction in
force.”
Michael McIntyre, a law professor and union member at Wayne, said the
language amounts to a “frontal attack on tenure.”
Whose Priorities Count?
“The administration already has the power to fire faculty and academic
staff in the face of an economic emergency,” McIntyre told Inside Higher Ed
. “What it apparently wants is the authority to fire people if it chooses
to spend money to advance some agenda that it considers more important than
retaining faculty and academic staff.”
According to Wayne State history professor Fran Shor in a letter to the
Detroit Free Press, “there is no provision for peer review of an
administration-initiated termination of tenure,” only “the possibility of
‘looking for mutual settlement’ after the fact.” The union could file a
grievance and hope for an arbitrator’s ruling to reinstate a fired member,
but is unwilling to take decisions about academic performance away from
fellow faculty, who, the union argues, are best suited to judge.
Management also wants a provision limiting faculty members’ political
freedom, by allowing professors to be terminated for “intentionally causing
injury to persons and/or damage to property, forcibly interrupting the
normal daily teaching, research or administrative operation of the
University or directly inciting others to engage in such actions.” This
kind of vague language would leave the door open to disciplining or
eliminating tenured faculty who participate or assist in organizing protests
on campus, such as the recent Occupy protests that swept campuses and
cities across the United States last fall, or the ongoing student strike in
Quebec.
According to Shor, the assault on tenure is another step in the “
corporatization of the university.” Recent decisions like the appointment
of Gilmour, the first Wayne president with no academic background, and the
elimination of the Interdisciplinary Studies program that primarily served
working-class people of color, have little to do with the economic realities
facing the university, Shor said, and more to do with “politically
motivated decisions about who the university should be serving.”
Department closures, layoffs of non-academic staff, extreme increases in
tuition, and increasing reliance on adjunct faculty all point toward a
radical shift to what some union members have been calling a corporate model
of higher education. The cost of attending Wayne State full-time has risen
from 3,970ayearin2000to10,188 a year now.
If faculty accept the abolition of tenure, they would harm not only their
own job security and academic freedom but also the quality of students’
education, argued Shashi Thandra, a graduate student in Wayne’s English
department.
“Abolishing tenure will devalue their degrees because they would no longer
graduate from a research university,” Thandra said. “Tenure protects
freedom of research and without tenure, faculty can only research what
university administrators will allow.”
The school will no longer be able to attract top-flight faculty, who would
refuse to work in a setting where they cannot research with security,
Thandra said.
Other universities have been experimenting with terminating tenured faculty,
including the eight-campus University of Louisiana system last year.
Florida State University tried to lay off 21 tenured faculty two years ago,
but the move was blocked by an arbitrator.
At Wayne State, the administration and the union have agreed to extend the
contract, which was set to end July 31, and established a six-person
committee to review tenure rights. Faculty have until September 30 to plan
their next move.
Detroit’s Wayne State University Looks to Destroy Tenure
Aaron Petkov
Wayne State University in Detroit has proposed a new contract that would
radically redefine the terms for eliminating faculty. The school would be
the first research university to effectively abolish tenure, said the
faculty union, which mounted a protest. Photo: Aaron Petkov.
Wayne State University in Detroit has proposed a new contract that would
radically redefine the terms for eliminating faculty.
The school would be the first research university to effectively abolish
tenure, said officials of the American Association of University Professors
(AAUP), opening the door for other campuses under pressure from cuts in
public spending to try similar moves.
Traditionally, tenured faculty could be removed only after undergoing an
extended peer review or in cases where the university is facing extreme
financial stress.
The contract language management proposed in late July, however, would
effectively remove peer review and centralize the power to terminate faculty
in administrators’ hands.
When the university’s chief negotiator, James Green, was asked if the new
terms would amount to eliminating tenure he replied, “It would have that
effect, yes.”
University President Allan Gilmour, a former top-level executive at Ford,
quickly denied the charge. “Faculty tenure is an important aspect of
academic freedom,” Gilmour told reporters, “but it cannot be a place to
hide for those whose performance or behavior is poor.”
Wayne State enrolls nearly 32,000 students, 89 percent of whom are from
metro Detroit, and has almost 3,000 faculty members. About a third are
tenured or tenure-track. Faculty are represented by a joint AAUP-Teachers (
AFT) Local 6075.
The proposed contract would allow the administration to remove faculty in
cases of “the substantial curtailment or discontinuance of a program which
removes any reasonable opportunity for using a faculty member's services,”
a “failure to meet professional responsibilities,” a “failure to perform
academic assignments competently,” and a “financially based reduction in
force.”
Michael McIntyre, a law professor and union member at Wayne, said the
language amounts to a “frontal attack on tenure.”
Whose Priorities Count?
“The administration already has the power to fire faculty and academic
staff in the face of an economic emergency,” McIntyre told Inside Higher Ed
. “What it apparently wants is the authority to fire people if it chooses
to spend money to advance some agenda that it considers more important than
retaining faculty and academic staff.”
According to Wayne State history professor Fran Shor in a letter to the
Detroit Free Press, “there is no provision for peer review of an
administration-initiated termination of tenure,” only “the possibility of
‘looking for mutual settlement’ after the fact.” The union could file a
grievance and hope for an arbitrator’s ruling to reinstate a fired member,
but is unwilling to take decisions about academic performance away from
fellow faculty, who, the union argues, are best suited to judge.
Management also wants a provision limiting faculty members’ political
freedom, by allowing professors to be terminated for “intentionally causing
injury to persons and/or damage to property, forcibly interrupting the
normal daily teaching, research or administrative operation of the
University or directly inciting others to engage in such actions.” This
kind of vague language would leave the door open to disciplining or
eliminating tenured faculty who participate or assist in organizing protests
on campus, such as the recent Occupy protests that swept campuses and
cities across the United States last fall, or the ongoing student strike in
Quebec.
According to Shor, the assault on tenure is another step in the “
corporatization of the university.” Recent decisions like the appointment
of Gilmour, the first Wayne president with no academic background, and the
elimination of the Interdisciplinary Studies program that primarily served
working-class people of color, have little to do with the economic realities
facing the university, Shor said, and more to do with “politically
motivated decisions about who the university should be serving.”
Department closures, layoffs of non-academic staff, extreme increases in
tuition, and increasing reliance on adjunct faculty all point toward a
radical shift to what some union members have been calling a corporate model
of higher education. The cost of attending Wayne State full-time has risen
from 3,970ayearin2000to10,188 a year now.
If faculty accept the abolition of tenure, they would harm not only their
own job security and academic freedom but also the quality of students’
education, argued Shashi Thandra, a graduate student in Wayne’s English
department.
“Abolishing tenure will devalue their degrees because they would no longer
graduate from a research university,” Thandra said. “Tenure protects
freedom of research and without tenure, faculty can only research what
university administrators will allow.”
The school will no longer be able to attract top-flight faculty, who would
refuse to work in a setting where they cannot research with security,
Thandra said.
Other universities have been experimenting with terminating tenured faculty,
including the eight-campus University of Louisiana system last year.
Florida State University tried to lay off 21 tenured faculty two years ago,
but the move was blocked by an arbitrator.
At Wayne State, the administration and the union have agreed to extend the
contract, which was set to end July 31, and established a six-person
committee to review tenure rights. Faculty have until September 30 to plan
their next move.
