The American Association of University Professors has cautioned top officials of the Louisiana State University system that they appear to be trampling over the rights of faculty members as they move to reorganize the system’s governance and fill a new leadership post.
The warning came in a letter the AAUP issued Tuesday in response to pleas for its assistance from Louisiana State faculty leaders, who have complained of being shut out of a reorganization process that seeks to combine the multicampus system into a single university led by the chief executive of its flagship campus at Baton Rouge. Many suspect that the reorganization represents an attempt by the state’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, to assert more control over the system’s leadership and affairs, and they worry that the governor’s political considerations will drive the selection of Louisiana State’s new president.
The AAUP letter said the association is responding to complaints from faculty leaders that Louisiana State’s Board of Supervisors “has bypassed the elected faculty governance bodies at various levels throughout the university system” as part of a “hasty and erratic” reorganization effort. It says such faculty members have reported not only being shut out of reorganization talks, but also being sidelined from the search to fill the new post of university president, a post that is to be created by combining the positions of university system president and chancellor of the flagship.
William L. Jenkins, who now serves as interim leader of the system and the flagship, on Wednesday issued a written statement which said the system’s board and administration “strongly disagree with the general implications” of the AAUP letter concerning the reorganization process and presidential search. The statement said Louisiana State faculty members “have been included in those processes” and “will continue to play a vital role as the reorganization process unfolds over the next 18 to 24 months.”
The AAUP’s letter, addressed to Mr. Jenkins and to Garret “Hank” Danos, the chair of the Board of Supervisors, acknowledges that the association has relied heavily on faculty sources for its information and invites system officials to offer their side. Nevertheless, its issuance creates the possibility that the entire Louisiana State University system could end up on the AAUP’s censure list, joining the Baton Rouge campus, which was censured in June for allegedly violating the due-process and academic-freedom rights of two faculty members.
The faculty senates at the system’s Baton Rouge campus and its Health Science Center at New Orleans last month passed resolutions arguing that the presidential search committee appointed by the board includes only one faculty member who is not currently serving as an administrator, and that that person was appointed to the committee through an unknown process that did not involve consultation with any faculty-governance officer on any campus. Citing those resolutions, the AAUP’s letter says a college or university “particularly suffers” when its faculty believes “its legitimate prerogatives and its professional experience have been largely disregarded through its exclusion and marginalization” in such a search. The letter expresses hope that the board will reconsider its position on the faculty’s proper role in the search process and how the search is being conducted.
The AAUP letter also says that faculty members are absent from the 10-person panel appointed by the board to advise the reorganization effort, and have little or no representation on most of the subcommittees established by the board to help guide specific aspects of the reorganization process. The one notable exception is a subcommittee on academic affairs, half of which is composed of full-time faculty members.
The AAUP’s decision to wade into Louisiana State’s governance controversy was cheered Wednesday by Kevin L. Cope, president of the Baton Rouge campus’s Faculty Senate and chairman of Louisiana State’s Council of Faculty Advisors, which represents faculty senates throughout the system. Mr. Cope, a professor of English, said the AAUP letter “clearly demonstrates that the university is not behaving in a way that would be consistent with the mission and the values of a great university.”
