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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State Senate should reject Governor’s unconstitutionally nominated Regents

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Assistant

You have, no doubt, seen the near constant barrage of news stories critical of the way UC has been managed — the latest being articles about the state legislature withholding funding from UC in the recently passed state budget because of behavior turned up in a recent state audit such as a large hidden reserve fund, interference with the auditor’s survey, and executive compensation far in excess of compensation for similar positions at the state. The budget also redirects nearly $350 million from UC’s core mission as the legislature tries to gain direct control of UCOPs budget. And before that it was articles decrying the Regents’ spending over $250 a head on dinner
parties for themselves.

These articles demonstrate the eroded level of trust the state legislature and the people of California have in UC. We believe a large part of that erosion is because of the closed and insular method by which Regents are appointed — a method that is in direct contradiction to what is specified in California’s Constitution.

For six years, we have been writing letters to Governor Brown asking him to obey the Constitution when nominating Regents,  letters to the UC Regents asking them to follow their own bylaws and not accept improperly nominated Regents and letters to the California Senate asking them to use their authority of approval of Regents to enforce the Constitution.

Three weeks ago, Governor Brown again nominated Regents without following the consultation process mandated by the Constitution. Our past efforts on this issue at least paid off this time with several newspaper articles noting the Constitutional violation (http://bit.ly/2rtynSE, http://bit.ly/2sHyi1Z, http://bit.ly/2sMxsk1).

Yesterday we sent another letter to the Senate, calling on the Senate Rules
Committee to enforce the California Constitution by immediately rejecting (without prejudice) the Governor’s nominees. Regent terms begin as soon as the Governor nominates them, so these improperly nominated Regents can vote on issues at the upcoming Regent’s meeting unless the Senate Rules Committee acts quickly to reject them.

We also requested that the Constitutionally-required advisory committee
be more than a pro forma process and that the Senate declare that it will only consider Regent nominees that have been vetted through an open public process, in a series of meetings held around the state and conducted in accordance with the Bagley-Keene Act (proper public notices of meetings with opportunities for public comment).

A more representative Board of Regents would have likely done a better
job of assuring accountability of the UC Office of the President and given a higher priority to vigorous efforts to restore high quality, accessible, and tuition-free higher education to the people of California as envisioned in the California Master Plan for Higher Education. A recent report that we and other organizations released through the Reclaim coalition, The $48 Fix,  shows that this goal is achievable in California, yet there has been no discussion of restoring the Master Plan by the current Board of Regents. The fact that it is dominated by wealthy interests for whom the steadily increasing costs would not be a practical problem may help explain the lack of urgency in building the confidence of the public and policymakers needed to restore
tuition-free education at UC.

You can read our full letter to the Senate Rules Committee here.

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CFHE statement on the nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education

Posted on January 28, 2017 by Assistant
The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education is trying to prevent the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.  The IFA supports this campaign and encourages colleagues to call our senators (phone numbers below). As well, please forward this message to colleagues across the United States, especially those in red states. The CFHE letter follows:

Statement on Betsy DeVos Nomination

The nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education raises alarms that the new administration will fail to support college access and affordability for millions of current and future college students. Her nomination signals a blatant disregard for not only the magnitude of college debt plaguing our students but also the widespread fraud that has been exposed in the for-profit sector across the country. It also reveals an irresponsible resistance to protecting students from sexual assault, gun violence, ensuring the rights of immigrants, and students
with disabilities.

Equally troubling, at her confirmation hearing and in the disclosure of her extensive financial entanglements, DeVos refused to commit to enforcing existing laws protecting students from fraudulent practices. Her financial connections to a student loan collection agency and
inexperience managing the trillion dollar student loan portfolio that would be her responsibility reinforce her unsuitability for the position.

Her responses to questions in her confirmation hearing raised concerns about the safety of students on our campuses. When asked about Title IX, DeVos indicated that as Secretary she would refuse to ensure that existing campus sexual assault prevention and response processes are respected and improved. She also refused to endorse a ban on guns in K-12 schools, suggesting that she would take a similar position with respect to college campuses.

DeVos also demonstrated a woeful ignorance of the federal scope of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act; her lack of understanding puts the rights of all students with disabilities at risk. We also do not know  if she would respect the protections of DACA on
which DREAMER students depend for their safety and protection.

In short, we believe that Betsy DeVos is singularly unqualified to fulfill the Department of Education’s obligation to ensure that all students who seek a college education will have fair access and will  receive the highest quality education possible with a minimum of debt. Her lack of experience and expertise is a black hole into which the nation’s students, faculty, and campus communities cannot afford to be pushed.

CFHE urges you to have your members make calls to their Senators IMMEDIATELY urging them to reject Betsy DeVos’s nomination as Secretary of Education.

