Letter to Chancellor Gillman from the UCI Faculty Association 2/26/20

Posted on February 26, 2020 by Assistant

Dear Chancellor Gillman:

We are writing as UCI faculty to express our concern about the arrest and detention of Shikera Chamndany, a UCI biomedical engineering alumna. Chamndany went to the Registrar in Aldrich Hall on February 20 at the same time the protest in support of UCSC graduate assistants cost of living adjustment was being held outside.  In an event that was documented by a widely circulated video, Chamndany was tackled to the ground and arrested by UCI police officer Trish Harding.  In the video we see her exchange some words with the police before it appears she is assaulted. It is reported by students who then followed her that she was then detained off campus before being released at around 6am the next morning.

Even if Chamndany were related to the protest—which was not the case, evidently—and even if she entered the building after being told not to (we do not know), her arrest is violent and disturbing.  The UCIPD statement posted to Twitter and Facebook describes Chamndany as “forcibly enter[ing] the building” – a statement difficult to believe, due to police presence at the doors documented on video prior to the event. The police claim that she assaulted them requires thorough investigation, as does the entire incident.  Chamndany is Black, and given that racial bias is perceived to be often involved in police arrests, many have commented, such as the BSU on campus, that it was racially motivated.  Chamndany is calm and non-threatening in the video.  Were her arrest and detention racist or meant to intimidate and harass students, as the BSU has suggested?  This uncertainty is itself unacceptable.  Such events contribute to a climate of fear and distrust on campus.

UCI administrators and UCIPD appear to think that a heavy police presence is not only acceptable, but justified for a small, peaceful protest by our graduate students. Tackling and arresting an alumna, and then dragging her off not to the UCI police station but to the county criminal justice system, is the wrong response. This disturbing event requires prompt and transparent investigation.  UCI administration should say at once that tackling and arresting non-violent students is against our policy, and should not be the first and apparently aggressive act of campus police. We feel threatened by the possibility that UCI might sanction such behavior.  To think that any of us and our students can be and have been subject to this violence affects our ability to work and live without fear on campus.  This is particularly true under the current national climate where police intimidation and killings of black and brown bodies and state violence more generally are on the rise.

The current Public Safety Advisory Committee should be replaced with an independent oversight committee with real authority to investigate and work to correct police procedures and actions, including this incident.  If it is found that excessive force or intimidation tactics were used by UCI police, then the officer(s) involved should be disciplined or dismissed.  UCI should have zero tolerance for racism, intimidation, or violence by campus police.

Sincerely,
Eyal Amiran, Mark LeVine, Kristin Peterson
UCI Faculty Association Executive Board

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Paid Family Leave for UC Employees

Posted on October 18, 2019 by Assistant

The Council of UC Faculty Associations’ board has just signed on to a proposal to provide paid family leave to all who work at the University of California. Most working residents of California have access to financial support for pregnancy, bonding with a new child, and caring for a sick family member. The governor is poised to further improve those programs.

University of California workers do not have this access. Staff employees are required to use accrued sick leave to stay home even just after giving birth, and although biological mothers on the faculty have six weeks of paid leave after birth, all other faculty parents are only eligible for teaching relief, and that must be individually negotiated with their Chairs.

Who pays for the work of caring for those who cannot care for themselves is a pressing social justice issue that goes well beyond the University of California. Apart from the raw question of what kind of world we are making, family leave policy also raises obvious equity issues relating to gender and family form. The University of California should be a leader in this context; instead we are far behind. This proposal is the beginning of a significant push to rectify that situation.

The committee working on the proposal is also looking for testimonials about UC employees’ experiences with dealing with a new child or a sick family leave under the current system. If you or someone else you know would like to contribute an account, it can be shared (anonymously or for attribution) here:  https://bit.ly/2Bd0Li4

It is high time the University of California offered paid family leave that is at least equivalent to the California Paid Family Leave program.

