BY KIM LEE

THE DAILY

Photographs depict a city that looks like it was built in the middle of the ocean. Trees are strewn about like toothpicks, and distraught victims are trudging through streets flooded with water.

The wrath of Hurricane Katrina had no mercy on New Orleans — not even for the jobs of the professors at Tulane University, Loyola University New Orleans, Southern University at New Orleans, University of New Orleans and the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.

“Tenured faculty were fired with scant notice, no due process whatsoever, no stated reasons, and no appeal stated to the administration who terminated them,” Dr. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), said last Tuesday in his UW lecture, “The End of Education: Globalization, Contingency, and Academic Freedom.”

Since 1915, the AAUP has represented college professors in the United States, basing its principles on academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance.

During his presentation, held in Smith Hall before an audience of UW faculty, Nelson concluded that shared governance, due process and tenure regulations need to be enforceable in contracts.

“You have to be able to take administration to court if an earthquake or hurricane hits,” he said. “It may be that a signed contract is more important to you than all traditional benefits of salary and other workplace regulations.”

Those five New Orleans colleges, Nelson said, ignored the procedures of the Faculty Handbook when it came to protecting their faculty members.

It was evident that Nelson felt strongly about the academic freedom and rights for college professors, when, during the lecture, he took time to clear his throat and wipe the tears away from his eyes.

Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, continued to lecture on the field of humanities, which he believes is declining in its role in higher education.

Institutions are emphasizing undergraduate majors that produce meaningful values in the future and are focusing on research able to deliver “marketable products,” Nelson said

“It’s not just the fall of liberal arts, but the demise of the entire commitment to educate students to be critical participants in democracy, which has cast a shadow over the education’s future,” he said.

While voting rights were granted to the research faculty in 2001 after approval from former UW president Richard McCormick, such rights were not granted to part-time lecturers for several reasons. One such difficulty was the concern of imbalance in votes, Luchtel said. Whether part-time faculty were involved enough within the UW community was also a concern.

“Part-timers fulfill a number of other positions,” he said. “So would they really know the [departmental] issues?”

Although Luchtel is troubled by the status of the contingent faculty, he said that the fight for voting rights for part-time faculty has not been brought up since 2002.

“There hasn’t been an attempt since then,” he said.

Humanities on the decline

Scanning through the Forbes List of America’s 25 Best-Paying Jobs, one will see anesthesiologists, gynecologists, orthodontists, chief executives, pilots and marketing managers. There is not a single humanities-related field to be spotted.

The field of humanities is not known to produce multimillionaires, which is why in 2005, the Australian government “brazenly announced [that] ‘the era of individual humanities research is over,’” Nelson said. “‘We will not support individual research in humanities any longer.’”

While the situation for the UW’s Simpson Center for the Humanities is not that extreme, Eva Cherniavsky, professor of English and a member of the Simpson Center Executive Board, agrees with Nelson in that the focus on humanities is declining.

“People just think ‘Oh, it’s nice for everyone,’” she said. “‘It’s just a general liberal arts credit.’”

The declining emphasis on humanities is reflected in the distribution of resources and the number of non-tenured faculty and graduate students teaching courses, Cherniavsky said.

“We’re holding the line on contingent faculty [in the English department],” she said.

Since the UW is a global university, several committees often gather to make the school as competitive as possible and to increase its rankings.

However, representatives from the humanities departments are not usually present, Cherniavsky said.

“It’s very hard to get noticed,” she said.

UW’s contingent faculty

For the AAUP, the increasing number of contingent faculty is a disturbing trend. One of the causes for concern is the huge salary gap.

The salary for full-time community college professors is nearly $50,000, while part-timers — often said to be a misnomer term, as they usually have teaching schedules equivalent to those of full-timers — earn $30,000, according to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Salary gaps between contingent and full-time professors are said to be the most prominent in community colleges, where 75 percent of the professors are contingent, according to an article by the AAUP.

But in terms of the UW, the exact number of part-time faculty is hard to calculate, said Dan Luchtel, chair of the UW Faculty Senate.

However, Luchtel confirms the poor working conditions (the lack of health benefits, disenfranchisement and lower salaries) for the same workload as the full-time faculty of the part-time faculty.

“In general, they’re fairly unhappy,” Luchtel said. “And they have valid complaints.”

Faculty who fall under the categories of serving under acting or visiting appointments, on leave of absence, serving under clinical or affiliate appointments, are of emeritus status unless serving on a part-time basis or serving under adjunct positions are classified as “not voting members of the faculty,” according to Section 21-31 of the Faculty Handbook.

The UW faculty handbook: a case study

In 2003, associate professor Duane Storti sued the UW on the allegation that former UW President McCormick violated the Faculty Code by refusing to distribute funds for the 2 percent annual merit salary increase. After a three-year battle, Storti was victorious in his lawsuit, and $17.45 million was awarded to more than 3,000 faculty members.

While Nelson claimed that the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina exemplified that the Faculty Handbook was not reinforceable, the Duane Storti lawsuit begs to differ.

“It (the Faculty Handbook) is a contract,” Luchtel confirmed. “The administration takes it quite seriously and do not want to violate it.”

The UW had argued that it could deny raises during the 2002-2003 school year due to inadequate funding, according to an article from the Seattle P.I.

However, Judge Mary Yu’s ruling displayed that the Faculty Handbook is “an enforceable contract and cannot be ignored just because the administration finds it to be inconvenient,” reported an article from the UW AAUP chapter’s Faculty Issues and Concerns listserve.

Yet, Storti accredits the victory to the several other faculty members who were also involved.

“So many people were directly involved,” he said. “There is legal status in the handbook, but it does you no good as an individual.”

Meanwhile, Luchtel strongly encourages all faculty members to read the handbook.

“It’s a fine document in my opinion,” he said.

[Reach reporter Kim Lee at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]