Now Available: Fall 2021 Issue of AAUP's Academe

 

The fall 2021 issue of Academe surveys the present state of academic governance. It includes a new report on findings of the 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey, firsthand accounts of governance struggles on campuses around the country, and a pair of articles that confront the threat posed by attacks on critical race theory.

Follow the links in the table of contents below to read the issue.

Most interesting for me was  The 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey: Findings on Demographics of Senate Chairs and Governance Structures By Hans-Joerg Tiede.

The 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey, the first such national survey in two decades, covered a wide range of topics related to academic gover­nance. I reported on responses to survey questions about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on governance and the relative authority of the faculty in various areas of academic decision-making in an online data snapshot titled “Survey Data on the Impact of the Pandemic on Shared Governance” and in the report Findings on Faculty Roles by Decision-Making Areas, respectively. This report focuses on responses to questions about the composition of senates and similar faculty governance bodies, faculty-board communication, and the conduct of presidential searches as well as questions about the demographic composition and professional character­istics of faculty governance leaders. I present the results by institutional control (public or private nonprofit); by Carnegie classification (distinguishing broadly between doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s institutions); by institutional size, with institutions categorized as “small” (fewer than two thousand students), “medium” (between two thousand and five thousand students), or “large” (more than five thousand students); and by the collective bargaining status of tenured and tenure-track faculty members (at institutions with a tenure system) or full-time faculty members (at institutions without a tenure system). When possible, I also compare findings with results from previous national surveys on shared governance conducted or sponsored by the AAUP.

The COVID Wars Continue at Penn State--A Tale of Two Senate Resolutions. . . and the Administration's Counternarrative

 

 

I have been following the sadly patched up disaster that has been the lurching progress toward what passes for policy at Penn State relating to the COVID pandemic (Pandemic and the University: "An Open Letter from Penn State faculty to the Penn State Administration and the Board of Trustees").  Not that any of this could be helped.  All of the actors in this drama have been prisoners (and happily so) of the logic of the positions they occupy since the start of this pandemic, and they frankly know no better than what they are are doing.  But a century from now that will be the epitaph of the first part of this century: here lies homo adminstratus incapable of agency other than to perpetuate the structures of power and culture into which they were willingly thrust. But administrators are not the only university actors trapped within the logic of the structures that they populate.  University faculty also perform to type. That is especially the case for the faculty representatives in its University Senate.  All people of good will--to be sure.  But also all necessarily trapped within the logic of their position and discourses of power and legitimacy which binds each to the other. Faculty also may merit an epitaph of their own: here lies homo complicitus who is trapped by the logic of Esau, famished and willing to sell his birthright to the administrator Jacob for a pot of stew (Gen 25-34).  

The Penn State Administration's choice to privilege the un-vaccinated using the discursive tropes of contemporary anti-discrimination for atmospherics, has produced something of a backlash. That backlash has been strengthened in part because Penn State leadership choices (unlike their usual cautious efforts to fall somewhere hidden in the middle of bench marked decision making) put them somewhere on the right side of the outlier curve. 

That has provided an opening for the University Senate, which to some extent has been formally marginally in the process of developing administratively "sound" policy, within the meaning universe of the university administrative community. The Senate has rushed through that opening.  It has called a special meeting of that body to vote on two resolutions, aptly named Resolution A and Resolution B--offering up of two related versions of a counter narrative, and plan of action, to that marketed by the university administration. 

Resolution A offers a counter approach to the administration's COVID planning for the Fall 20201 Semester. It calls for  an immediate vaccination mandate for eligible Penn State students, faculty, and staff and and demands that, until full vaccination can occur, that the university impose rules for universal mask mandates; twice weekly COVID-19 testing for individuals without proof of vaccination; and adherence to CDC recommendations.  

Resolution B serves the purpose of condemning the current administrative approach. It os based on the obvious--the faculty was cut out of the process of decision making. It then seeks an affirmative vote of NO CONFIDENCE  in the University’s COVID-19 Plan for Fall 2021. That s followed by a more meek request to be included in whatever revised decision making process might be triggered as a result of the vote.

That the university's leadership core takes this serious might be evidenced by a last minute appeal to the faculty in the form of an "open letter" signed by the University's president. It s a marvelous statement of its kind.  At the same time its discursive allegiance to the forms and sensibilities of the administrative milieu evidences both the increasing gap that is now apparent in the way that faculty and administration approach an issue, and as well the differences in the way that risk is valued by those who bear the risk but have no control over risk versus those who control the risk but effectively can avoid bearing the risk. 

