UW: Should I stay or should I go?

There’s a lot of talk now about UW faculty being poached or just looking to flee the state. The following is a real letter from a senior faculty member at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. I have been saying that the first real question for faculty now is whether to run or to fight. Below is that person’s decision. With all the talk of people leaving under present circumstances, it’s a reminder that there’s another option.

This faculty member had been repeatedly invited last year to apply for a position that was pretty much ideal for them, a situation with serious new resources at an excellent institution with real chances to build something big and lasting. They had resisted but eventually decided that the opportunity to do something important for their field was very real and that the prospects for real innovation at Madison were deteriorating rapidly. So they applied. The application was moving to the very serious stages of the hiring process, but the person says “when the JFC omnibus came out, everything changed. I had to think about this anew, from the beginning”.  The letter went out a couple days ago.

Dear -----, dear ------, dear ------,
After two weeks of soul searching, I am writing now to tell you that I’ve decided that I must withdraw from consideration for appointment to the position of Chair in ---------- at ---------- University. Having served on many search committees, I know how much time and effort goes into scrutinizing candidates, and apologize for having put the committee through this extra work. 

As I said several times during the process, I have not applied for a job in many years, nor even seriously considered applying for one. The decision to apply for this position reflected the amazing possibilities the position represents.  It’s a set of opportunities and challenges I would dearly love to tackle. 

In ways I could not have expected when I applied or even when I spoke most recently with ----------, my professional circumstances have changed very suddenly and right now I simply cannot abandon the University of Wisconsin. Our budget has been slashed year after year and I knew that those cuts would continue apace this year and next. But the state legislature has now proposed to eliminate tenure protections and our tradition of shared governance. I had earlier reached a decision that I could continue to work with my graduate students and continue collaborations here from afar, but we now face a serious, long-term battle for the future of a great institution and the future of higher education in this state. I’ve invested too much in and owe too much to this institution, my students and people here at early career stages to simply walk away at this juncture. 

The position at ---------- is an exciting and important one for a set of areas in our field and I’m honored to have been considered so seriously for it. I know that there are outstanding candidates and I look forward to collaborating with the person who ultimately takes the position. 

With my apologies and wishes for a successful hire,
Yours,

This person has a message for faculty as well:

I struggled personally with this decision, but this is a national fight. If Wisconsin goes, you know that other states will follow. Way back when, I thought moving to Wisconsin meant moving to a politically stable, secure place. Nowhere is safe now. So whether you stay or go, you have to engage. As public higher education is being systematically destroyed, tenured and tenure-track faculty are still among the most privileged and best protected. You have to fight for your own interests, but you better also be fighting for the staff who make your job possible and the students up to their eyeballs in debt. We’re in this together and we win together or lose together.

Just fyi.
Mr. Verb

Open attack on academic freedom and free speech

Look at this clip of an interview with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. The host, Mike Gousha, asks specifically about tenure, "why do changes need to be made?" Starting around 2:00, Fitzgerald responds with this:

The idea that anybody should be protected from any kind of criticism when they make public comments or even the way they handle themselves on campus is just not sitting well with many of us. 

He shortly thereafter comes back around to talk about professors being "completely protected", in case you found "anybody" ambiguous.

Now, tenure is not about criticism that I can see and faculty are hardly protected from criticism (see below or, my god, read a newspaper). What we are protected from is being fired for doing legitimate research or speaking our minds. That's surely what he means.

And you do know that there's already political consequences for people doing normal research, including firing and public calls for firing: (1) firing a bunch of scientists from the Department of Natural Resources who had worked on politically charged issues and (2) a sitting state senator making scathing attacks on a professor because of his research.

The house is on fire, folks.


Image in recognition of Donald Trump announcement that he's running for president. In case the news wasn't insane enough for you yet.

The real misperception about the politics surrounding the University of Wisconsin

This blog has been silent about recent developments aimed at destroying the University of Wisconsin by more rapid defunding, by dismantling tenure and by forbidding shared governance.

We've seen the Board of Regents decline to step up and urge the state not to do these things. We've seen the System president and Madison chancellor reassure us repeatedly that there's really no problem here and then that it's not as bad as it seems and now that they're doing all they can to lessen the damage.

The latest message from our chancellor (here) is intended, among other things, to "help clarify some misperceptions".

The only real misperception here is any failure to understand and to say clearly and directly that the state government — the governor and the assembly and the senate — intends to defund UW, dismantle tenure and destroy shared governance and this is a huge step toward accomplishing those goals. They have been very open about this (e.g. here) and to pretend like things aren't heading that way is maddening.

What do we do? Well, you can run or you can stand and fight. If you choose the latter or have no choice but to stay, there's only one way to go: Organized action. A member of Team Verb posted this list on fb last week; consider it a suggestion to join and be active in the relevant groups:

• TAA
• AAUP
• PROFS 
• WUU
• UFAS

The TAA has fought more effectively than anybody for UW in a broad sense, and even if you can't join, you should support them. AAUP is our big national ally and word on the street is that the long moribund local chapter is getting going again. PROFS is the key group working with state government (to the extent that is possible at present) and their website is a good source of information about what's happening. There are two small unions on campus for faculty and academic staff, the Wisconsin University Union and United Faculty and Academic Staff. My real hope is that these groups will now all work together ... the stakes could not be higher. 

LSA 'Foundation Members' from Wisconsin

Somebody just told me about looking through the lists of original members of the Linguistic Society of America — they'd talked to someone at another university who'd actually investigated this in detail for their institution. The list of original members is published in the first issue of Language, 1925, and includes everyone who had joined before the end of March of that year. I thought, "oh, great, I'll write a little quiz post asking who can guess the Wisconsin foundation members". Well, I checked out the list and the Wisconsin folks are probably not familiar to a lot of people, even those who know the history of linguistics on campus.

• Prof. A. G. Laird, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. (Greek)
• Dr. Raphael Levy, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisc. (Romance Langs.) 
• Prof. Antonio G. Solalinde, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisc. (Spanish) 
• Miss Else M. Saleski, Madison, Wis. (German, Univ. of Wisconsin) 

These were important figures on campus. Laird was editor of the Classical Journal 1907-1909, and Solalinde directed the dissertation of Lloyd Kasten, later a key figure in linguistics and philology on campus. Saleski, who went on to teach at Downer College (now UW–Milwaukee) and elsewhere, is mentioned in Julia Falk's Women, Language and Linguistics.

Others with strong Wisconsin connections include Leonard Bloomfield and Eduard Prokosch.