Leslie Salzinger for the Irvine Faculty Association

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CUCFA’s Letter re: the Academic Advisory Committee for the Selection of a New UC President

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Assistant

Below is a copy of a letter The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) sent to the chair and vice chair of the systemwide Academic Senate regarding the academic advisory committee for the selection of a new UC President.

October 7, 2019

With President Napolitano’s announcement of her resignation, effective August 2020, it is vital to undertake a search process that is open and participatory to counter a national (and UC) trend toward secretive top-down searches that look for a chief executive to preside over the university. Rather, we should seek a selection process that develops the kind of leader we need through democratic consultation with UC’s constituents – faculty members, students, staff, and alumni. Disastrous recent presidential searches in South Carolina, Iowa, and Colorado show what happens when a governing board unilaterally produces a candidate whose remoteness from educational functions and faculty they deem a virtue.

Fortunately, the UC Regents have a formal search process that could ensure an active, democratic, consultative, and representative presidential selection. Regents Policy 7101 prescribes a number of steps following from the formation of a Special Committee comprised of six Regents and other ex officio members that consults with the Regents to set the criteria for the search, discusses potential candidates, and participates in making the final appointment. The Policy describes a potentially huge and dynamic systemwide consultation process that establishes four advisory committees representing faculty, students, staff, and alumni.

The Policy calls for the Chair of the Special Committee to invite the Academic Council to appoint an Academic Advisory Committee, our concern here, composed of not more than thirteen members, including the Chair of the Academic Council and at least one representative of each of the ten campuses, to assist the Special Committee in screening candidates. It is difficult to imagine how each of those Academic Advisory Committee members could represent the views of hundreds if not thousands of faculty between campuses and medical centers, across all disciplines, which have diverse needs, and across racial groups, which also have diverse needs.

So, too, it is not clear how the Academic Advisory Committee members, even if they are prestigious faculty members, campus heavyweights who are recognized as speaking authoritatively for (the leadership of) each campus, would influence the Special Committee or the Board of Regents. In the last three UC presidential searches, the business culture of the Regents has disregarded the professional culture of the faculty. The class gaps between professors and most regents are too wide and, in any case, faculty are stripped of decision rights.

The Policy, however, puts no limitations on the activities of the Advisory Committees. They could affect the presidential search by using the committees to prompt campus discussions about the presidential search in the context of the immediate future of UC. All of the Advisory Committees could set up a series of events in which they talk with their constituents on each of the ten campuses. They would listen to hopes and fears, gather ideas about leadership needs, hash them over, and then transmit the resulting comments, recommendations, or demands to the Special Committee. One faculty member suggested a “UC Day” in which town halls or other public events happen across the UC system at the same time. The Advisory Committees would have to identify a deadline that would fall before the Special Committee’s long-listing and short-listing of candidates such that it (and the Board overall) could fully consider the input. Each committee could do its work in about six weeks. The scope of the issue is limited and the reports could be short.

Another benefit of using the ACs as a public fulcrum: the town halls would be newsworthy. Whatever governing boards think of professors, unions, and students, they do care about institutional reputation, media coverage, and what they hear back from VIPs as a result of that. The timing of these town halls would be especially propitious in the context of the surprisingly vibrant national discussion in the presidential primary races of the need to return to the idea of higher education as a public good rather than a private commodity. The town halls could also serve to promote UC’s and California’s reputation for pioneering the original free college plan five decades ago. California’s Master Plan for Higher Education is globally recognized as having served as the key cultural and economic engine of California. We could again be a model and inspiration for other states and the nation of how to provide free quality higher education for the masses.

Notably, the parting words of both former UC President Yudof and outgoing President Napolitano emphasized the greatest regret of their respective tenures: that they should have been more consultative and deliberative with the faculty.

The CUCFA Board asks Academic Council President Bhavnani to form a democratic and representative Academic Advisory Committee formed of the chairs of the campus Academic Senates, who are directly answerable to their constituents. We also urge you to charge that committee with organizing town halls or other public events on each campus to prompt as large and participatory discussion as possible of both criteria for the selection of a new President and specific candidates for the job.

