Minutes, General Meeting January 30, 2021 – AAUP Louisiana Conference

Meeting: LA State Conference, AAUP

January 30, 2021

Present:
Elected Board
Leslie Bary (President) (UL Lafayette)
Sudhir Trivedi (Vice President) (SU-BR)
Thomas Miller (Secretary) (SU-BR)
Kevin Cope (Treasurer) (LSU-BR)
David Reid (At-large) (UL Lafayette)
Ravi Rau (Past President) (LSU-BR)

General Membership: Hugh Wilson (Grambling), Laura Adderly (Tulane), Matthew Ware (Grambling), Brooks Elwood (LSU-BR), Christof Stumpf (LSU-A), Felicia Fulk (Xavier), Ilko Iliev (SUSLA), Jana Giles (ULM), Jennifer Creery (Southeastern), Judith Miranti (Xavier), Michelle Glaros (Centenary), Ravi Rau (LSU-BR), Sudhir Trivedi (SUBR), Vipin Menon (McNeese), NG Gwee (SUBR), Peter Siska (LSU-S), Son Mai (McNeese), A. Augustin-Billy (Centenary).

Meeting begins: 10:00 am

Committee Reports:

Letter on Garrett Felber – The text of the letter from the Conference and the LSU-BR Chapter to the Chancellor of UM on the dismissal of Professor Garrett Felber is attached as an appendix at the end of these Minutes. Felber’s dismissal has occasioned national and international outcry and we felt a statement from a neighboring state would be helpful.
Treasurer’s Report – Expenses this quarter were just over $1,000, including the five partial dues subsidies approved in the fall and $500 from Committee A to support a complaint on working conditions at LSUS. Income included the annual dues rebate from AAUP national of some $1,200, and a bonus from AAUP national of about $500 in lieu of a possible conference development grant. These were not administered this year due to the COVID-19 situation, and the money was divided equally among conferences. We have thus taken in slightly more than we spent, and our bank account remains at over $26,000.
Ad hoc committee on COVID 19 – A draft of the faculty survey has been created. Trivedi, Christof and Miller will meet on Saturday, Feb. 6, to review and revise. Following this, the survey will be distributed to members of the various campuses. There is general agreement that the instrument should be used to survey all faculty, not just AAUP members. The Faculty Senate president of each campus can disseminate, with the option of tailoring the survey to the particular needs of the individual campus.
Committee A- No new grievances were filed this quarter. New members are nonetheless sought to help redistribute the workload, as each case can be time consuming and work is best divided.
Committee on Gender and Sexuality – Is functioning as an interest group rather than a working committee but seeks membership. Contact person is Judith Miranti at Xavier.
Committee on Media Management – Outreach and Communication should fall under the purview of this committee. In addition to the existing website, it was suggested that we consider creating and hosting a Face Book page to increase visibility of the State Conference. After some discussion, it was agreed that the State Conference should make use of the organization’s website for internal discussion, open to members only, and that the Face Book page should be used to post documents, discussions, etc. The Face Book page contributions would be restricted to the organization and its members.

Old Business:

Resolution on HE Boards – The resolution was drafted and presented to the Commissioner of Higher Education by Jim Robinson, AAUP member and President of the Association of Louisiana Faculty Senates (ALFS). It was received and put under consideration. Should the Committee not hear from the Commissioner before February 14th, the committee will re-engage to move it forward. The resolution seeks faculty representation on all Boards of Higher Education.
Membership – (President Leslie Bary). We are about to break 250 members, nearly a 50% increase over membership in summer 2018. If we have 251 or more at institutions with chapters, we get a second delegate to the national convention. Our goal is a) to replace everyone who retires or moves with two new members and (b) create chapters where there are none.

New Business:

Faculty retirement – Update on suit pertaining to TRSL/ORP (Kevin Cope, Roger Laine) – A lawsuit has been filed by the LSU faculty senate to address issues of imbalance in the way in which contributions to the separate retirement systems are collected. Also at issue is the disparity of the support each group of contributors receives in terms of financial counseling. A percentage of contributions to the the Optional Retirement Plan (ORP), most of whose members are University faculty, goes to the Teachers Retirement State Plan (TRSL) without any corresponding benefits. In other words, the state is ‘taxing’ ORP contributors to shore-up an underfunded TRSL.

