James D. Gordon III
Associate Academic Vice President
D-387 ASB
8 April 1997
Dear Jim:
Thank you for your letter of 25 March responding to our letters of
13 March and 27 February.
You correctly point out that in our first letter we requested
something that seems to go against AAUP guidelines -- "We ask you to
carefully consider the appropriateness of the request from the Rank
and Status committee and direct them in the proper way to proceed."
We added that sentence to a draft of our letter in a conscious
attempt to ease the tension, to allow the administration to step back
gracefully from a counterproductive and ill-advised policy. We
should not have done so, and we apologize. In the process, however,
you have clearly stated the administration's commitment to faculty
governance, and that is a positive step.
It seems important, nevertheless, to consider the context in which we
asked the administration to request that a committee adhere to
university regulations.
There is essentially no faculty governance at BYU. The single
elected faculty group, the "Faculty Advisory Council," has only
advisory power.
Contrary to AAUP guidelines accepted and practiced by nearly every
university in the United States, the University Faculty Council on
Rank and Status, arguably the most important committee at this
university, is not elected by faculty, but appointed by the
administration.
This Council is not chaired by a faculty member, but by an
administrator.
The Council on Rank and Status has overturned departmental and
college-committee recommendations in every recent controversial case
relating to academic freedom.
The letter requesting that the five English Department candidates
for third-year review provide additional materials, including
presentations made at symposia and fora relating to Mormonism, was
written by you, as chair of that Council, and sent under your name.
On the basis of our experience with administrative procedures at
least since 1993 (the Konchar-Farr and Knowlton cases) and on the
basis of reports from members of the Faculty Council on Rank and
Status, it is our perception that the committee did not vote to
request that information, but that it was an administrative
decision. (Endnote #1)
Third-year and tenure review has become a zero-sum game wherein even
productive junior faculty members are in serious jeopardy of losing
their jobs. Relations between the administration and faculty have
suffered greatly; and the Faculty Council for Rank and Status, as it
has gone against departmental and college recommendations on the
basis of its interpretations of candidates' "worthiness," bears some
of the responsibility for that decline.
A few additional notes:
You argue that we misrepresented the contents of your letter to the
five candidates in the English Department. While we did not
reproduce the exact wording, we correctly captured its meaning.
Would you have preferred that we reproduce the extensive and telling
list of suspect publications and symposia and fora you mentioned:
Sunstone, Dialogue, B.H. Roberts Society, Mormon Women's Forum,
etc.?
You write that "The request for additional information is intended
only to help in evaluating the candidates' teaching, scholarship,
and citizenship consistent with the standards set forth in
University policy"; but in the context the administration has
established with intrusive questions to and investigation of
prospective faculty members (Endnote #2), and by refusing
advancement to faculty members on the basis of arbitrary,
unannounced, and unforeseeable standards, the request is bound to be
seen as simply as an attempt to find reasons to deny advancement.
In a more robust environment, your note that "vigorous debate and
open processes are best served by . . . [providing] additional
relevant information" would make sense. But in place of vigorous
debate and open processes, we are witnessing concerted (and
demoralizing) actions by our administrators to determine,
unilaterally, which colleagues will join us and who will be required
to leave.
While it is true that the rank and status document allows that
"honors, masters, or Ph.D. theses supervised" may be (!) included in
advancement files as evidence of good teaching (and we concur that
theses can in fact reflect a faculty member's skill as a mentor), it
seems clear that the current request of these five candidates is not
aimed at evaluating teaching, but rather at finding methodological
approaches (feminist? postmodern?) opposed by administrators, or
statements by the students opposed to someone's definition of Church
doctrine -- evidence that can be used to punish the advisor. Again,
in an environment committed to academic excellence, our objection
would not arise.
In response to our argument about the potential for
misrepresentation through the raw data of student comments on
evaluations as opposed to summaries provided by departmental
committees and chairs, you wrote that "the recommendations at every
level will be more informed, not less, by the additional
information." Republican Senators recently demanded that they be
allowed to see the raw FBI files on a cabinet nominee before
approving him. Because those files include every unsubstantiated
allegation and rumor and therefore contain false and/or irrelevant
information, it was argued that more information was not better
information. That is our argument: the best, most complete, most
accurate picture of a candidate is found in the departmental summary
of a candidate. After all, those with the best information and with
the greatest ability to bring context to a candidate's strengths and
weaknesses are those colleagues closest to the candidate.
Finally, although we appreciate the time you spend to respond to us,
we are concerned that our exchange of letters is not particularly
productive. This correspondence has turned out to be a largely
private and adversarial process: you defending the administration's
actions and we questioning them. Unfortunately, there does not seem
to be any real give and take. This is a "debate" over issues that
have already been decided without consultation or apparent
deliberation by the BYU administration, and you are merely providing
"information." As we have stated repeatedly, we are concerned that
the university community at large is not involved in an ongoing and
meaningful discussion of faculty governance and academic freedom at
BYU. We continue to be concerned that those affected by policies
have little say in establishing and implementing them. These
concerns led us to ask the AAUP to send its investigative team to
BYU, and we hope that their eventual report will facilitate more
faculty involvement in decisions here; but aren't there ways we can
work better together as faculty and administration to decide
questions crucial to us all?
What would you think, for example, of a public discussion of these
issues, moderated by an independent, respected senior faculty member?
Sincerely,
Members of the BYU Chapter of the AAUP
cc President Merrill J. Bateman, AVP Alan Wilkins
Endnote #1: Last Monday (March 31), in the English Department faculty
meeting with Alan Wilkins and Merrill Bateman, members of the
department raised the question of the fairness of the additional
requests of our third-year review candidates. During the discussion,
Stephen Tanner, currently a member of the University Council on Rank
and Status, explained his perceptions of the request. He said that
from the discussion in which this list was generated, he thought the
list to be merely advisory and helpful to the English Department Rank
and Status Committee. He said that Jim Gordon asked the Council,
"What sorts of things should the English Department be looking at so
that they examine all the relevant information about their
candidates?" Suggestions were made by individual members of the
Council, several of whom have only begun their assignment on that
body. Stephen said that the material requested should not have been
considered as an official request of the Council because the Council
did not vote upon and approve the individual items suggested; they
didn't feel they needed to because they were only making a
recommendation, not issuing a mandate. For Jim Gordon then to
interpret that list as a mandate and in his letter to require the
candidates to submit the materials seems to us a misuse of his
authority and a deception of both the University Council and the
English Department. Or, if he did not do this intentionally, it is a
very serious mistake that he ought to be willing to admit and rectify.
Almost the entire faculty of the English Department was present in
this meeting, and we all heard Steve Tanner explain what he thought.
President Bateman seemed to agree with Steve Tanner and recognize the
error because he instructed Doug Thayer to get back to Jim Gordon
about the matter. President Bateman said, "It is likely this will not
happen again." (As reported by three professors of English present at
the discussion.)
Endnote #2: Reports from interviews with you indicate that you are
disqualifying candidates based on their answers to questions that feel
like they are coming from the House Committee on Un-Mormon Activities,
e.g. What would you tell a student who said she prayed to a Mother in
Heaven? What would you do if a General Authority asked you not to
publish research you had done? What do you think of academic freedom
at BYU?
List of all books by author? When was a review written? What's currently being read?