You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Governance’ category.
Regular readers will remember that a few weeks ago an administrator at CUNY’s Queensboro Community College threatened to eviscerate the college’s English Department — eliminate composition courses at the college, terminate all adjuncts, halt all job searches, fire full-time faculty — in retaliation for the department’s refusal to scale back its comp courses to comply with Pathways, a controversial new CUNY-wide curricular scheme. It was bizarre, and scary.
The administrator in question eventually apologized in the face of criticism from this site and a bunch of other good folks, and the president of QCC walked back — but didn’t quite close the door on — her threats. The story has been simmering on campus ever since, but there haven’t been any big public developments until now.
Last night the Queensboro Academic Senate met and made it clear that they’re standing by the department and will resist any attempt to go forward with the administration’s threats. I’m still working on getting all the official details out of the meeting, but here’s what I’ve been told so far.
First, in a “nearly unanimous” vote, the Academic Senate passed a resolution affirming Queensboro’s non-negotiable obligation to continue to offer composition courses to its students. “It shall be the official policy of Queensboro Community College,” the resolution declared, that the college “must not violate state law or regulation … jeopardize its accreditations … [or] violate its agreements … by failing to offer courses in sufficient number required for its degree programs.” It further declared that “these obligations must be honored, irrespective of whether Queensboro’s course listings adhere to the specifications of the CUNY Common Required and Flexible Cores.”
Queensboro needs to offer composition, in other words, and as far as the Academic Senate is concerned the college will continue to offer composition, whatever happens with the Pathways fight.
An additional resolution saw more debate, a little more opposition, and a few amendments, and I don’t yet have a precise picture of how that discussion turned out. But in its original form, the second resolution noted the CUNY administration’s lack of attention to “the objections of faculty across CUNY” to the Pathways plan, and called the proposal to scale back composition and similar courses a “particularly problematic” change to “already flawed … schema.” Reviewing showdown between the English department and the QCC administration the resolution declared its “strong support” for the department’s “academic freedom … to render their best academic judgments” on such issues.
In a meatier, forward-looking passage the resolution — again, as originally proposed — declared that “no further review” of Pathways course specifications “can proceed … until and unless the academic judgment and academic freedom of the faculty are fully respected, and guaranteed, in a written document” and the threats to cut course offerings and faculty “is formally retracted” in writing.
Finally, the resolution declared that “no curriculum, adopted by the faculty under pressure and constraint, should ever be interpreted by Administrative personnel … or any media organization as denoting any degree of faculty support for the Pathways initiative, which is overwhelmingly rejected by members of our faculty as harmful to our students and poor educational practice.”
I’m told that this resolution passed by a margin of about four-to-one after unspecified amendments. As soon as I have the exact details I’ll pass them along.
For an hour this morning, starting at eleven o’clock Eastern Time, the US Supreme Court will interrogate lawyers representing the state of Texas, the federal government, and a young woman who recently graduated from Louisiana State University. That woman, Abigail Noel Fisher, is suing the University of Texas in an attempt to recoup a $50 application fee and a $50 housing deposit that she forfeited when she was denied admission to UT several years ago.
It’s a weird case, and it gets weirder. The Supremes last addressed affirmative action in college admissions — the issue at the heart of today’s case — just nine years ago, with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor fashioning a narrow compromise that allowed campuses to consider race (but not in any quantifiable way) in order to promote campus diversity (but not as redress for past discrimination). Many observers consider it unlikely that Justice Anthony Kennedy will be persuaded to completely abandon that standard, particularly so soon after it was implemented.
Complicating things even further, the newest member of the Court — Elena Kagan, herself a former university dean (Harvard Law, 2003-2009) — won’t be participating, having recused herself due to her involvement in the case during her brief tenure as President Obama’s first Solicitor General.
The Court is deeply divided on the issue of affirmative action right now. In a 2007 opinion Chief Justice Roberts — joined by the Court’s other three staunch conservatives — wrote flatly (and famously) that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” That doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room.
On the other side, Kagan is as noted sitting this one out, and two of her liberal colleagues are on record in support of affirmative action in college admissions. The third, Obama appointee Sonia Sotomayor, hasn’t written on the subject yet as a justice, but she seems an unlikely defector on this issue.
Given all this, and barring any truly bizarre surprises, there are three ways this decision could come down:
First, Justice Kennedy could join with the Court’s four most conservative justices in a decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions entirely. Many observers consider this unlikely, but others note that Kennedy has never cast a vote on the Court in favor of an affirmative action policy.
Second, Kennedy could join with the Court’s conservatives in a decision that preserves campus affirmative action, but limits it even further. Considering the narrow scope in which admissions officials currently operate, and the fact that it was Kennedy himself who established the present framework, this is likely to result in a head-scratcher of a decision.
And third, Kennedy could join with the Court’s three liberals in affirming the status quo, or something similar. This would mean a four-four tie, which would, given the Court’s rules, leave the Texas admissions setup intact without creating new precedent. If that happens, the Court may well call a do-over with a new case — and Kagan’s participation — in the fairly near future.
