Seeking to Lay Off Tenured Professors, Catholic U. Provost Blasts Critics for ‘Spreading Half-Truths and Fear’

In a fiery treatise on Monday, the provost of Catholic University of America rejected what he described as a faculty committee’s attempt to “mutilate” and “neuter” a layoff plan that some professors describe as a threat to the institution of tenure. He also condemned the plan’s toughest critics, whom he accused of “spreading half-truths and fear” instead of collaborating on a cost-cutting proposal. The provost says that layoffs or buyouts are needed to close a $3.5-million budget deficit that came about in part from enrollment declines.

Andrew V. Abela, the provost, proposed in March that the university eliminate the positions of 35 full-time professors, including tenured faculty members. That would be about 9 percent of the faculty. Professors at Catholic have pushed back, questioning the rationale behind the “academic renewal” plan and rejecting the notion that the university’s financial circumstances provide sufficient justification for removing tenured faculty members.

(The university’s leaders have not declared financial exigency, and they assert that Catholic is, on balance, in good financial health.)

Abela’s letter serves as a formal response to the recent recommendations of an ad hoc committee of the Academic Senate, which last week rejected nearly all of the most controversial elements of the plan and argued that the university was “playing with fire” by seeking to lay off tenured professors. Abela expressed disappointment with much of the report, and said that various amendments to his original proposal have effectively gutted it of cost savings while offering no reasonable alternatives to faculty layoffs.

“Opponents of the proposal for academic renewal have attempted to position the proposal as an attack on tenure as such,” the provost wrote. “This rhetorical strategy has been successful in causing widespread anxiety among faculty. Rhetorical flourishes like ‘playing with fire’ grossly misrepresent the intent of the proposal.”

The plan has roiled Catholic University, which was founded by American Roman Catholic bishops and is located in Washington, D.C., for months. The proposal to cut the faculty has provoked a wider dialogue about whether the university has overplayed its religiosity to the detriment of student recruitment.

As a practical matter, however, the bigger fight concerns the fragility of tenure in an environment where university leaders are eager to shed faculty members to cut costs. The provost’s letter, which was sent to professors just days before the Academic Senate is expected to vote on the proposal, constitutes the administration’s most forceful counterargument to faculty members who appear increasingly emboldened in their opposition.

In his letter, Abela took aim at the university’s Faculty Handbook Committee, whose narrow interpretation of the grounds for dismissing tenured professors — for cause, after a declaration of financial exigency, or in the event of program eliminations — would seem to rule out the layoffs the provost has suggested.

“By no stretch of its mandate is the Faculty Handbook Committee authorized to sit as some sort of Supreme Court and pass judgment as to how the Faculty Handbook is to be interpreted or applied,” Abela wrote.

The provost has held fast to the notion that, by increasing teaching loads and cutting the resulting “surplus faculty,” Catholic University can simultaneously improve in quality and reduce costs. After months of dialogue, Abela said in his letter, no one has come forward with a reasonable alternative to do both that would not involve professors’ losing their jobs. He rejected with a hint of contempt, for example, the idea that Catholic merely has a marketing problem.

“If it were easy to ‘work out a new marketing and recruiting plan’ successful enough to solve our financial woes, we would have done so already,” he wrote. “The undeniable fact is that there are no other sources for funding this remaining shortfall.”

‘Grief, Anxiety, Pain, and Division’

With their jobs under threat, some professors have criticized both the academic-renewal plan and the university’s leadership, whom they blame for allowing Catholic’s finances to deteriorate. Many of those faculty members, who have expressed their concerns to The Chronicle in recent months, have asked not to be named in news coverage for fear of retaliation in an environment of layoffs. An anonymous website, savecatholic.com, emerged recently as a repository of critique.

The Academic Senate’s ad hoc committee, responding to the concerns of professors, noted in its report that the provost’s plan has “been the source for grief, anxiety, pain, and even division in the academic community.” Abela, in his letter, rejected that assessment.

“Much of the grief, anxiety, pain, and division was caused by the tactics of those who sought primarily to spread fear rather than participate in a productive exercise of shared governance,” the provost wrote. "(And does the committee not see the irony of presenting complaints about transparency when on the one side we have a process unequaled in its extent of consultation and candor while on the other we have its most strident opponents spreading half-truths and fear through an anonymous website and unattributed comments in the press?)”

The university’s Academic Senate, which includes administrators and professors, will provide only a consultative vote on Wednesday. Patrick B. Tuite, chairman of the Senate, said the plan requires final approval from the Board of Trustees.

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.

Correction (5/9/2018, 11:30 a.m.): This article originally stated incorrectly that the provost had proposed laying off 35 full-time professors. He had proposed layoffs or buyouts. The text has been updated.