[xmca] Fwd: French Program terminated at SUNY-- Albany

[Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>]

Another sign of the times, and symptomatic of many things wrong with higher education today, not just funding problems. See below, forwarded to me by a colleague in a French department in different state.

From my response to him:

I am not surprised to read about the "qualifications" of SUNY Albany's president; there were a lot of such obviously political senior appointments at CUNY as well, and the accreditation agencies really should look into the question of whether such institutions are being run by people who understand academic values and norms.

There may be valid reasons to terminate programs, but it does not sound as if any defensible process of evaluation was followed in these cases. Even in a very progressive institution like the U of Amsterdam last year there were protests against serious budget cuts at the discretion of the university administration preferentially against programs in the humanities. A university that does not value humane scholarship really does not value its own core mission. Too often institutions are becoming merely training camps for professional laborers. Especially unacceptable when these are public institutions that were created to serve the public good.

Maybe we are overdue for some serious discussion about the "professionalization" of higher education -- and I don't mean that term in any positive sense.

JAY.


Jay Lemke
Research Scientist
Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
University of California - San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093-0506

Adjunct Professor
School of Education
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke 

Professor Emeritus
City University of New York





Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Denis Provencher" <provench@umbc.edu>
> Date: October 1, 2010 5:08:22 PM PDT
> To: brazieje@UCMAIL.UC.EDU, hayesj@umich.edu, siegeljf@umail.iu.edu, jaylemke@ameritech.net, jaylemke@umich.edu, jcv1@psu.edu, jljeannelle@wanadoo.fr, guieuj@georgetown.edu, jean-paul.montagnier@wanadoo.fr, jean-pierre.boule@ntu.ac.uk, jmerrick@uwm.edu, jab808@psu.edu, jennifer.yee@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk, crandall@umbc.edu, jodik@umbc.edu, Jmagerus@aol.com, J.Binnie@mmu.ac.uk, j.ervine@bangor.ac.uk, jfine@Princeton.EDU, rfa@berkeley.edu, judith.stone@wmich.edu, j.t.jackson@qmul.ac.uk, fette@rice.edu, justine@northwestern.edu
> Subject: French Program terminated at SUNY-- Albany
> 
> Dear Friends and Colleagues,
> 
> Today the seven members of the French faculty at SUNY--Albany (all
> tenured)  were
> informed that by presidential decision, ostensibly for budgetary reasons,
> the French
> program has been "deactivated" at all levels (BA, MA, PhD), as have BA
> programs in
> Russian and Italian. The only foreign language program unaffected is
> Spanish. The
> primary criterion used in making the decision was undergrad
> majors-to-faculty ratio.
> We were told that tenured faculty in French, Russian, and Italian will be
> kept on
> long enough for our students to finish their degrees--meaning three years
> at the
> outside. Senoir faculty are being encouraged to take early retirement. The
> rest of
> us are being urged to "pursue our careers elsewhere," as our Provost put it.
> 
> Needless to say, the decision is personally devastating to those of us
> affected, but
> it is also symptomatic of the ongoing devaluation of foreign-language and
> other
> humanities program in universities across the United States. I'm writing
> to ask for
> your help in spreading the word about this decision as widely as possible
> and in
> generating as much negative media publicity as possible against
> SUNY--Albany and the
> SUNY system in its entirety.
> 
> There is much background to add about how this decision was reached and
> implemented,
> too much for me to explain fully here. Suffice it to say that the
> disappearance of
> French, Italian, and Russian has resulted from an almost complete lack of
> leadership
> at the Albany campus and in the SUNY system. Our president, a former state
> pension
> fund manager, holds an MBA as his highest degree, has never held a college or
> university teaching position, and has never engaged in any kind of
> scholarship.
> 
> More disturbing still, due process was not followed in the decision-making
> process.
> The affected programs were not consulted or given the opportunity to propose
> money-saving reforms. Our Dean and Provost simply hand-selected an advisory
> committee to rubber stamp the president's decision. The legalities of the
> situation
> remain to be discussed with our union, UUP, but in the meantime I welcome
> any advice
> you may have.
> 
> 
> best,
> 
> Brett
> 
> Brett Bowles
> Associate Professor of French Studies
> French Graduate Program Director
> State University of New York, Albany
> bbowles@albany.edu<mailto:bbowles@albany.edu>
> 
> 
> 
> 

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