Belonging is a Practice, Not a Decree
We begin with one of the most serious problems facing us: the need for true, sustained commitment to the diversity and well-being of our faculty, students, and staff. In a campus-wide email on Feb. 22, KU Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer declared our university’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. But recent decisions show that what this administration says is not what it does.
- Two valued staff members of the Office of Multicultural Affairs were abruptly fired over the winter break.
- Active centers for diversity and equity saw their staff reduced and placed under the Office of Student Affairs, as if faculty and staff do not have their own diversity and equity concerns.
- The Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness (DEI) advisory committee of faculty, staff, and students was not consulted about these decisions or even informed about them until after the decisions were made.
- Many organizations have voiced their concerns with this process, without a response from the provost, including the Black Faculty Staff Council, Black Student Coalition, Faculty Chairs and Directors, Faculty Staff Council, Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition, Sexuality and Gender Diversity Faculty and Staff Council, Social Justice Fellows, Student Senate, and others.
- In contract negotiations with the Graduate Teaching Assistant Coalition, the administration hired an attorney who specializes in fighting discrimination claims, and who suggested removing an anti-discrimination clause from the contract.
- In recent years, six senior women of color have left the faculty and none have been replaced.
KU has faculty, staff, and students with substantial expertise and experience in the areas of discrimination, justice, and access. Community members must have an active seat at the table if KU is to do more than just talk about diversity and inclusion.
We begin with one of the most serious problems facing us: the need for true, sustained commitment to the diversity and well-being of our faculty, students, and staff. In a campus-wide email on Feb. 22, KU Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer declared our university’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. But recent decisions show that what this administration says is not what it does.
- Two valued staff members of the Office of Multicultural Affairs were abruptly fired over the winter break.
- Active centers for diversity and equity saw their staff reduced and placed under the Office of Student Affairs, as if faculty and staff do not have their own diversity and equity concerns.
- The Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness (DEI) advisory committee of faculty, staff, and students was not consulted about these decisions or even informed about them until after the decisions were made.
- Many organizations have voiced their concerns with this process, without a response from the provost, including the Black Faculty Staff Council, Black Student Coalition, Faculty Chairs and Directors, Faculty Staff Council, Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition, Sexuality and Gender Diversity Faculty and Staff Council, Social Justice Fellows, Student Senate, and others.
- In contract negotiations with the Graduate Teaching Assistant Coalition, the administration hired an attorney who specializes in fighting discrimination claims, and who suggested removing an anti-discrimination clause from the contract.
- In recent years, six senior women of color have left the faculty and none have been replaced.
KU has faculty, staff, and students with substantial expertise and experience in the areas of discrimination, justice, and access. Community members must have an active seat at the table if KU is to do more than just talk about diversity and inclusion.
AAUP letter to the regents concerning their recent Cuts and Cancellations policy (the full letter is linked here).
JOIN KU FACULTY & STAFF IN OPPOSITION TO KBOR TENURE POLICY
SIGN OUR OPEN LETTER (FOR KU FACULTY AND STAFF) OR SOLIDARITY STATEMENT (ALL OTHER SUPPORTERS) BELOW.
January 23, 2021
All eyes in higher education are on Kansas, as the Board of Regents has unilaterally suspended tenure protections and long-established procedures of shared governance, transparency, and due process in order to ease the termination of faculty and staff. This extreme policy circumvents professional standards and violates our commitments as a member institution of the American Association of Universities (AAU). Procedures already exist to make decisions according to financial exigency as part of shared governance. The regents now allow administrators to bypass the established process and eliminate faculty’s structural role in it. The leadership at our fellow Regents Universities in Kansas quickly recognized that this move is at odds with our profession, and have stated that they will not implement it. Only at KU has our Chancellor not committed to shared governance and our professional integrity by refusing to exercise the policy.
KBOR’s policy blatantly violates two of the three core Academic Principles of the AAU– those pertaining to Shared Governance and Academic Freedom. Such actions place KU at grave risk of expulsion from this prestigious professional organization, which would inevitably impede the recruitment and retention of faculty and the securing of research funds, ultimately eroding the value of all degrees from the University of Kansas.
