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Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Why no Nona Gerard?

A reader asks why-- if I teach at Penn State, which I do-- I haven’t weighed in on the controversy swirling around the dismissal of Penn State Altoona professor Nona Gerard.

The short answer is this:  I know next to nothing about the reasons for Gerard’s firing.  I agree with Kieran Healy that “firing tenured professors because they are opinionated jerks seems to set a dangerous precedent,” and indeed I would worry that the “opinionated jerk” standard would cover about sixty percent of the professoriate even if it is irrelevant to Gerard.  That’s why, back in January when I first read about Gerard, my sympathies were entirely with her.  At one point, in fact, I expressed those sympathies, saying, more or less, “my instincts tell me that my sympathies should be with Nona Gerard on this.” Whereupon a couple of my colleagues-- not senior faculty, not administrators, just friends (one of whom teaches at Altoona)-- pulled me aside and said, with all due respect, “Michael, with all due respect, you don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about on this one.” And they were right; I didn’t.  All I had were my instincts.  University Administration vs. out lesbian leftist theater professor?  Ordinarily, I’d bet the house on the underdog.

But most of the people who’ve commented thus far on Gerard don’t have much more than instinct, either.  Last week Brian Leiter declared that “Penn State leaves the ranks of serious universities” with this decision, and even the more circumspect Timothy Burke (who is always more circumspect, even when he’s dealing with people who shoot from the holster) opens a Crooked Timber comment with “the Penn State case is bad.”

Maybe it is.  We know that the vote was 5-0 against the charge that Gerard failed to perform her duties; 5-0 in favor of the charge of grave misconduct; and 3-2 to rescind tenure.  So we know, at minimum, that there was serious debate among the committee members with regard to the charges brought against Gerard, and that two people who were persuaded that Gerard’s actions (whatever they were) amounted to “grave misconduct” did not agree that this grave misconduct justified the revocation of tenure.

And we also know this:  this isn’t a case like the one at the University of Southern Mississippi, where university president Shelby Thames allegedly locked two professors out of their offices (I hear their computers have been confiscated as well) before initiating dismissal procedures.  Apparently, the grounds for the dismissal are that the professors in question (according to the Chronicle of Higher Education) had been involved in an AAUP investigation of the USM provost:

Mr. Glamser, president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said in a telephone interview that he and Mr. Stringer had been suspended because of their involvement with the AAUP’s investigation of the academic credentials of a senior administrator.

In December, according to Mr. Glamser, he received an anonymous packet of information alleging that Angeline Godwin Dvorak, the vice president for research and economic development, had misrepresented herself on various documents as having been a tenured associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky. Ms. Dvorak has denied falsifying her credentials.

The USM Faculty Senate has responded with a 40-0 vote of no confidence in Thames, and apparently-- according to local media-- President Thames has a history of autocratic leadership in his two years at the helm, so this isn’t particularly anomalous.

So with a tip of the cap to Kieran Healy, whose judgment usually seems reasonably sound, I have to think that there really isn’t any plausible linkage between a Penn State case that respected due process and came to a debatable conclusion, and a University of Southern Mississippi case that involved a peremptory lockout of two professors who were involved in an investigation of a senior member of the administration.

Last but not least:  I am not interested in protecting my employer on this one.  My instincts continue to tell me to regard all revocations of tenure with deep suspicion, and besides, I have a long history of denouncing my employers (the University of Illinois, 1989-2001, and Penn State, 2001-present) when the need arises, especially with regard to their dealings with graduate students.  But I think there’s a world of difference between a questionable decision and a manifest outrage.  The Penn State decision should be pursued, and the grounds for Gerard’s dismissal made available for broader review.  And the USM decision should be simply and unambiguously denounced.

UPDATE:  Kieran Healy follows up on his earlier post here, noting “that there just isn’t enough information available to make a judgment” but that “the bar for revoking tenure is pretty damn high.” I agree-- and it’s not clear that the bar was cleared in this case (and apparently two of the committee members didn’t think so either).  I should add, also, that the colleagues who spoke to me about Gerard earlier this year weren’t arguing in favor of revoking her tenure.

UPDATE UPDATE:  Erin O’Connor offers a measured response to this post, in the course of which she writes that she’s “troubled by the passive voice construction” in its penultimate sentence.  Fair enough.  So, who should do the pursuing?  I say the AAUP-- and in the meantime, I will continue to reserve judgment about the substance of the case until I learn more about it.

Posted by Michael on 03/09 at 03:20 PM
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