The Presidents narrative is detached (though the words are meant to suggest caring, at least form a distance)  and Olympian.  It speaks from above conveying the sense of those burdened with the balancing of factors in a "greater game" of which the productive forces of the university (faculty, staff, buildings, services) play a role. The Senate narrative is risk based as well, but from the perspective of risk bearers the discursive form is more personal and more immediate. The Senate balances risk on their bodies; the administration bases its risk calculus on abstractions--important abstractions to be sure, but bloodless, ledger entries within ideological structures of compliance and accountability regimes.  That remoteness, of course, diminishes the micro risks of those who must bear responsibility for the operation of the ecologies of principles that the administration seeks to advance.  And it ignores the anger of a professional caste once central to the running of the university that increasingly is recast in hyper technical functionaries and transformed into live ingots that serve as one factor in the production of university welfare. 

But decide for yourselves. In the immediate term the issue is simple enough--what and how does the university value most among the factors the university administrators balance, ad whose voices count (and how) in that balancing. 

The text of the two Senate Resolutions. along with the text of the Presidential Open Letter follow.

Pandemic and the University: "An Open Letter from Penn State faculty to the Penn State Administration and the Board of Trustees "

Pix Credit HERE

 

 The COVID-19 Pandemic has brought out the best and worst among key institutional stakeholders.  It has accelerated trends that had been slowly working toward transformations of work, social, political, and cultural environments.  Most importantly COVID-19 brought into sharp focus the oppositions inherent in the organization of society and the way in which societal principles and objectives are privileged, weighed, and balanced against each other.

That balancing of principles, which are assumed to always be aligned, but which more often than not cannot be adequately reconciled, is more sharply drawn when health (individual, economic, and societal health) is affected by the weighing and balancing.  Less equitably, it appears to accelerate a trend  in which control of risk and risk bearing are increasingly detached. In the case of the university it manifests as a shift in the authority to control risk migrating to institutional administrators who bear little risk (for example in the context of health risks brought on by conditions of pandemic) but can impose risk on faculty, students, and staff whose exposure to risk for themselves and their families are essentially out of their hands. 

The Administrators at Penn State University provide a somewhat ordinary example of the sort of balancing that is being undertaken by the institutional governance apparatus of state and state affiliated universities, the way they value health risks that they do not bear, and the resulting allocation of risk and reward within university structures that privilege some actors in ways denied others.

 
Health guidelines



​As of June 28, masks are optional inside University buildings for individuals who are fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated individuals must continue to wear masks indoors at all times. If you want someone to wear a mask when interacting with you in your private office, you can request they do so, but cannot require it. It is important to note that those who are visiting designated health care environments must continue to wear masks indoors and maintain physical distancing regardless of vaccination status.

In individual offices, staff members may post this sign if they wish to request that people entering wear a mask.




Yes, unvaccinated individuals who have been in close contact with someone who is COVID-19 positive or suspected of having COVID-19 must quarantine for 7 to 10 days. They must quarantine for 10 days without testing if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring, or after seven days with a negative test on or after day five of quarantine and if they have no symptoms.




No. According to the CDC, fully vaccinated individuals do not have to be tested or quarantine but should monitor themselves for symptoms for 14 days. If symptoms develop, employees should contact their personal health care provider.




Employees can find detailed information and guidance on the Health Guidelines, Contact Tracing, and Quarantine and Isolation pages.




At this time, masking outdoors and physical distancing are not required. Fully vaccinated individuals are not required to wear face masks indoors, however, individuals who are not fully vaccinated are expected to wear face masks inside University buildings. Additionally, all individuals must wear a face mask while using public transportation, in accordance with CDC guidance, and in some additional settings such as when visiting on-campus health care facilities and when conducting in-person research involving human subjects.

Additional information about masking and physical distancing is available on the Health Guidelines page.

Not all schools similarly situated have chosen to balance the needs for operations (and its derivative outcome), the psycho-social imperatives of physical presence, religious convictions, political choices, and health in the peculiar way chosen by Penn State. See, e.g., Indiana University, whose decision to mandate vaccination (with limited exceptions for medical or religious reasons) was recently upheld by the courts).

Faculty have essentially been cut out of the process of policymaking.  They have been free to express their views of course.  And their organs of governance, reduced to rgans of expressions of opinion, have done just that.  But the University, like other administrative organs throughout liberal democratic collectives, like the United States, have chosen to treat this as a matter for which technical expertise is solicited (by invitation) from staff (in this case faculty), but it remains for the "grown-ups" (the administrator class to gather together to discuss and make decisions. This is not unusual post COVID.  But it nicely expresses the transformation of governance and the greater transformation of the university from a collective of professionals to a learning factory with overseers.  