The AAU principles reflect widely held professional standards, laid out in foundational statements from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure holds that financial exigency must be “demonstrably bona fide” in order to justify termination, and must be considered by a faculty committee as well as the governing board. The AAUP standard does not provide for arbitrary administrative power over such decisions. The 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities calls for “joint planning and effort” among its constituents, in which faculty are to hold primary responsibility over matters of faculty status, including dismissal. In order to have a voice in institutional planning, faculty must be fully briefed on the specific budgetary matters in play. The regents’ policy allows administrators to make dismissals without formally declaring financial exigency. This is clearly out of step with the AAUP standard that university executives work “within the concept of tenure,” and “necessarily utilize the judgments of faculty” when addressing institutional challenges.
These standards speak to the role of the faculty, but to bypass them affects the entire campus. The new policy gives a blank check to the chancellor to make sweeping changes. The regents have asked us to trust the chancellor in a time of crisis, but our financial issues predate the pandemic. This recent experience suggests that accountability is in order. To annul shared governance and transparency instead degrades the working conditions of the entire university and the learning conditions for all of our students.
The statements of core values and standard practices were composed during moments of extraordinary societal upheaval and unrest—during the worst economic depression and the deadliest world war—crises even greater than our current one. The hasty adoption of this policy strays from these long-standing professional standards. We agree with our representatives in the KU Faculty Senate, and the majority of the University’s department chairs, who find the regents’ action to be unprecedented and devastating to our professional standing as an institution.
Even as the regents affirm the value of faculty involvement in facing our grave financial situation, the new policy specifically neutralizes the form that such involvement already takes. Administrators at our fellow state institutions have shown leadership in recognizing the risk of grave consequences posed by unilateral action and have declined to exercise it. As KU stands alone in the state, and as an outlier nationally in pursuing the suspension of tenure and shared governance, it will become a much smaller and less prominent university. We refuse the inevitability of this, appealing to decades-old values of transparency, accountability, and shared governance in US higher education.
As faculty and staff at the University of Kansas, we demand that Chancellor Girod:
1. Join with his colleagues at the other Kansas Regents Universities in declining to pursue the new KBOR policy on suspension, termination, and dismissal; and
2. Recommit in word and action to existing KU policies pertaining to shared governance, especially in matters of tenure, dismissal and financial transparency, as well as the long-established national standards that are their basis.
We further call upon our colleagues, students, alumni, donors, members of the public and all who would join us in defending core academic principles to show your support HERE (KU Faculty and Staff) or HERE (all other supporters)
Staff/Faculty Signatures
Shawn Alexander, Professor and Chair, African and African American Studies
Nazli Avdan, Associate Professor, Political Science
Ron Barrett-Gonzalez, Professor, Aerospace Engineering
Henry Bial, Professor and Chair, Theatre and Dance
Marie Brown, Associate Professor, History
Kathryn Conrad, Professor and Chair, English
John Hoopes, Professor, Anthropology
Ani Kokobobo, Associate Professor and Chair, Slavic Languages and Literatures
Brian Lagotte, Assistant Teaching Professor, Global & International Studies
Ari Linden, German Studies
Craig Marshall, Associate Professor, Geology
Araceli Masterson-Algar, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, Latin American Studies
Ray Mizumura-Pence, Associate Teaching Professor, American Studies Department
David Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor, American Studies and History
Rachel Schwaller, History, Religious Studies
