GALVESTON — A committee appointed by the American Association of University Professors will travel to Galveston and Austin this summer to investigate whether the University of Texas Medical Branch used Hurricane Ike as a handy excuse to thin out tenured faculty.
“We don’t launch an investigation lightly,” said Eric Combest, associate secretary in the Department of Academic Freedom and Tenure of the 94-year-old organization based in Washington, D.C.
“What happened at UTMB raises very significant concerns about academic freedom and questions the committee will try to answer, not only for the people involved, but more widely, the academic community.”
Exigency Or Otherwise?
If the association determined faculty members were dismissed for reasons other than financial exigency — a crisis threatening an academic institution’s survival — the medical branch could face censure.
Although censure would carry no legal consequences, it would be a serious stain on the university’s image.
The medical branch stands by the declaration of financial exigency, said Barry Burgdorf, vice chancellor and general counsel for the University of Texas System.
But UT officials take the renowned association’s investigation seriously and intend to meet with and answer the committee’s questions, Burgdorf said.
The UT System is coordinating interviews between the committee and its highest-ranking officials, including Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, Burgdorf said.
“We have engaged in a respectful dialogue and intend to fully cooperate with the investigative procedure,’ Burgdorf said.
November Layoffs At Issue
The ad hoc committee also will interview medical branch faculty members and administrators about the circumstances surrounding dismissal of more than 125 faculty members after Hurricane Ike, which made landfall Sept. 13, flooding about 1 million square feet in buildings at the island campus.
In November, the UT System Board of Regents authorized the medical branch, home to John Sealy Hospital, a medical school and research facilities, to lay off up to 3,500 employees after Dr. David Callender, medical branch president, declared financial exigency.
Ike Set The Stage
The medical branch, which officials said had sustained $710 million in storm damage and expenses, was losing $40 million a month with the 550-bed hospital knocked out of commission by flooding.
Ultimately, about 2,500 employees were dismissed, most from the hospital. Among them were the faculty members, some world renowned in their fields, many with tenure, the status of having a permanent post at an academic institution. Under financial exigency, medical branch officials were not required to consider tenure.
Still, medical branch officials have said they were careful to ensure the reduction in force was fair. When individual positions were considered, tenure mattered if all other factors were equal, officials have said.
Tenure Under Attack?
Some dismissed faculty members accused the medical branch of working to jettison tenured faculty long before the storm.
Some also argued that methods used to decide who to cut and who to keep were open to influence by professional jealousies and political agendas.
The storm had become a convenient excuse for the firings, they said.
Clean Committee
The association has not set dates for when committee members would arrive in Galveston and Austin.
The investigative committee would consist of people who were neither involved in the layoffs nor engaged in any correspondence with administrators or faculty about them, Combest said.
The investigation promises to be a long, arduous process. When it is complete, the committee will prepare a report for the association’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which may authorize its publication in the association’s magazine, Academe.
Association members vote on whether to censure institutions at their yearly meetings, which convene in June. The association already met this year, so it would be another 12 months at least before a vote about the medical branch.
Deep-rooted Association
The association’s birth, according to its history, can be traced to the firing of noted economist Edward Ross, who in 1900 lost his job at Stanford University because “Mrs. Leland Stanford didn’t like his views on immigrant labor and railroad monopolies.”
The Ross issue was on the mind of Arthur O. Lovejoy, philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, when he and John Dewey, a philosopher, psychologist and education reformer, organized a meeting in 1915 to form an association to ensure academic freedom for faculty members, according to the organization.