CUCFA is eager to partner with the Academic Council on this path towards greater and more democratic input by our faculty on a matter of great relevance to the life of our University.

Sincerely,
Constance Penley,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
and Professor of Film and Media Studies, UCSB

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UC abandons plans for closer affiliation with Dignity Health

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Assistant

We learned today that the concerted and united efforts of many (including the Faculty Association) have been successful in getting UCSF to give up on its plan to affiliate with Dignity Health. This is an especially important fight, and victory, in light of current efforts (some successful) to turn back the clock on Roe vs. Wade.

Click HERE to view the UCSF Faculty Association’s letter to the UC Regents concerning the proposed affiliation.

Click HERE to read the Chancellor’s response to the UCSF community.

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CA-AAUP and CUCFA Issue Statement in Support of UC Workers

Posted on March 28, 2019 by Assistant

The executive board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) joins the executive board of the California Conference of the American Association of University Professors to express unconditional support for the just demands of our colleagues and friends of the Union of Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE-CWA) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). These are the people who supply the labor and technical support that enables faculty to carry out the educational mission of the University of California.

For too long, the Board of Regents and the upper levels of the UC administration have pitted professors, staff, and students against one another. Despite this, UC faculty, students and staff are learning to come together and support one another in tackling the serious problems they face with our system of higher education in California. We stand with the fundamental unity that binds us together in all sectors of California Higher Education, and we tell UC Administrators this simple truth about their staff:

They Do The Work! Without them, there is no University of California.

Issued by the Executive Board of the CA-AAUP and CUCFA
March 28, 2019

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Joint Letter in Support of Librarian Academic Freedom

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Assistant

August 18, 2018

President Janet Napolitano
University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607
Email: president@ucop.edu

Joint statement by CUCFA and CA-AAUP:

On July 26, 2018 UC negotiators rejected a proposal by the UC-AFT Unit 17 that academic freedom be recognized as a right of all UC librarians as academic employees. UC negotiators reportedly argued that academic freedom is granted only to faculty and students “to enable free expression in the classroom,” that it is “a professional standard established by faculty, for faculty,” and that their position was consistent with “AAUP’s stance on Academic Freedom.”

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has rejected UC negotiators’ claims and clarified that since 1972 it has recognized librarians as faculty (Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians – https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/2013 Bulletin/librarians.pdf). Specifically, the joint statement affirms that:

College and university librarians share the professional concerns of faculty members. Academic freedom is indispensable to librarians in their roles as teachers and researchers. Critically, they are trustees of knowledge with the responsibility of ensuring the intellectual freedom of the academic community through the availability of information and ideas, no matter how controversial, so that teachers may freely teach and students may freely learn. Moreover, as members of the academic community, librarians should have latitude in the exercise of their professional judgment within the library, a share in shaping policy within the institution, and adequate opportunities for professional development and appropriate reward.

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) and the California Conference of AAUP chapters (CA-AAUP) wholeheartedly agree with AAUP’s 1972 statement, recognize librarians as fellow faculty, and jointly support UC-AFT Unit 17’s request that all librarians be “entitled to academic freedom, as their primary responsibility to their institution and profession is to seek, state, and act according to the truth as they see it.”

CUCFA and CA-AAUP therefore urge UC President Napolitano to instruct UC negotiators to grant academic freedom to university librarians as they rightly deserve and have requested.

Sincerely,
Stanton Glantz,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
Professor of Medicine, UCSF

cc: UC Regents

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Faculty response to UC’s Contract with General Dynamics Information Technology

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Assistant

June 21, 2018

President Janet Napolitano
University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607
Email: president@ucop.edu

Dear President Napolitano,

The Board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations applauds you for your forthright support for UC’s undocumented students, your lawsuit against the Trump administration’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and your strong public statement regarding the Trump Administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border.