To reach your Senator:
Feinstein, Dianne – 331 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510 (202) 224-3841
Harris, Kamala D. – 112 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510 (202) 224-3553

Contact information for Senators outside of California can be found HERE.

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The $48 fix: Reclaiming California’s Master Plan for Higher Education

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Assistant

On Thursday, January 26, the UC Regents will consider and likely approve their budget for the University for 2017-2018. It and the Governor’s budget, to which it is closely tied, perpetuate decades of failed privatization and persistent under funding of the University and of public higher education more generally. At UC and as compared to both 1990-1991 and 2000-2001, total per student expenditures for instruction and the State general fund contribution to per student instruction are sharply down while the inflation-adjusted contributions from students through tuition and fees are 70% higher than they were in 2000-2001 and 135% higher than they were in 1990-1991. Students and their families are paying more and getting less.

It has become conventional “wisdom” that this continuing decline is inevitable and that viable alternatives do not exist.

The report The $48 fix: Reclaiming California’s MASTER PLAN for Higher Education demonstrates that there is an affordable alternative that restores public higher education in California.

“It turns out that keeping the full promise of the Master Plan-returning the state’s investment per CSU and UC student to 2000 levels (inflation-adjusted); eliminating tuition and fees for all in-state UC, CSU and CCC students; and funding seats for qualified California high-school graduates now refused access to the system-is affordable.”

“California’s two-decade experiment in privatizing higher education has failed, as it has failed in the rest of the country. Top-quality, accessible and appropriate higher education that affords opportunity to all California students has been replaced with a system that restricts access, costs students more and compromises educational quality. Exploding student debt constricts students’ futures and harms the economy as a whole. It is entirely feasible to reinstate California’s proven success in public higher education. Several reasonable funding options can be mixed and matched to make the costs remarkably low for almost all California families. Our state has the means and the opportunity. Will we recover our political will and vision?”

This report 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.

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Defense of Undocumented and other Vulnerable Categories of Students

Posted on November 23, 2016 by admin

The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) wrote the following letter to President Napolitano on November 23, 2016.

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Dear President Napolitano,

We applaud your timely declaration in the immediate aftermath of the election that the UC administration “remain[s] absolutely committed to supporting all members of our community and adhering to UC’s Principles Against Intolerance.”[1]

Like you, we are gravely concerned by the statements made by President-elect Donald Trump during the campaign, and in the aftermath of his victory, targeting particularly vulnerable communities such as undocumented Latinos and Muslim immigrants.

We support your subsequent statement to the UC Regents that “it is more important than ever that we preserve our core values, expand opportunity, and create and share knowledge in the public interest.”[2] We also support your decision to meet with representatives of undocumented students, and to institute a task force to help UC students who are in the country without legal permission and who may be at greater risk of deportation under a Trump administration.

We endorse the joint letter you wrote with CSU Chancellor Timothy White and CC Interim President Erik Skinner to the California congressional delegation asking for the restoration of year-long Pell grants.[3] CUCFA has long believed in the inextricable connection between affordable higher education and the benefits of all forms of diversity to knowledge-production, society, and democracy. We greatly appreciate the advocacy of our leaders on behalf of our students.

In short, we stand united with our administrators against any threats directed at our students and fellow employees, or any words or acts of hate that threaten our mission as a public research university committed to the betterment of our global society through teaching, learning, and the dissemination of new knowledge. We pledge to stand up for, support, and defend the most vulnerable among us, those deliberately targeted in the lead up to the election, and those who are now victims of hate in its wake – members of our community who are undocumented, people of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims (and other religious minorities), immigrants, people with disabilities, and women.

To implement these policy principles, we urge that, in collaboration with the chancellors and other appropriate authorities, you:

  • Explore all legal venues to refuse to act on behalf of federal agents, and to withhold information on the immigration status, religion, and national origin of our students, faculty, or staff;
  • Not enter into agreements with state or local law enforcement agencies, Homeland Security or any other federal department for the enforcement of federal immigration law;
  • Instruct university police not to honor immigration hold requests, and not to contact, detain, question or arrest individuals solely on the basis of being, or suspected of being, a person that lacks documentation;
  • Standardize a UC systemwide administrative office with responsibility for counseling DACA students on their educational situation;
  • Publicize that DACA student counseling services are available on a strictly confidential basis;
  • Continue to allow DACA-eligible students to pay in-state resident tuition;
  • Ensure student’s access to health care and financial aid within California law;
  • Invest in faculty and staff training for UndocuAlly modules developed by UC Davis;[4]
  • Commit to allow undocumented students to work on UC campuses in the event that the DACA provisions were repealed;
  • Take these measures before Inauguration Day so that DACA students can be assured of institutional support.