David Smith, Professor, Sociology
Sherrie Tucker, Professor, American Studies
Marike Janzen, Associate Professor, Humanities
Nick Syrett, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Brett Bricker, Associate Specialist, COMS
Dorothy Daley, Professor, School of Public Affair and Administration & Environmental Studies Program
Shannon O'Lear, Professor, Geography & Atmospheric Science Department and Environmental Studies Program
Purnaprajna Bangere, Professor, Mathematics (and Music)
Robert C. Schwaller, Associate Professor, History
Mabel L. Rice, Fred & Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor, Child Language Doctoral Program
Lua Kamal Yuille (in my individual capacity), Professor, School of Law
Luciano Tosta, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Margot Versteeg, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese and Humanities
Kathryn Rhine, Associate Professor, AAAS & G-AS
Hannah Britton, Professor, Political Science and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Jacob Livingston, Communications Specialist, Humanities Program
Marc L. Greenberg, Professor, Slavic & Eurasian Languages & Literatures, Corresponding member, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Satyagopal Mandal, Professor, Mathematics
Margaret Bayer, Professor of Mathematics
Philip Barnard, Professor Emeritus, English
Joane Nagel, University distinguished professor, Sociology
Devon Mihesuah, Cora Lee Beers Price Professor, Humanities Program
Phillip Drake, Associate Professor, English & Environmental Studies
Kelly Chong, Professor and Chair, Sociology
Jay T Johnson, Professor, Geography & Atmospheric Science
James Moreno, Associate Professor, Theatre and Dance
Margaret Marco, Professor, Music
Sarah Gross, Assistant Professor, Visual Art
Katie Batza, Associate professor and director of graduate studies, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
David B Mechem, Professor and Chair, Geography and Atmospheric Science
Darren Canady, Associate Professor, English
Shannon Portillo, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs & Administration
Ebenezer Obadare, Professor, Sociology
Tami Albin, Associate Librarian, KU Libraries
Greg Wood, Associate Professor, History
Stacey Vanderhurst, Assistant Professor, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Gregory T Cushman, Associate Professor, History / Environmental Studies
Randal Maurice Jelks, Professor, American Studies, African and African American Studies
Nicole Hodges-Persley, Associate Professor, American Studies and African and African American Studies
A. Townsend Peterson, University Distinguished Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Lisa-Marie Wright, Assistant Teaching Professor, Sociology
Corey J. Maley, Associate Professor
Santa Arias, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Steven Maynard-Moody, Professor, SPAA
Symantha Dawson, Instructor, Career Center
Elizabeth Esch, Associate Professor, American Studies
Kelsey Carls, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Giselle Anatol, Professor, English
Brian Rosenblum, Librarian, KU Libraries
Mary Jo Reiff, Professor, English
Jacob Fowles, Associate Professor, SPAA
Rebekah Aycock, GTA, American Studies
Ayesha Hardison, Associate Professor, English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Ward Lyles, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration
Anna Neill, Professor, English
Akiko Takeyama, Associate Professor, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Margaret Jean Arnold, Associate Professor, Emerita English
David Slusky, De-Min and Chin-Sha Wu Associate Professor, Economics
Molly Zahn, Associate Professor, Religious Studies
Margaret Jean, Associate Professor Emerita, English
Alesha Doan, Professor, Spanish & Portuguese; School of Public Affairs & Administration; Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Hannah Soyer, Graduate Teaching Assistant, English
Jennifer Raff, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Joanna Slusky, Associate Professor, Molecular Biosciences
Hollie Hall, Graduate Student Body Vice President, Student Senate
James Yeku, Assistant Professor, African and African American Studies
Elizabeth Asiedu, Professor, Economics
Rachel M. Krause, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration
Ashley Muddiman, Associate Professor, Communication Studies
Shannon Ryall, GTA, American Studies
Renee Perelmutter, Associate Professor and Director, Jewish Studies
