A number of professors at DePaul University are asking the institution’s Board of Trustees to investigate the reasons behind a string of recent failed tenure bids for minority faculty members, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. A group rallied on Tuesday on behalf of two of the six minority members who were denied tenure this year—Namita Goswami, an assistant professor of philosophy, and Quinetta Shelby, an assistant professor of chemistry. The two women appealed, and separate faculty committees ruled that each should have been granted tenure. In Ms. Goswami’s case, a committee also found that her academic freedom had been violated.
DePaul faced similar allegations last year, when rejected candidates accused the university of discrimination against women. Its tenure process also came under public scrutiny in 2007, in the case involving the controversial political scientist Norman Finkelstein.
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7 Responses to Faculty Members Ask DePaul U. Board to Investigate Tenure Denials
Randy Addison - March 17, 2011 at 9:37 pm
My brother is an online artist and is really happy being at home, being self-employed and is really satisfied with what he is doing. He earns and learns a lot with this Macbook everyday.
sherbygirl - March 18, 2011 at 9:12 pm
I think more “arts”, as opposed to “fine arts,” grads need to start adopting the mentality described here. These are skills (and a mentality) that I wished my BA had instilled in me.
richardtaborgreene - March 19, 2011 at 12:57 pm
The survey data referred to above presents what is to me, personally, a dismal unnecessary picture–it defines a ghetto of poverty the professions of art and design are stuck in.
A clear majority of the 150 world leading designers (in 63 diverse fields of design) whom my staff interviewed at the Excellence Science Research Project of the U of Chicago, stated that up to a mean age of 44 they could seldom if ever afford the types of designs/products/exhibits they themselves built and released into the world. They enjoyed releasing works valued at high prices but did not really enjoy themselves never having enough resources to buy works like the ones they themselves made. “I walk through galleries, shows, exhibitions, seminars, competitions in Manhattan unable to buy the vast majority of stuff there—at 30 this did not really bother me but at 40 it is beginning to really make me angry”. A majority (different one) of this same sample of designers felt good about all the stuff cited in the article above–lasting power, vision, clarity, reality, and creativity their art training provided to many dimensions of their lives.
The conclusion we drew via categorization and analysis was this:
1) artists are educated in a ghetto of anti-resource-ness and/or beyond-resource-ness
2) artists are hired and paid in a ghetto of —you CHOSE a profession of under-payment (the same creativity in law or medicine gets you $300,000 a year!!!!)
3) artists are trained and hired to watch physicians and MBAs and lawyers sit “on top of the world looking down on creation”
4) artists study art way way way too much
5) the best designers have huge diverse libraries and read vastly more than average designers
6) the “breakthrough” in designer careers into “the big time” (by fame, fortune, or acclaim of the few they respect the most) comes usually from encounter with a senior designer figure of amazing accomplishment who invites them OUT of the ghetto art education put them in
We also found:
1) the average designer in our dataset had, in 4 years of art education, gone through 320 professor judged design competitions with other students, with winners announced and reasons provided why runners up ran up—no other profession is a toughened by competition and public evaluation during undergraduate training
2) the average designer runs rings about the average MBA in terms of competitiveness skills, habits, attitudes, and experience
3) the professions of design and art are incompetently led and administered nearly everywhere except a few global urban cosmopolises–due to the baleful influence of super rich “sponsors” who keep the profession down
4) the web just may create global widespread regional displays and markets that liberate designers from patronizing sponsorship
5) nearly EVERY team in EVERY profession can be directly measured to have very significantly improved if and to the degree artists and designers play leadership roles on those teams—the production and sales of nearly everything in our world is improved by including these people as leaders of teams.
If I were hiring a board of directors of General Motors (I know whereof I speak having worked there) I would be sure to appoint designers/artists as a quarter of all board positions, and favor them for leadership of various board committees—designers/artists are drenched with love of product, the future, amazing markets, and extricating everyone from boring normalcy—something General Motors nearly died from lack of.
The most intellectually and emotionally profound factor under all this MAY be somehow how artists and designers are trained to handle and look at and determine VALUE. A lawyer, physican, or MBA is trained to fight for his profession and his value, and WIN those fights. A clear toughness is instilled and then tightly supported by socialization rites and rituals. Thou art NOW a physician—and you find you have joined a powerful fraternity. The accumulations in medicine belong to doctors, in law to lawyers and judges, in business to MBAs now CEOs or founders or to technology founders. In design??? To rich sponsors and gallery owners. The designers and artists lose the accumulations that turn imagination into POWER. I have NO confidence in what I just wrote but I would like to read research in that direction or someday do some myself.
gsudduth - March 21, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Great commentary. I went from an apprenticeship in Rome to an administrator to an adjunct instructor, to a for profit instructor, chair, administrator, continuing to exhibit, albeit generally having to pay some fee, to the stereotype, riffed, trying to find work, and struggling as I continue to paint.
I remember when I had medical insurance asking my Doctor to come to one of my openings. He said what kind of work do you do? I said contemporary. He said, what? As he walked out of the cubicle and I waited for a shot from an assistant.
Maybe we do look at and study too much art, but, I would have thought that a medical physician would at least be aware of the history of art. How is that possible? Wasn’t it once called the ‘art’ of medicine?’
otiscollege - March 21, 2011 at 4:42 pm
You all might be interested in the Otis Creative Economy Report that discusses these same issues specifically within the Los Angeles region: http://www.otis.edu/creative_economy/
larsenjeanne - March 22, 2011 at 10:25 am
How about having better (fuller, richer, deeper) lives? Seems worth remembering, however out of fashion it may be to mention it.
clvngodess - April 16, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Some of us artists are successful without having the art degree. And we’re happy we didn’t attend the ivory tower. Made us better business people and better artists.