In this spirit, we urge you to act positively on the June 18, 2018 UC-AFT call to sever ties between the University of California and General Dynamics Information Technology, a contractor for the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. In addition, UC faculty are concerned with outsourcing of the Analytical Writing Placement exam to this contractor who is helping run the child separation program.

On behalf of the CUCFA Board,
Stanton Glantz,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations,
Professor of Medicine, UCSF

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IFA letter concerning the appointment of Michelle Deutchman as the first Executive Director of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Assistant

The Board of the Irvine Faculty Association sent the letter below to Chancellor Gillman and UC Berkeley Law School Dean Chemerinsky concerning the appointment of the first Executive Director of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, on May 17, 2018.

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Dear Chancellor Gillman and Dean Chemerinsky,

The Board of the Irvine Faculty Association is writing to express concern about the recent appointment of Michelle Deutchman as the first Executive Director of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The Center is a high-profile effort on the part of the University to demonstrate that it can provide a forum in which heated issues can be debated in and open and transparent way.  This is an important venture, and it is imperative that the Center operate without the appearance of indifference to or endorsement of limiting constitutionally protected speech. Given these aims, we have three main concerns about Ms. Deutchman’s appointment: her limited expertise as a scholar of free speech and academic freedom; her background as an attorney for ADL; and the lack of transparency of and faculty involvement in her hiring.

Ms. Deutchman appears not to have the academic and/or scholarly record or experience needed to be the Executive Director of a major research center–to work independently with “the broad authority of the UCI Chancellor to implement [its] programmatic aims,” including designing and managing programs, conferences and others function in a leadership position “engaged in shaping the national dialog about free speech.” Although she is described as a “scholar” in the press release announcing her hiring, Ms. Deutchman does not appear to publish academic research or to work as a scholar, save that she has taught as an adjunct at UCLA. Given that the Center’s goal is to encourage and fund research, Ms. Deutchman’s lack of credentials raises doubts about her suitability for the position. Further, as the UC Compendium makes clear, the establishment of such a Center is normally accompanied by widespread review and commentary.  The faculty and the community deserve to know that Ms. Deutchman is the best leader we can have for this nationally visible Center.  Moreover, as far as we have been able to determine, confirmed by conversations between the Council of UC Faculty Associations and the system-wide Committee on Academic Freedom (UCAF), there has been no consultation with faculty or open reception of candidates in this search.

The opacity of the search and apparent unpreparedness of the candidate put the spotlight instead on the message being sent by this selection.  Ms. Deutchman has worked for the ADL, an organization that while describing itself as devoted to fighting bias, has a self-avowed history of partisan political behavior.  The ADL has been involved in the campaign against BDS, the boycott movement to pressure Israel on political grounds.  The ADL in its public documents considers BDS a movement against Israel’s right to exist, and says that “College and university campuses have become battlegrounds” in this political campaign.  Whatever one’s position about BDS, it is a free speech matter: to select a staff member of an organization that opposes such speech and seeks to influence governing bodies in the US, including the UC Regents, on this matter to be the defender of free speech is troubling, and sends at best an ambiguous message about the purpose of the Center.  The ADL has been similarly controversial in public on account of its political positions.  This year, for example, African American and Arab/Muslim American organizations have protested the ADL’s selection to take part in anti-bias training at Starbucks.  The ADL was then removed from this training, as reported by ABC News and other national media.  Selecting a member of this organization to lead the Center could connect the university to the public controversies about free speech and racism in which the ADL has been involved.

We therefore ask you to:

  • provide a full accounting of the process used to select the director of the Center, and explain the committee’s rubric regarding the scholarly qualifications required for the position;
  • explain how the hiring process and the planned governance of the Center fulfill the requirements set out in the UC Compendium;
  • explain how someone coming from an organization with well-known partisan positions regarding key free speech issues and race relations can be expected to act in an impartial and effective manner as an Executive Director of a free speech center.