Joyce Castle, University Distinguished Professor, School of Music
Zach Parker, Graduate Teaching Assistant, English
Geraldo Sousa, Professor, English
Holly T. Goerdel, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs & Administration
Lorie Vanchena, Associate Professor, German Studies
Samuel Hayim Brody, Associate Professor, Religious Studies
Sylvia Fernandez, Public and Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Researcher, Hall Center for the Humanities
Stephen Dickey, Professor, Slavic & Eurasian Languages & Literatures
Laura Mielke, Dean's Professor, English
Betsaida Reyes, Librarian for Spanish, Portuguese, Latin America and Caribbean Studies, Libraries
Dan Gailey, Director of Jazz Studies/Professor of Music, Music
Margaret Kelley, Associate Professor, American Studies
Chris McKitterick, Faculty, CLAS
Adrianne Kunkel, Professor, Communication Studies
Corey Rayburn Yung, William R. Scott Research Professor, School of Law
Rebecca Rovit, Associate Professor, Theatre and Dance
William Staples, Professor Emeritus/Research Professor, Sociology
Aimee Wilson, Assistant Professor, Humanities Program
David Mahaffey, GTA, Religious Studies
Germaine Halegoua, Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies
Remy lequesne, Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
Ximena, Dr., History
Eileen S. Nutting, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Antha Cotten-Spreckelmeyer, Associate Director, Humanities Program
Sam Worley, Professor, English
Annie Tremblay, Professor, Linguistics
Jeremy Martin, Professor, Department of Mathematics
David W. Congdon, Acquisitions Editor, University Press of Kansas
Rebecca Swinburne Romine, Associate Research Professor, Life Span Institute at the University of Kansas
Ignacio Carvajal, Assistant Professor, Spanish & Portuguese
Marta Caminero-Santangelo, Director/Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies / English
John Kennedy, Professor, Political Science Department and Director of Center for East Asian Studies
Bradford Cokelet, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Andrew Denning, Associate Professor, History
Marcy Quiason, GTA, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Josh Bolick, Assistant Librarian, Libraries
Markus Potter, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
Emma Scioli, Associate Professor, Classics
Eve Levin, Professor Emerita, History
Jane Barnette, Associate Professor, Theatre & Dance
Kristi Neufeld, Professor, Molecular Biosciences
Sarah Robins, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Ben Caplan, Professor, Philosophy
Ellen Collier, Graduate Teaching Assistant, French, Francophone & Italian Studies
Svetlana Vassileva-Karagyozova, Associate Professor, Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literaturess
Frances Glazer Sternberg, Ph.D., Lecturer, Jewish Studies
Anita M Superson, Professor, Philosophy
Isidro J. Rivera, Associate Professor, Spanish & Portuguese
Mary Klayder, Assoc.Dir. UG Stud., Engl. Faculty Fellow
Carolyn Caine, Research Development and Administrative Specialist, Institute for Policy & Social Research
Sunyoung Cheong, Adjunct, Art
Vincent T Francisco, Professor, Applied Behavioral Science
Katherine Pryor, Director of Theatre, Theatre & Dance
Amber Brown, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Vitaly Chernetsky, Associate Professor, Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literatures
Jeff Lang, Professor, Mathematics
Amanda J Snider, Assistant Director, Center for East Asian Studies
Tatiana Scanlan, Lecturer, Slavic Languages and Literatures
Mie Hase, IT engineer
Paul Outka, Associate Professor, English
Berl R. Oakley, Irving S. Johnson Distinguished Professor, Molecular Biosciences
Beth Bailey, Foundation Distinguished Professor, History
Verónica Garibotto, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Ahmad Sobhy Mustafa, GTA, Religious studies
Celka Straughn, Deputy Director for Public Practice, Curatorial and Research, Spencer Museum of Art
Shima Fardad, Assistant Professor, EECS
Alessandro Salandrino, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Don Haider-Markel, Professor and Chair, Political Science
Whitney Baker, Librarian, Libraries
Lena Hileman, Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Antonio Roberto Monteiro Simoes, Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Laura Hines, Professor, School of Law
Xingong Li, Professor, Geography & Atmospheric Science