Timelines for the suit:

April 28, 2021 – Process of discovery begins (submission, by all parties, of documents related to the suit)
May 15, 2021 – Witnesses to the suit determined
June 5, 2021 – Final discovery (Date before which all relevant documents should have been submitted)
July 14, 2021 – Court proceedings begin.

Academic Freedom – Academic freedom, particularly in the context of faculty handbooks and tenure/promotion policy (language on “respect” and collegiality). There was a recent discussion of this at Cambridge University and AAUP has a clear position on it, however, such language is increasingly present in our handbooks and increasingly difficult to remove (Jana Giles).

All are in agreement that the inclusion in Faculty Handbooks of language requiring ‘collegiality’ and ‘respectful’ or ‘positive’ attitudes is inappropriate. The AAUP website has multiple articles on this. Such language runs contrary to the basic principles of Academic Freedom and the State conference will address this issue on a campus-by-campus basis.

Two additional issues relative to Academic Freedom were broached. 1) The need for recommended procedures leading to meaningful inclusion of faculty in the creation and revision of faculty handbooks; 2) The need for a detailed examination and discussion of procedures used in the hiring of faculty. A subsequent meeting will be held to explore these topics with recommendations following.

3. The Kansas Board of Regents has declared that all state institutions of Higher Education can, in response to the crisis brought on by COVID 19, dismiss anyone, tenured or non-tenured, without having to demonstrate financial exigency. This is, in effect, an abolition of tenure. The Louisiana State Conference leadership will draft a letter in opposition and address it to the offending authorities.

4. Spring Meeting – The spring meeting scheduled for April 24^th will take place via video conferencing given there is little change of either a) the end of the COVID 19 or b) the celebration that was to bring us all together in the first place, namely, the Festival International.

Meeting concludes: 12:05 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

THOMAS MILLER
Secretary

APPENDIX

Letter on Garrett Felber

Dr. Glenn Boyce, Chancellor
University of Mississippi

Dear Chancellor Boyce,

The Executive Committee and Committee A of the Louisiana Conference of the American Association of University Professors, and the LSU-Baton Rouge Chapter of AAUP, endorse the well-publicized letters already sent by entities including the American Historical Association and joins all those urging you to reconsider the non-renewal of Assistant Professor of History Dr. Garrett Felber. It is surprising that a scholar so productive and committed to his field should not be retained at a SEC flagship R-1 university such as the University of Mississippi.

It is our understanding that Dr. Felber’s termination follows his insistence on limiting interactions with his department chair, Dr. Noell Wilson, to email. In other words, the official reason for his non-renewal is his desire to maintain a paper trail of communications with his superior. This strikes us as a perfectly reasonable desire and hardly disruptive of departmental business.

We are also aware that Dr. Felber has run afoul of university administrators for his public critiques of the University’s financial ties to private prison companies. Since Dr. Felber is a prominent scholar of carceral studies, such criticism should be welcome at a public university whose mission statement announces:

The University of Mississippi provides an academic experience that emphasizes critical thinking; promotes research and creative achievement to advance society; uses its expertise to engage and transform communities; challenges and inspires a diverse community of … students; offers enriching opportunities outside the classroom; supports lifelong learning; and develops a sense of global responsibility.

Throughout its history, the AAUP has defended the principles of academic freedom and shared governance precisely because it shares the above vision. We, your neighbors, hope that the leadership of the University of Mississippi will reassess Dr. Wilson’s decision and reinstate Dr. Felber.

[Signed] Leslie Bary (President, LA Conference AAUP), Kevin Cope (Chair, Committee A, LA Conference AAUP), Brooks Ellwood (President, LSU-BR Chapter AAUP), Bryan McCann (Secretary, LSU-BR Chapter AAUP)