If I had to bet, I’d bet on number three. But I wouldn’t bet much. (For a deeper analysis of all this from someone who knows much more than I do, check out this detailed analysis from SCOTUSblog. For my own take on the moral and practical issues at stake in the case, read this rant from yesterday.)
Oral arguments are at eleven o’clock this morning. Transcripts should be made available this afternoon, and audio at the end of the week. (The Supreme Court does not permit video recording or livestreaming of oral arguments.) Expect lots of wild guessing and speculation by the end of the day about what the arguments mean (including from me), and look for an actual decision to come down sometime next spring.
Tomorrow the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Fisher v. Texas, addressing the constitutionality of affirmative action in college admissions. I wrote a piece on the history of the case and how the Court might rule back in July, and I’d encourage you to go take a look at it if you’re not familiar with the background. But this morning I want to talk about something a little less technical.
Here’s how the case’s plaintiff, rejected University of Texas applicant Abigail Fisher, described what’s at stake in today’s New York Times:
“I’m hoping that they’ll completely take race out of the issue in terms of admissions and that everyone will be able to get into any school that they want no matter what race they are but solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it.”
For better or worse, that’s not remotely on the table.
Colleges accept and reject candidates for all sorts of reasons that have little or nothing to do with merit. They take legacies — relatives of other graduates — because those admissions are good for alumni donations. They accept football players because bowl games and shirt sales are good for the bottom line. Many private colleges consider a student’s wealth in admissions decisions, and many publics are pumping up out-of-state admissions to enhance tuition revenue. None of this has anything to do with merit.
And all of it is completely legal.
That’s worth underscoring. It’s not illegal to discriminate on the basis of non-academic factors in college admissions in the United States. There are no barriers to rejecting students because they’re not rich, or went to crappy high schools, or studied the piccolo instead of the oboe in a year when you’ve already got enough piccolo players. Unfair, arbitrary, and venal admissions standards are part of the fabric of every selective college’s decision-making process.
And there’s something truly twisted about the argument that all of that is okay but affirmative action — precisely because it’s intended as a remedy for the country’s long history of racial discrimination, a history that didn’t end in 1865 or 1954 or 1963, but continues to this very day — is not.
When we as a country say that it’s right and just to accept one student because her high school had a great gymnastics program or her parents are big donors or her grandfather was a dean while while we simultaneously recoil at the “racism” of giving a boost to another student who, as a result of the nation’s persisting inequities, had no chance to acquire any of those advantages, we aren’t saying we want to move beyond our history of racial discrimination.
We’re saying we want to lock it in.
As many as forty people were killed early Tuesday morning in a student hostel adjoining Federal Polytechnic Mubi, a college in northeastern Nigeria, and authorities are trying to piece together why.
Initial suspician centered on Boko Hiram, a violent Islamist group whose name literally means “western education is forbidden.” But given the nature of the killings and the reported targets, officials now believe that the massacre may be connected to student elections held last weekend.
The police commissioner for the region told reporters that many of those killed “were executive leaders that were elected” in the Saturday elections, which the New York Times said were “bitterly contested along religious and ethnic lines.” The BBC reports that student union leadership positions in Nigeria are often “stepping stones” to careers in national politics, providing opportunities for economic advancement. The new leader of the Mubi student union is said to be one of those killed.
Nigeria also has a history of university violence in connection with unofficial fraternities which have been described as campus cults. In 1999 eight students at Obafemi Awololo University in southwestern Nigeria, including the secretary-general of the campus student union, were murdered by members of the Black Axe Confraternity.
Federal Polytechnic Mubi is a campus of some fourteen thousand students which opened in 1979 and moved to its current location in 1982. In the last six years its student body has more than quadrupled, and it now has a staff of some two thousand faculty and other employees.
The college has been closed since the massacre, and many students are now evacuating the area.
When the student union at the University of Florida was built in 1967, students requested that it be named in honor of outgoing university president J. Wayne Reitz. Today, students are fighting over whether that name should stand.
As UF president, Reitz participated in a purge of gay faculty and students that involved the firing and expulsion of dozens of people. During his administration, the university also failed to integrate until placed under court order, and then only haltingly, and in 1967 a popular professor was denied tenure because of his political views.
Student activists at UF want the union building renamed for Virgil Hawkins, a local black scholar who fought a ten-year battle to integrate the UF school of law in the 1940s and 50s, but the attempt has run into resistance from the campus student government.
Student of color and LGBT groups on campus have held several demonstrations around the issue, with tensions rising after a popular law professor’s car was vandalized with the word “faggot” in mid-September.
Activists collected five hundred signatures in recent months in favor of a non-binding campus referendum on the name change, but student government officials have attempted to block it twice — first by claiming that the signatures were improperly obtained, and then, when that challenge was rejected, by objecting to the wording of the referendum question. Critics of the student government say the body is being improperly influenced by the Reitz family, who remain major donors to the university.
In a late September ruling the student government court stripped the contested language from the question, but allowed the referendum to be placed before the students, with the referendum expected later this month.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments