Posted on 06/10/2015 7:32:55 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
“Bad news always seems to drop on Fridays,” Dave Vanness, an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, wrote on a blog which appeared on the blogroll that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) maintains. “Friday May 29, 2015 was a particularly bad news day for Wisconsin and for all of us who believe in academic freedom,” he avers.
“On that day, Joint Finance Committee of the State of Wisconsin passed Omnibus Motion #521 on a 12-4 party-line vote, including a $250 million biennium budget cut to UW System, major changes to shared governance (a huge topic for another time) and a complete redefinition of tenure as we know it.”
“It’s important to recognize that there are two key sections of OM#521. First, there’s Section 12, which strikes definition of a “tenure appointment” and the standard of dismissal ‘only for just cause and only after due notice and hearing’ from Section 36 of the state statutes. The purpose of Section 12 would seem to be to kick the definition of tenure and ‘dismissal for just cause’ from where it resided, without issue, in state statute — over to the Board of Regents. If this were the only provision of the bill, Wisconsin would merely be facing a reduction of tenure protection from “A – Excellent” to “C – Average.” Food for thought: On Wednesday, June 3, 2015, at an Ethics and Public Policy forum here in Washington, D. C., Professor Peter Lawler of Berry College pointed out that hardly any professors are tenured anymore. Back to Professor Vanness.
“Second, there’s the far more worrisome Section 39, which addresses the other way in which tenured faculty can lose their jobs: termination of their position or layoff in the event of a bona fide financial emergency,” Professor Vanness writes. “Section 39 strikes the language ‘when a financial emergency exists’ from current law and replaces it with the alarmingly vague standard ‘deemed necessary due to a budget or program decision regarding program discontinuance, curtailment, modification, or redirection.’ Now, we’re talking ‘F=Failure.’”
By the way, at the same symposium Professor Lawler addressed, Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue, pointed out that his university has been able to freeze tuition for four straight years and, thus, reduce student debt by 18 percent. Interestingly, it was Daniels’ successful battles with public employees unions in Indiana which inspired Governor Walker in Wisconsin.
...major changes to shared governance (a huge topic for another time.....
Trying to Kill Tenure [Gov. Scott Walker's state budget] - every other word is about "shared governance."
"Shared governance gives representation to academic staff, classified staff, faculty and students, who all take part in making significant decisions concerning the operation of the university....." [SNIP] Please consult the links below for more information."......
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And if you're interested (you should be) check out: Wisconsin Idea and find out why the Left when apoplectic when Walker moved to put his fingers on it (signaling its vulnerable).
*ping*
“Friday May 29, 2015 was a particularly bad news day for Wisconsin and for all of us who believe in academic freedom,”
Academic freedom only applies to Gay Mafia and other liberal whack jobs.
Welcome to the real world, academics. The bubble that shelters Madison from reality is about to be popped.
Just a quick thank-you for all the posts, helping tell Gov. Walkers story of accomplishement.
Do you actually think without tenure any of the academic climatologists or statisticians who are critical of the global warming hysteria would still have jobs?
No, academic freedom applies to everyone, and tenure is its guardian. The left has done enough to destroy the university as an institution of Western Civilization, we don’t need Scott Walker and the rest of his ilk who want to remake the university in the image of a commercial corporation (and that includes a lot of university administrators) completing the process. Conservatives (what is it we want to conserve? Just the American Founding, or is it the patrimony of Western Civilization, including the American Founding?) should be seeking to restore the university, not complete its destruction.
It’s a great story!
The libs are so entrenched there is no way we can restore the high principles of academic freedom.
(I say that as someone who is in a “staff” position at a major university.)
It means that dip-@i$t courses in social sciences, etc can get the ax because they’re useless and cost the university, so they’re gone.
Gov. Walker’s and the Republican legislature are giving UW the power to clean house.
Universities across the country are watching closely.
bada bing!
Sir,
This is about RESORTING power so that the UW power can clean house (if they wish, which I think some there do).
bump
I kept looking and searching in the media to find out what the budget at the UW System is for the next 2 years. All I could find was the caterwauling about the $250 million dollar cuts over 2 years. Finally found this at Right Wisconsin:
“The overall budget for the UW System is $6,098 million per year. (Another way of saying $6.1 billion.) The $150 million cut per year represents about 2.5 percent of the total yearly operating budget.”
Actually the cuts have been reduced to $125 million per year. That seems doable. Thank you Charlie Sykes.
That “bubble” that protects the academic staff and institutions at UW-Madison has proved in the past to be something on the order of the impenetrable transparent barrier as depicted in the TV series “Under the Dome”.
And like that dome, the “bubble” surrounding the UW grounds is resistant to any external forces, but within, it is a fevered competition for resources and settlement of petty quarrels by sometimes drastic means.
I was there as a non-academic employee for about four years back in the 1960’s, just as the campus revolutions were starting to ramp up. The community had always been a sort of closed shop, “progressives only”, and I fit in there like a square peg in a round hole, and the situation has only gotten much worse since then. I left before the bombings started, but I had come in contact with plenty of the students who could have be inclined to take that course of action. The worst part was, the persons who got bombed probably agreed in good measure with the objectives of the bombers themselves.
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“Tenure” needs to just go away.
No one should ever be guaranteed a job without regard to their inadequate performance.
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>> “The worst part was, the persons who got bombed probably agreed in good measure with the objectives of the bombers themselves.” <<
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Gee! Sometimes one has to make a little sacrifice for what one believes in...
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Scott Walker (who has no degree) attacks academic tenure the single biggest problem facing America and the World. I’m mesmerized. :-)
Madison: 35 square miles surrounded by reality.
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