If proper procedures were followed and Ms. Deutchman is qualified for this important position, was properly vetted and chosen from an appropriate pool of candidates, and has demonstrated and will confirm her willingness and ability to separate herself from the positions of the ADL, then the appearance of impropriety in this matter can be dispelled; if not, we call upon you to participate in a public forum about the purpose and future of the Center and the hiring of its Executive Director.

Sincerely,
The Executive Board of the Irvine Faculty Association

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The $66 Fix: Restore quality and access while eliminating tuition PLUS Prop 98 K-12 funding

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Assistant

Below is the link to the updated version of the “$48. fix: Reclaiming California’s MASTER PLAN for Higher Education“ that was produced by the Reclaim California Higher Education coalition, which includes the Council of University of California Faculty Associations and other organizations dedicated to affordable, accessible, and excellent public higher education in California. The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) is the systemwide organization of which the Irvine Faculty Association is a member.  This new version is the same “fix” from last year, but it also includes money for K-14 schools both to satisfy Proposition 98 and because they also need funding. Those two needs together require the $66 Fix.

https://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/3930168/the-66fix

 

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Post-Charlottesville Statement

Posted on August 26, 2017 by Assistant

The UC Council of Faculty Associations (CUCFA), of which the Irvine Faculty Association is a member, has issued this statement and set of recommendations in response to the tragic recent events in Charlottesville.

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Statement

The events and aftermath of Charlottesville have revealed the disturbing connection between Alt-Right rhetoric of violence and the very real violence perpetrated by white supremacist groups. This situation bears dangerous parallels with the way fascist movements came to power in 20th-century Europe. Historically, fascism takes root in the public demand for a strong government to restore order following the unrest and violence provoked by ultra nationalist organizations precipitating violent confrontations with antifascist forces. President Trump’s irresponsible and incorrect assertion of a “two-sided” violence has set the stage for a likely reaction by anarchy-inspired groups at the next provocation or implementation of violence by the Alt-Right / white supremacist front. This reaction, in turn, would allow the Trump government to present itself as the ‘neither left nor right’ party of order and security.

Knowing that university campuses are the likely sites for violence to erupt, it is tempting to call for suppressing the right to speak of any element connected with the Alt-Right movement. CUCFA disagrees. We reaffirm our unfettered commitment to free speech, and the proposition that universities cannot discriminate among speakers on the basis of the content of their speech. At the same time, we support denying permission to speak on campus if the speaker or those organizing the speech incite explicitly and/or pose a clear threat of violence.[1]

Recommendations

CUCFA endorses the recent AAUP statement, and UC President Napolitano’s letter in the wake of the tragic events in Charlottesville.  We invite them — and the entire higher education community  — to also denounce more explicitly the connection among the Alt-Right appropriation of ‘free speech’ rhetoric to provoke violent confrontation, white supremacist violence, and the proto-fascist narrative of equivalence between left and right being spun by the Trump administration.

To counter this worrisome state of affairs, CUCFA further recommends that UCOP make public its criteria for determining and countering a clear threat of violence on the part of outside speakers, and institute an “Outside Speakers’ Commission”—with representatives of the UC faculty Senate, students, campus police, UC lawyers, and other possible stakeholders—in charge of reviewing and publicly discussing these criteria, and, if necessary, of updating them, or developing new ones which would pay particular attention and respond to the following concerns:

  1. What constitutes evidence of a clear threat of violence brought by a speaker or the organizers of a speaking event?
  2. If necessary, should the cost of extra police protection be borne by the University or the association asking for a certain speaker to be allowed to speak on campus?
  3. Should restrictions be passed to what protesters can hold in their hands (i.e. clubs, batons, etc…) entering any UC campus?

Lastly, recognizing the appealing status of all UC campuses as targets for Alt-Right provocations, CUCFA invites UCOP to publicize as soon and as widely as possible among students and faculty the “Ten Ways to Fight Hate Guide” released by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

[1] The decision by Michigan State and Louisiana State on August 18 to deny white supremacist leader Richard Spencer permission to speak there is an example of an appropriate response.

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