Faculty, however, have not been content to lick their wounds--not at Penn State anyway.  A group calling itself the Faculty Coordinating Committee of the Coalition for a Just University have decided to organize themselves to put pressure on the university apparatus in more public and politically traditional ways.  They have drafted an "Open Letter" addressed to the University Administrative organs calling on the university to:

1. Require vaccinations
2. Continue masking and social distancing
3. Continue to conduct random surveillance testing
4. Maintain improved ventilation standards
5. Institute a more reasonable and flexible teaching and learning policy
6. Improve Penn State's mental healthcare resources

To date the letter has amassed over 650 faculty signatures and almost 600 signatures of students, staff, and others. It is not clear whether the Open Letter will produce any change in Administrative decision making.  I suspect that calculus will tend to underweigh faculty concerns but center values based decisions on the risk of liability or loss caused by assessments of COVID impact, along with the political cost of taking a particular decision (and its impacts on budget negotiations with the legislature.  It may also depend on the ideologies and politics of the Board of Trustees--but that is a black box (a subject for another day). More interesting, though, is the way that the Open Letter itself provides evidence of the way that Faculty shared governance has become something like a historical artifact that is retained for the gesture it represents to a historical period that is now receding fast.  

Note that the issue survives whatever one's position is vaccination policy or mask wearing, or physical presence at the university.  One does not have to be either pro or anti vaccination mandates, or pro or anti masking, or pro or anti physical presence to understand that the effective consequence here, evidenced by the process and impact of decision making, has shifted, perhaps permanently the role of faculty in governance, and certainly, has exposed the way and extent to which faculty is valued (in terms of risk to health, and the health of their families who may be affected) as a function of other objectives, goals, and principles, against which these may be weighed.  And in the process, those who are required to bear the risk, no longer actively involved in controlling it, become an object in the governance of an institution and its institutional value maximizing calculus. Even that is not necessarily a bad thing--the effort to hide this, and to pretend that one still lives and operates in accordance with principles and expectations now abandoned (effectively), though, is a bad thing if only because it suggests the cultivation of misperception.

The Call to Sign follows below along with the text of the Request to sign cover note.



 

Now Available Bulletin of the AAUP (Summer 2021)--COVID and the University (and all is not Well)

 

The AAUP's annual Bulletin collects in one place the reports, policy statements, and official AAUP business materials of an academic year—in this case, 2020–21. Most of these documents have already been published on the AAUP website or in Academe, and the parenthetical dates after their titles refer to date of original publication. The Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors is published annually as the summer issue of Academe (or as the July–August issue prior to 2019). This table of contents links to PDFs of that print version. These PDFs will stand as the historical record for 2020–21 and will not be changed. (AAUP Bulletin Announcement)

 It comes as no surprise that the AAUP focuses its reporting this year on the most important event of this generation--COVID19. Thsi issue of Academe does an excellent job of memorializing the perspectives ad analysis of that crisis on the academy.  It also suggests the great tragedy of the faculty voice in crisis.  That tragedy is centered on the irresistible urge to assume a reactionary posture--and the discourse of a "return"--in the face of transformed conditions that will make the possibility of any such return effectively impossible.  It will be left to others, perhaps, to forge forward.  But this reporting provides a glimpse of the way in which that forward might lead backwards in the context of a industry capable of such a return.  That this is not so and that other approaches may well have to be developed may be read between the lines.

COVID-19 has fast forwarded trends that have effectively sidelined traditional faculty governance and shared governance principles.  Shared governance has been reduced effectively to a technocratic exercise.  At its best it has reduced faculty governance structures to an odd form of focus group, or worse, has absorbed  the faculty into the administrative apparatus at a low administrative level. In the process faculties have refused to embrace or neglected any effort to transform themselves into stronger instruments of accountability.  Part of that, of course, is a function of the great transformation of this century--the effective elimination of tenure except as a vestigial condition.  Faculty dependent on the renewal of contracts are hardly in a position to effectively "lean in" without substantial risk. And the technological revolution will reshape teaching and student engagement--and here it is the administration rather than faculty that are driving change.  In the meantime faculty obsession with transforming their function from research to the exercise of a role as public intellectuals--a process abetted by an administration obsessed, in turn, with short term (and quite manipulative) impact measures, has altered the value of faculty as sources of the production of knowledge.  They have become a political instrument, or on the other side, the blue collar producers of "facts" that can be consumed by the policy caste. Still there is much to lear from the orthodox narrative of the effects of COVID-19 on faculty.  Links to the articles follow.

Now Available Vol 107(2) of the AAUP's Academe Magazine and its Vision for an Academic "New Deal"

 

 

Spring 2021 | Vol. 107, No. 2

Times of crisis always seem to bring out that fundamental and powerful human response of looking back toward a golden age, whose re-establishment in contemporary form is thought to be essential for successfully overcoming crisis. The darker the present, the more powerful the urge to look to the past for the ideal that the future is tasked to recapture.