Lindsey Stone, Assistant professor, Psychology
Alexis Peterson, Administrative Associate, The University of Kansas
Peter H Herlihy, Professor of Geography, Geography and Atmospheric Science
David P. Jarmolowicz, Associate Professor, University of Kansas
Christopher Forth, Dean’s Professor of Humanities/Professor of History
Scott Jenkins, Professor, Philosophy
Yinglong Miao, Assistant Professor, Molecular Biosciences and Computational Biology
Sakthi Kasthurirengan, GRA, Physics & Astronomy
Elspeth Healey, Associate Librarian, KU Libraries
Jessica Gerschultz, Associate Professor, African and African-American Studies
Joan A. Sereno, Professor and Chair, Linguistics
Philip Duncan, Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Linguistics
Jie Zhang, Professor
Dr. Colleen Moore, Assistant Professor, History
Joey Orr, Andrew W Mellon Curator for Research, Spencer Museum
Nicholas Feroce, Graduate Student, Linguistics
Seulgi Shin, GTA, Linguistics
Jonathan Mayhew, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Tara Welch, Professor, Classics
Hailong Dao, Professor, Mathematics
Brianna Perez, GTA in Voice, Music
Ben Chappell, Associate Professor, American Studies
Vicky Unruh, Professor Emerita, Spanish and Portuguese
Andrés Rabinovich, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Spanish and Portuguese
Peter Ukpokodu, Professor, African & African-American Studies
Caroline Jewers, Associate Professor, French, Francophone & Italian Studies
Tanya E Hartman, Chairperson and Professor, Department of Visual Art
Marshall Maude, Associate Professor, Visual Art
Brad Osborn, Associate Professor, Music
Bernard Cornet, Charles Oswald Distinguished Professor of Microeconomics, Department of Economics
Seungjoo Lee, Graduate research assistant, Spanish and Portuguese
Patrizio Ceccagnoli, Associate Professor, French, Francophone and Italian Studies
Andrew Kustodowicz, GTA, History
Megan Kaminski, Associate Professor, English
Megan Dennis, GTA, English
Nils Gore, Professor, Architecture
Lance Rake, Professor, Design
Robert Rohrschneider, Sir Robert Worcester Distinguished Professor, Political Science
John Symons, Professor, Philosophy
John Gluckman, Assistant Professor, Linguistics
Allison Kirkpatrick, Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Robert Antonio, Professor, Sociology
Alice Bean, University Distinguished Professor, Physics and Astronomy
Christopher Fischer, Associate Chair and Director of Engineering Physics, Physics and Astronomy
Alison Gabriele, Professor, Linguistics
Hui Zhao, Professor, Physics and Astronomy
Bruce Hayes, Professor, French, Francophone & Italian Studies
Admin Husic, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
Laura Moriarty, Professor, English
Byron Santangelo, Professor, English and Environmental Studies
Tristan Lindo, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Visual Art
Marta Vicente, Professor, History and WGSS
Hannes Zacharias, Professor of Practice, School of Public Affairs and Administratioin
Dale Urie, Associate Teaching Professor, Humanities
Samantha Bishop Simmons, Undergraduate Learning Specialist, KU Libraries
Hume A. Feldman, Professor and Chair, Physics & Astronomy
Faye Xiao, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Charles Epp, University Distinguished Professor, Public Affairs and Administration
Jason Johnson, IT Support Technician, IT
Kevin Mullinix, Assistant Professor, Political Science
John P. Ralston, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Ann Wierda Rowland, Associate Professor, English
Alesha Pisciotta, Linguistics
Mikhail Medvedev, Professor, Physics and Astronomy
Brian Lines, Associate professor, CEAE
Jason Slote, KPR
Simone Cavalcante, Lecturer, SpanPort - KU
Nathan Wood, Associate Professor, History
Mariana Farah, Associate Professor, Music
Ilya Vakser, Professor and Director, Computational Biology
Stephen Leisring, Professor, Music
Andrea Herstowski, Associate Professor, Design
Eric Stomberg, Professor of Music, School of Music
Dennis H O'Rourke, Foundation Distinguished Professor, Anthropology
Allard Jongman, Professor, Linguistics
Yan Bing Zhang, Professor, Communication Studies
Tingting Wang, GTA, Linguistics
Christopher Perreira, Assistant Professor, American studies
See the full list of individual signers here
About
OneKU is a grassroots organization of faculty, lecturers, librarians and staff who are committed to addressing the current and ongoing crisis at the University of Kansas.
