The future of Syracuse University’s promotion policies may be more dangerous to academic freedom than the threats that resulted from the firing of a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University Senate voted on Wednesday.

The unanimously voted motion came up after Bruce Carter, associate professor of psychology and child and family studies, presented two motions in response to the May 10 decision by the Board of Trustees. The decision called for the promotions policy to be changed in several ways, including that the Vice-Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina handle all cases of promotion, instead of faculty in respective schools and colleges. The senate also discussed a resolution on academic freedom that concerned a professor losing his job at Urbana-Champaign after controversial tweets about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The University Senate voted to object to the Board of Trustees’ decision, citing that the decision ignored a 76-1 senate motion to create a committee of tenured faculty members that would review promotion decisions. Instead it relied on an incomplete report created by the now-defunct University Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Promotions. The second motion reaffirmed that involving only the administration in promotion cases would remove faculty entirely from the decision making process.

Both motions concluded by saying that the senate calls for the board to “reconsider their decision and/or explain their actions.”

“It devalues the meaning of promotion at any rank at this university, since it opens up for consideration lots of non-scholarly, non-professional considerations to be used in promotions,” said Robert Rubinstein, chair of the Appointment and Promotions Committee.

The board’s decision also called for the creation of a task force of faculty to work with Spina in creating a new faculty committee to meet with him and make recommendations on promotion and tenure cases. Spina said he and Syverud will be meeting to talk about membership on the committee, but that currently “the ball is in my (Spina’s) court.”

The senate also motioned to endorse the four recommendations included in the report by the Appointment and Promotions Committee, which included that, for this year only, the Office of Academic Affairs comply with the board’s decision; that the task force should include current and recent members of the Appointment and Promotions Committee; that the official faculty review and advisory committee should include the chair of the Appointment and Promotions Committee; and that the Office of Academic Affairs work with the Committee on Appointment and Promotions to make sure the new policies are consistent across the university.

After the academic freedom resolution was tabled at the last senate meeting, Mark Rupert and Margaret Susan Thompson, political science professors and university senators, introduced their resolution in support of academic and shared governance at Urbana-Champaign. At the last senate meeting, the motion was tabled so that Rupert could gather more faculty opinions on the issue.

Many senators expressed concern that the resolution would insinuate SU supports Steven Salaita’s tweets about Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which resulted in the revoking of his promotion to tenure.

Miriam Elman, a non-senator and associate professor of political science, argued that hiring decisions come with a different standard than termination decisions, so refusing to appoint Salaita to tenure based on his tweets could have been justified. She added that many of Salaita’s tweets contained anti-Semitic messages.

“Would we wish to welcome onto our campus a faculty member who would choose to represent himself or herself in this way on public online forums?” Elman said. “I would suspect many of us would be writing in and phoning up Chancellor (Kent) Syverud urging him to reconsider the hire.”

Rupert reaffirmed that the resolution calls for Urbana-Champaign to either honor Salaita’s promotion, or justify why they felt it was necessary to refuse him tenure. He added that SU should allow for the faculty and administration at Urbana-Champaign to decide whether it was justified, not the senate.

Still, Harvey Teres, an associate English professor, motioned for the resolution to be tabled so that the committees could have more time to review it.

“I think I agree that this is not nearly strong enough, I think we need to go back to the drawing boards,” Teres said. “I think there’s a lot in this resolution that I would support, but there’s also a lot that needs revised.”

Other business discussed at the meeting:

— Starting Friday, there will be a 10-day faculty comment period on the Tobacco Free and Smoke Free Campus Policy.

— The Senate Administrative Operations Committee announced that it would be focusing on parking services this year, specifically on examining parking fees and parking space assignments.

— The senate Committee on LGBT Concerns presented a resolution on LGBT advocacy, which passed unanimously. The resolution stated that the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics will work with the senate Committee on LGBT Concerns and other LGBT organizations to prevent and punish instances of harassment and homophobia, as well as several other points.

The resolution included several points, such as: the senate supports efforts by LGBT organizations to decrease use of offensive language focused on sexual orientation and gender identity in the university community; the university community will work with curricular and co-curricular departments to address instances of offensive speech inside and outside the classroom; the university administration will include LGBT advocates on all initiatives concerning campus diversity and inclusion; that the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics will work with the senate Committee on LGBT Concerns and other LGBT organizations to prevent and punish instances of harassment and homophobia.

Published on November 6, 2014 at 12:01 am

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