Al societies appear to have a golden age somewhere in their cultural back pocket--and sometimes elements of society, important social actors, have very specific eddies of "gold" that they can mine within these rapidly receding times that look better and better as they move farther and farther from out experiences. 

So it is with the world of the American academic community.  In the face of a crisis, and the likley end of a century of more of less stable ideals of university education, a crisis with respect to which  there is more than enough complicity to go around involving all of the academy's major stakeholders, even the complicit can look back and seek to replicate in modern form the essence of a past age which in retrospect now looks so appealing. 

To that end, the American academy has sought solace in the Great Depression, and in the transformative changes that occurred then (judged in the rear view mirror of time of course) --now transposed in ways that are acceptable to modern sensibilities, to the contemporary age and its contemporary problems.   Thus Academe's marvelously valuable Vol. 107(2).  Whether or not one is open to the vision that its many essays develop, the volume itself serves as an extraordinary testimony not just to the times, but also to the passing of an age.  And it is in the shadow of the hope that these essays advance, that one might see the darker forms of what actually lies ahead for the American academy. Links to the articles follow below.

The Transformation of University Governance and the Triumph of a Peculiar Ideology of Fiscalization in the American University

 

 

The American Association of University Professor (AAUP) has just announced publication of a set of quite interesting article in the Spring issue of its Academe Magazine..

The spring issue, which will be published in full in May, focuses on the campaign for a New Deal for Higher Education and builds on the work of Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education, a group founded last year by Jennifer Mittelstadt. Follow the links below or visit https://www.aaup.org/academe to read more about the Scholars for a New Deal and the work of the faculty activists who are mapping out a new vision for the future of higher education.

Of particular interest is the "better late than never" observations of Michael Bérubé and Michael DeCesare in their Column: State of the Profession: Twin Crises. They offer a "blunt assessment as cochairs of the AAUP committee that investigated departures from AAUP-recommended standards of governance at eight institutions." From this they weave a set of observations of trends they deplore that combine the trajectories of fiscal stewardship and protection of health into a potent cocktail spiced by the principles (so current in contemporary administrative ideology) of nimble leadership and of the migration of stewardship and responsibility from a decentralized model built around engagement by university professionals and overseen by its administrators, to one in which the professionalization of administration has itself served as the basis for drawing all authority into the now separable administrative class governing the university. Far too late (the professorate is itself trapped by the logic of its own pretensions as firmly as administrators are trapped in the logic of their own caste)  they have come to realize the extent to which ideologies of governance to which they have been indifferent now serve as a powerful baseline for authenticating and legitimating decisions that effectively reduce faculty to factors in the production of goods (graduates and outside income) who are both fungible and whose employment is a function of institutional profitability as such things are measured by university administrators and driven by their boards. A de-professionalized faculty is one that is vulnerable to attack on its professional prerogatives. And yet over the course of a generation, faculty has done little to resist the incremental gnawing away of both its status and its prerogatives

Still, this lamentation is worth a careful read, if only for a glimpse at the state of affairs in university governance. But the time for lamentation has passed.  And that is the great pity and the great failing of this effort. University stakeholders are not in need of keening; they are in need of the organization of response, or a consensus that response is now impossible if the goal is to preserve the imaginary of an academic life world that is quickly receding into historical fantasy. It is in that context that the issue theme assumes its ironic character.

Now Available Winter 2021 Issue of Academe

 

This issue of Academe examines several “preexisting conditions” within higher education that the pandemic has thrown into sharp relief. These long-standing problems—blind spots, inequities, deficiencies in policies and practices—have been exacerbated during the present crisis, but they require more than short-term fixes.

Follow the links in the table of contents below or read the entire issue at https://www.aaup.org/issue/winter-2021. Please consider supporting our work by joiningthe AAUP. AAUP members have access to full-issue PDFs of Academe, can opt to receive the magazine by mail, and enjoy a range of other benefits.

Wilson China Fellowships

 

 

This month, the Wilson-China Fellowship is recruiting its second class of scholars, and I'm writing again to ask if you could send the below information to any colleagues you think would have interest. 

 

The only requirements are that they be a U.S. citizen and that they received a PhD after January 1, 2009. They do not need to be China-focused scholars necessarily, but only have an interest in conducting research on aspects of China's rise and its impact on the world and/or the United States. The first class included research on energy issues, information and technology, as well as traditional geopolitical and security issues.