We are aware of the many calls to consider declaring all UCs “sanctuary campuses” before the inauguration of President-elect Trump.[5] While we support the spirit of this call, believing that Universities have an ethical obligation to assist undocumented students against threats of deportation, we are concerned that the idea of sanctuary campuses does not have any legal status, and agree with Cal State Chancellor White that declaring any public university a “sanctuary” may give a false sense of security “to the very people we support and serve.”[6] We urge you to study all legal and symbolic ramifications of declaring UC campuses “sanctuaries,” and to involve students, staff, and faculty in making that decision. Accordingly, we ask you to charge the announced task force on undocumented students with discussing explicitly the issue of sanctuary status and to make their findings public before January 20.

It is estimated that one third of the over 740,000 undocumented students in the US reside in California, and our state already has multiple progressive policies designed to support undocumented immigrants, including measures that help them access healthcare, driver’s licenses and student loans. We have a responsibility not only to reassure our students that we will stand by them in the face of deportation if laws were passed in that direction, but to lead the nation in rejecting policies opposed to the core values of our university.

For this reason we support your actions to date and reiterate our desire to work with you and other university leaders to advance these important goals.

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

[1] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article113780763.html

[2] http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ln-uc-regents-20161116-story.html

[3] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-president-joins-california-higher-education-and-uc-student-leaders-support-pell-grants

[4] http://undocumented.ucdavis.edu/education/ally.html

[5] http://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2016/11/proposal-turn-californias-massive-public-higher-ed-system-into-sanctuary-campuses-to-stop-trump-107463

[6] http://mynewsla.com/education/2016/11/17/no-sanctuary-at-cal-state-university-but-no-cooperation-with-trump-immigration/

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A Statement of Principles for Choosing New University of California Chancellors

Posted on October 6, 2016 by admin

The Council of UC Faculty Associations, with the assistance of the Irvine Faculty Association, has developed criteria for Chancellor searches in light of the vacancies at the Davis and Berkeley campuses. We welcome your feedback.

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A University of California Chancellor must be committed both to broad access to university education and to scholarly excellence, and have a proven record of support for the value of public education. A Chancellor must recognize that, despite increases in fundraising for specific projects, efforts at privatization have failed to sustain the University’s central mission of education, research, and service for the people of California. In addition to providing intellectual vision and integrity, the Chancellor should demonstrate accountability to the principles and the public mission of the university.

To be forthright and transparent in dealings with the UC community and the public, the Chancellor must show by example the values held by the UC system:

•    By focusing on education, research, and public service, not on peripheral capital projects not directly related to the university’s primary teaching and research missions that saddle the university with high levels of debt.

•    By respecting shared governance between administration and faculty as vital to insulating academic freedom from external political and financial influence.

•    By limiting the number of out-of-state undergraduate students to maximize opportunity for Californians.

•    By reducing the number of senior managers; senior management has grown by a factor of three or four over the last 20 years while the number of faculty has remained stagnant and the number of students increased by 60%.

•    By making the administrative leadership transparent and by opening the budget to meaningful faculty review and input.

•    By implementing a cap on the salary of the Chancellor and other senior administrators, limited to a given multiplier of the lowest paid workers on campus on the grounds that a corporate salary leads to corporate attitudes, whereas a more modest salary corresponds to public service and respects the financial needs of students, faculty, and the institution.

•    By pledging not to accept any paid external board service or paid consulting with for-profit entities.

•    By developing new community outreach programs, involving the teaching and research role of campus faculty and students and, more generally, elevating the contributions of UC to the people of California.

Accordingly, the process of choosing the Chancellor should be open to the university community:

•    The short list of candidates selected by the search committee and forwarded to the President should be publicly discussed. The candidates should be invited to campus for public presentations and comments from the university community should be debated by the search committee.

•    The President and Regents should make their decision after consultation with the Academic Senate to ensure a candidate the whole campus supports.

Council of University of California Faculty Associations

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CUCFA’s Letter to the President of Long Island University

Posted on September 8, 2016 by admin

Dear Dr. Cline:

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations is extremely alarmed by the “lock out” action taken by your administration against the faculty of LIU-Brooklyn.

The action has no precedent in higher education in this country and constitutes a grave assault on unions, labor negotiations, and faculty themselves.

We urge you to reconsider this tactic and return to the negotiating table to bargain in good faith.

To do otherwise is to antagonize hardworking and dedicated faculty for years to come, devastate the educational aspirations and expectations of your students, many of whom have overcome tremendous obstacles to arrive at your college gates, and produce pariah status for LIU-Brooklyn in American higher education.

This path has no future for your institution and we urge you to reconsider.

Sincerely,

The Board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations

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