The Fight for the University of Kansas

Last week sent shock waves across the state of Kansas.

The Kansas Board of Regents decided to give administrators at the flagship university and the five other state universities the board oversees the power to annul tenure for two years, if they choose to do so. This measure is supposed to be a way of coping with budget deficits. At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where I teach, we have been told that we are running a $74-million deficit, which is projected to grow further as our state’s budget targets higher ed with one of the largest cuts in our history.

If you have any sense of what most faculty salaries are, this number — $74 million — boggles the mind. How many faculty members would our institution need to fire to make a dent in that amount? What would our campus look like on the other end of the slashing? How can we maintain our research and teaching standards with a skeleton staff? What prospective faculty members would choose to come to an institution willing to discard them after decades of loyal service? Will the prestigious Association of American Universities still have us as a member?

When we learned of this decision, many of us hoped that our chancellor, Douglas A. Girod, would disavow the policy, as other public-university campus leaders around the state have done. I wrote to him that this policy would destroy our university, and asked him to stand with the faculty and staff. Instead, our chancellor went another route, writing in a campus message that he wanted to explore this option because it affords flexibility in dealing with budget challenges.

Our leader may not have stood with us, but our community has joined together. In a open letter with more than 900 signatures so far, we’re standing up to say no to a “solution” that will permanently ravage our institution. The letter signers are tenured and untenured faculty members, staffers, graduate students, and even some administrators. We represent a broad coalition of advisers, administrative associates, university-press workers, engineers, social scientists, humanists, STEM scholars, doctors, and practically all of the university distinguished professors. We are individuals who have made our careers at this university, investing our abilities to serve our students.

More than 5,000 colleagues all over the world are standing with us, including academic luminaries like Angela Davis, Judith Butler, and countless others. I woke up one morning to see Fredric Jameson’s name pop up on the list. Then I saw our student-body president, and many other students, former professors, and colleagues. A few days later the academic associations began to sign on to our open letter; now more than 40 have joined.

All of these people are taking a stand for public education. We sign our names and register our voices because we want to fight to preserve what we are. The mission of our university as the flagship institution of the state of Kansas is to serve through “the elevating force of education, the transformative power of research, and the healing power of service.”

I experienced these values firsthand as an immigrant who found refuge on a college campus. What changed my life was, in part, the close mentorship and care of professors, experts in their fields, who had seen generations of students and made a vocation out of nurturing them. They saw me and helped me find my voice.

Experiences like this take place every day at the University of Kansas. But how can we live up to these values without the basic academic freedom that tenure affords? How can we ever teach students to challenge racism, to serve others, to stand up for causes and a better society, when we do not serve one another? How can faculty members, stripped of the protection that gives them a voice, help others find a voice? Students deserve allies who will be fearless, both in pushing the boundaries of their knowledge and in helping them navigate intimidating and often unfair academic structures.

The people I work with have come together in the face of such challenges because we care deeply about our university. This is not the first time we have come together, and it won’t be the last — even as we face the reality that our voices may be kept from decisions made about our careers.

We speak up not only for ourselves. When faculty members like me speak up, staff members rush to thank us — they often do not feel they could speak openly without risking their jobs. Some staff colleagues have reached out this week to apologize for not signing our open letter even though they agree with it, explaining that they are frightened. Some have signed with their first names only.

I have no illusions about American academe: It is hierarchical and unequal. University staffers feel expendable far more often than faculty members do, and a number have already lost their jobs. But within the confines of a university, the faculty voice carries the unique role of both propagating knowledge and speaking inconvenient truth to power. As an immigrant and scholar of Russia, I am familiar with very different educational systems in Eastern Europe, and see the ability to voice dissent as a distinguishing feature of American academe. It is what sets the university apart from profit-seeking companies. And the unique protection of tenure is the only lever that balances the scales and allows any kind of shared governance.

As the list of signatures grew, our provost, Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, sent the university a message saying that she hoped not to use the policy but needed to keep it on the table just in case. She said she planned to outline how the policy would be used, and she sought our participation. But can anyone feel safe speaking up on campus anymore, when we’re expected to outline the parameters of our own firings and those of our colleagues?

Our provost said she has hope, but she acts in fear. I hope that she and our chancellor will look at the long list of people who have stood up to fight for our community and act on hope. I hope they will, ultimately, join us.