 

As a brief description, the aim of this fellowship is to produce new and original pieces of research that improve understanding of the role that China is playing in the Indo-Pacific, its relations with its neighbors and the United States, and its impact on peace and security issues. Additionally, the Fellowship seeks to build bridges between traditional academia and the policy world, and to support a new generation of American scholarship on China. A brochure is follows.

 

Call for Papers: AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom

 

 

Journal of Academic Freedom

The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom publishes scholarship on academic freedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. Scholarship on academic freedom is typically scattered across a wide range of disciplines. The Journal provides a central place to track the developing international discussion about academic freedom and its collateral issues. Essays range from historical studies to analyses of contemporary conflicts, from accounts of individual faculty experiences to institutional histories.

The Journal is published online annually, and is supported by funding from the AAUP Foundation. We release a call for papers each fall.

JAF has put out a "Call for Papers"  for its next volume, scheduled for publication in fall 2021. The Journal of Academic Freedom will consider any original article on the topic of academic freedom,

See the latest call for papers. Which also follows below

 

The COVID-19 Crisis: Fall 2020 Issue of AAUP's ACademe Magazine

 

I am delighted to share the articles in the Fall 2020 issue of Academe which describes itself as taking "stock of the crisis that has transformed our lives and the way we work. It features a series of reflections on faculty life during the pandemic as well as articles that look ahead to the near- and long-term challenges of the COVID-19 crisis in higher education."

Links to the articles and essays follow.

The Transfiguration of University Faculty Senates in the Shadow of Pandemic

 





 Pix: Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter on the Via Labicana.

University Faculty Senates in the United States continue to struggle to define their role within universities that increasingly function like large public administrative agencies. This emerging "university new era" governance framework is grounded in the professionalization of an administrator class and the de-professionalization of faculty. That shift has had profound effects both on the governance of the university as an institution, and on the way in which the role of faculty is understood as workers on sometimes enormous (and in some cases enormously wealthy) learning latifundia (some might suggest modern and more benign forms of knowledge encomienda).

Where once faculty were more centered within the governance of the university (and certainly within its colleges and departments), now de-profesisonalized, they are run like administrative agencies by bevies of (former) faculty eager to rise within the administrative state that the university has become. University administrations have become engorged with assistant, associate and special case deans; they have become the sum of departments that now manage virtually every aspect of academic life (1) as an aid to, (2) for the convenience of, and (3) because of the need for specialized administrative skills and attention in connection with, the processing of students through degree programs and the management of faculty. The later, no longer capable of self management because we have now come to believe they lack the skills. . . and certainly the time given their teaching and research obligations in frenetic competition in peer prestige markets on which their internal and external status depends), become objects of management.

And yet, like the institutions of Republican Rome after the establishment of the the Principate (and then the Dominate after the crisis of the 3rd century AD), the university's ancient institutions of shared governance, and the muscle memory of the rituals of an earlier age remain long after their effectiveness has passed into oblivion. Like the Roman Senate during the Principate (after the victory of Augustus Ceasar) University Faculty Senates assumed a consultative and consensus producing role in the years after the start of this century.  Penn State provided a good example of this general evolution, one in which the institutions of the Senate were respected even as its authority was being evacuated in favor of better managed administrative led special committees in which the real business of "shared" (and well managed) governance was being undertaken. 

But the COVID-19 pandemic may well have produced the crisis that may precipitate fairly rapid change along the trajectories described above.  That is, in the shadow of COVID-19 and its threat to the income and function of the university,  the pace and character of changes in the relationship between (de professionalized) faculty and (a rising corps of professional) administrators may move shared governance from the more benign forms of a Principate to those of a crisis entrenched and  much more bureaucratized and hierarchical Dominate.

These are the thoughts that came to mind as, along with other members of the Penn State University Community, I  received this message from the Chair of its University Faculty Senate:

Faculty Senate Newsletter

September 29, 2020

 

The University Faculty Senate will meet remotely on Tuesday, September 29, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. via ZOOM (link below). 

                                                

The Faculty Senate remains deeply committed to representing our faculty and student body during these challenging times. Numerous questions and concerns were raised at our recent plenary meeting on September 15, 2020 that could not be fully addressed due to time constraints. Events have continued to evolve, and we would benefit from continued and open conversation with all members of our community. In that spirit, the meeting will begin with an extensive Forensic to support a conversation about how we can best continue to meet our shared mission of teaching, research, creative activity, service and outreach for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania across our campuses.   

The Senate will consider One Forensic Report entitled: The State of Penn State.

                                                                                   

Faculty Senate meetings are held via ZOOM. Please refer to the University Faculty Senate website for ZOOM connection instructions.

 

Members of the University community are welcome to attend this meeting.  Any member of the University community not a member of the Senate may request the privilege of the floor on any item of business already before the Senate.  Such a request must be made to the Chair, through the Executive Director, at least five calendar days before the meeting at which the individual wishes to speak. The Senate Agenda will be posted on the Senate website one week prior to each meeting and the Senate Record (minutes) will be posted approximately three weeks following each meeting. 

For information on submitting major, minor, option, or course proposals, view the Guide to Curricular Procedures. View The Senate Curriculum Report.

 

 Beth Seymour
Chair, University Faculty Senate

The message, and the meeting to come, may well illustrate more the changing face of faculty involvement in governance, than it might produce any sort of consensus or action that will have real effect on the way n which the university is governed in this emerging era.  It expresses not just a concern, but also an attempt, to preserve what is left of faculty authority against its erosion in the face of the imperatives of the consequences of crisis that may go to the viability of the ancient institution in contemporary times. It suggests as well, the forms of the rear guard actions that may well characterize the forms of retreat from authority that ay characterize the next several years in the new era of the university and its workers.  The form of the university faculty senate will certainly remain with us for some time to time.  What one makes of it, though, remains an import and open question.

The Senate Forensic document along with the "University Faculty Senate Resolution on Return to Work" follow below.

 

Leonard M. Baynes: Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 Librado Romero / New York Times

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg touched many of our lives.  For some the connection was personal, for others as a consequence of her leadership in the academy and then as a judge and then justice.  Many have written about those connections. I was most touched by that written by my classmate and now dean of the University of Houston Law Center, Leonard M. Baynes.  Professor Ginsburg and Professor Kellis Parker, were and remain, as Dean Baynes notes, godsends for many of us. They remain so.

 With his permission I have re-posted his beautiful tribute and remembrance.

 

COVID and the University from the American Association of University Professors

What’s New with Academe?

This month’s newsletter offers a preview of selected articles from our forthcoming fall issue on the COVID-19 crisis in higher education. Follow the links below or visit https://www.aaup.org/academe to read a new series of reflections on faculty life during the pandemic and other highlights from Academe and the Academe Blog.

Links to the articles follow below.

---

Measures for the Appointment and Management of Foreign Teachers (Draft for Solicitation of Comments) [外籍教师聘任和管理办法（征求意见稿）]

Pix Credit: Precarious times for foreign teachers in China.

The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has distributed for comment （征求意见稿）  Measures for the Appointment and Management of Foreign Teachers [外籍教师聘任和管理办法]. Much of the legislation covers the usual issues in the usual fashion. With respect to these there are issues of efficiency and the connection between objectives and the administrative methods chosen to meet these objectives.  But these issues are little different from those facing an administrative apparatus anywhere. And the legislation represents the end of a process already well underway in 2019 (e.g., Precarious times for foreign teachers in China ("Another reason that authorities are cracking down on foreign teachers is ideological. China has long been wary of foreign influences in education, and in December 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping reminded education leaders that, “Adherence to the Party’s leadership is essential to the development of higher education in the country”, emphasising the need to “build universities into strongholds that adhere to Party leadership”.")).

And indeed the two sets f provisions that are the most interesting for foreigners are those relating to the legalization of the policy of Part leadership over education. These merit sustained consideration.  The first is Article 5:

Article 5 (Specific Obligations) Foreign teachers shall abide by Chinese laws and regulations, abide by Chinese public order and good customs and professional ethics of teachers, and abide by the principle of separation of education from religion. The educational and teaching activities and contents implemented shall conform to China's educational policies and basic teaching principles. It is required that China’s national sovereignty, security, honor, and social public interests must not be harmed. [第五条 （特定义务）外籍教师应当遵守中国法律法规，遵守中国的公序良俗和教师职业道德，遵守教育与宗教相分离的原则，所实施的教育教学活动和内容应当符合中国的教育方针和教学基本要求，不得损害中国的国家主权、安全、荣誉和社会公共利益。]

The second are Articles 27-32 (Chapter 4 Supervision and Responsibility [第四章 监督与责任]).  Articles 27 and 28 establish an administrative structure for the supervision of the obligations imposed by law on relevant national and local governments. Article 27 requires the establishment of deep cooperation between the science and technology depart and the education departments of the State Council.  The Science and Technology Department is charged with sharing a list of foreign teachers, and the education department is required to deliver to the science and technology department lists of foreign teachers prohibited from employment "in real time." Article 28 charges the education administrative department of the local people’s government, the administrative department of science and technology, the entry-exit management agency of the public security organ, and other relevant departments shall strengthen the daily supervision of the employment of foreign teachers by educational institutions with the daily supervision (日常监管) of foreign teachers for violations of law relating to their hiring and work. 

Articles 29-32  then establish the parameters by which the Chinese Social Credit system is extended to foreign teachers in China. Article 29 requires that assessments relating to the foreign teacher's compliance with law, ethics, and quality of teaching be included in a national foreign teacher comprehensive information service platform.  Good social credit scores will ensure that regulatory hurdles relating to employment will be convenient. Article 30 then lists four key areas of activities that will reduce social credit scoring: (1) Serious academic misconduct; (2) Engaging in paid work in violation of regulations outside the appointed educational institution; (3) Dismissed in violation of the rules and regulations of the employment agency; and (4) Resigning without authorization after the appointment period has not expired [（一）有严重学术不端行为的；（二）在受聘任的教育机构以外违规从事有偿工作的；（三）违反聘任机构规章制度，被解聘的；（四）聘任期未满，擅自离职的。]. Lastly Article 31 lists those actions or activities that will result in dismissal of appointment. The resulting Social Credit score will require that such individuals be placed on a black list, which will make it impossible for educational institutions to hire them [教育机构不得聘任有前款情形的外籍人员担任外籍教师。]. The ten include:  

(1) Words and deeds that damage China's national sovereignty, security, honor, and public interests;
(2) Being held criminally responsible;
(3) Obstructing the implementation of the education policy;
(4) Violating public security management such as taking drugs;
(5) Sexual assault or abuse of minors;
(6) Engaging in religious education or preaching illegally;
(7) Engaging in cult activities;
(8) Sexual harassment of students or other serious violations of China's public order and good customs, teachers' professional ethics and codes of conduct;
(9) Providing false certification information in the process of applying to teach in China;
(10) The total number of untrustworthy records specified in Article 30 of these Measures exceeds 3. [（一）有损害中国国家主权、安全、荣誉和社会公共利益的言行的；（二）被追究刑事责任的；（三）妨碍教育方针贯彻落实的；（四）有吸食毒品等违反治安管理行为的；（五）有性侵害、虐待未成年人行为的；（六）非法从事宗教教育或者传教的；（七）从事邪教活动的；（八）有性骚扰学生或者其他严重违反中国的公序良俗和教师职业道德、行为准则的；（九）在申请来华任教过程中提供虚假证明信息的；（十）本办法第三十条规定的失信记录累计超过3条的。].

 Lastly, Article 32 provides that educational institutions that fail either to ensure the proper operation of the social credit system (by facilitating negative activity) or hire a blacklisted foreign teacher will "be handled by the public security organs of the local people’s government at or above the county level."
 

For foreign faculty from liberal democratic states, the changes require a conscious sensitivity both to supervision, and to the measurement of conduct by reference to values and markers that are not the same as in many of their home states.  This is particularly true with respect to "(1) Words and deeds that damage China's national sovereignty, security, honor, and public interests" [（一）有损害中国国家主权、安全、荣誉和社会公共利益的言行的] and "(3) Obstructing the implementation of the education policy" [（三）违反聘任机构规章制度，被解聘的] if only because they may no way of understanding where the conduct boundaries or expectations are.  In those cases, it will likely fall to educational institutions to closely supervise and guide foreigner teachers in the conduct of their classes. It is also likely that educational institutions that contribute foreign faculty to the black lists will likely find their own social credit scores dangerous lowered, and in the worst cases, may find themselves on a black list as well (likely, at a minimum, prohibited from hiring any foreigners).

None of this, of course, ought to surprise. And in many cases the net result of the provisions will hardly be felt--other than with respect for the need to cultivate a greater sensitivity of the context in which teachers operate.  Still, even when teaching very young children, it will be necessary to be conscious that an offhand remark, or a reference to baseline principles and concepts that are cherished in a home country (and not really thought about as problematic) may be sensitive in the context in which it is heard.  It is the inadvertent act that poses the greatest threat. 

Of course, much of this would be ameliorated if it is possible t understand the analytics that will go into the social credit scoring for foreign teachers, and more importantly, the way that black lists are constructed, and the rules for getting off a black list.  None of that seems to be available currently. In a sense, then, the value of social credit in this case is to provide guidance necessary to adjust conduct.  Thus rather than produce regulatory guidance, authorities might be able to produce a guide to how scoring will be measured (the value of data and its identification) for purposes of Articles 30 and 31.

Moreover, in certain circumstances, the rules may provide substantial challenges for educational institutions and their foreign faculty.  This may be particularly true at the university and graduate levels in those areas that touch on professional education, business and some of the disciplines in the social sciences, especially where the issues touch on necessary aspects of globalization or are connected to foreign and comparative study.  It is likely that substantial regulation and soime waivers  and a waiver system will have to be greater in those respects--but the price will likely also be substantially greater supervision of those activities. As a result, it is possible that except for elite institutions, and those otherwise designated for that purpose, the scope and conduct of teaching by foreigners will change. At a minimum, national and local authorities would do well to provide more specific guidance to avoid a situation where the law itsef serves as a series of traps for the unwary (and those otherwise not guided by savvy educational sponsors).  Otherwise the result will be to reduce the presence and impact of foreign educators in China. In that respect it may be necessary to carefully consider the Communist Party Basic Line respecting "Reform and Opening Up" in the New Era (e.g., "The Party shall implement the strategy for  invigorating China through science and education")

The entire provision in the original Chinese along with a crude English translation follows. Interested individuals and entities  are encouraged to send their comments to the Ministry.

Diversity in Silence: A Look Back To Diversity Reform Now Forgotten at Penn State University

I have not commented on the recent, and potentially quite profoundly transformative, movements to center diversity generally, and the African American experience in particular, in the American University. Penn State University, like many other similarly situated university institutions, has now sought to intensely engage with the issues that have become once again passionately current in the United States.  On 10 June 2020, "Penn State President Eric Barron issued a statement . . . outlining steps the university will take to address instances of racism, bias, and religious intolerance within its community." (President Barron Outlines Penn State’s Actions Against Racism, Hate Speech).

Given the nature of events, and the very short time cohorts of students have an intense engagement with the university, for many this may seem new and long overdue.  For faculty, many of whom have been insulated from events increasingly shunted behind the closed doors of "leadership teams" and the closed cultures of emerging university bureaucratic practices, the extent of university efforts to confront issues of inclusion may well seem somewhat removed fro their lives--and certainly from the center of their shared governance experiences.  

For the ever growing administrative superstructure, and its increasingly distinct and remote operational ideologues, the issue of diversity has been treated as one of many on a large platter of issues , the importance of which might have been measured by the risk it poses.  The reason for that, of course, is that at the heart of emerging ideologies of university governance is the framing principle of risk avoidance, implemented through the application of the secondary principles of prevention, mitigation, and remedy. Every challenge to the university (that is to the stability of the governance of the institution, and the avoidance of threats as those are understood by university administrators) is understood only within the parameters of risk, and the riskiness of choices among prevention, mitigation, or remedial measures. Diversity issues--like campus drinking, the registration system, the allocation of student fees, and the smooth running of dormitories, parking spaces, and events--are conceptualized first as a normative challenge (goal) but one that must be assessed for the risk it poses and the value of adopting policies that focus on prevention, rather tan on mitigation and remedy.  It has been, in that sense, nothing special.

And yet, it would be a mistake to believe that there have not been efforts to change the way that senior officials approached the application of these governance parameters, even within the logic of what they perceive their operational function to be. 

One such effort to bring greater focus on diversity started in January 2013  under my leadership of the Penn State University Faculty Senate when at my invitation students addressed the Penn State University Faculty Senate about the issue. (Diversity Awareness Task Force: Statement to the University Faculty Senate January 29, 2013). Following that intervention a Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force was constituted including elements from the major stakeholders of the University. Its charge included:

· Bring a diverse group of administrators, faculty and students together to work collaboratively to engage in dialogue and provide recommendations to the University Faculty Senate and Administration to enhance diversity awareness in the University Community.
· Thoroughly investigate practices that will be most effective to increase diversity understanding among the student body.
· Provide recommendations to the Faculty Senate Committee charged with reforming the general education curriculum as a whole.

This post chronicles both the achievement of that remarkable committee over the course of several years--and the ultimate marginalization of its work--now so long forgotten that it is not even a memory within the administrative organs of the university, much less among its stakeholders. Those efforts are worth remembering if only as a cautionary take for the current group of individuals and institutional representatives now bent on a similar task. The principal lesson was one that I pointed out in 2014, even before the full set of Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force Reports was produced:

This response provides an excellent illustration of the approach to diversity at many institutions--engagement and oblivion.  This is all the more important because of it collateral result--Marginalization.  Even as the University devotes a tremendous amount of resources to its reconstruction of General Education, even as it focuses substantial public time to experiential learning and other important elements of a public education--the education and practice of diversity is buried and marginalized. . . . The expectations appear simple enough--provide a formally responsive forum for meeting, produce a report well received but avoid robust interconnection to the vital life of the university, and then move on with a sense of satisfaction of having engaged with diversity. (Diversity in Silence--The Joint Diversity Task Force Report at Penn State University Becomes Less Visible).

That chronicling was set out in a series of Reports produced by the JDATF over the course of several years.  Now long forgotten (and effectively inaccessible except by university faculty senators "For agendas or records prior to 2016-2017, please contact the Senate office. Faculty Senators may access Agendas and Records through the Senate Archives.") they are reproduced below.