Wednesday, September 26, 2001

AAUP Finds Fault With U. of Dubuque; University Says Report Is Flawed By SCOTT SMALLWOOD The American Association of University Professors has found that the University of Dubuque violated the association's standards when it fired two tenured professors in 2000, but the Iowa university contends that it was facing a serious financial crisis and treated the professors fairly. In May 1999, the university, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, told 14 faculty members that they would be terminated in May 2000. Of the 14 professors, 10 had tenure. Several of those faculty members were not assigned classes for the following year and were asked to vacate their offices, although they continued to receive their salaries. Two of the professors, Julia K. McDonald and Steven A. Walstrum, asked the AAUP for assistance. The results of the investigation are reported in the latest issue of the association's magazine, Academe. Prompted by the university's declining financial health, administrators in the spring of 1999 announced the terminations of numerous faculty and staff members and eliminated some majors. While financial crisis is one of the few situations in which tenured professors can be dismissed, some professors at Dubuque questioned how serious the financial problems were. The AAUP report says that its investigators do not doubt the university was facing financial difficulties, but that they are "skeptical" that the problems were serious enough to justify the terminations. In its stinging response to the report, the university argues that the AAUP investigators "simply lacked the basic understanding of financial accounting practices in higher education to assess the university's true financial situation." The AAUP investigating committee found that the administration did not clearly explain the financial situation to the professors or provide the necessary information to prove the claims of financial crisis. The investigators also pointed to the growth in the institution's net assets, but the university called that analysis "astoundingly simplistic" because those increases reflected restricted endowment gifts that were not available to pay operating costs. The AAUP investigation concluded that the university had failed to demonstrate that its financial condition mandated the terminations, that assigning no classes to the professors amounted to an unfair suspension, that the Board of Trustees and administration didn't allow for a meaningful faculty role in the decisions, and that some of the provisions in the faculty handbook did not meet "generally accepted academic standards." Ms. McDonald, a mathematics professor, is now on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. Mr. Walstrum, who taught as an adjunct in the chemistry department at Iowa State University last spring, is now an adjunct instructor at Coe College, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jonathan Knight, an AAUP staff member who handled the case, said that, with the investigation completed, the association may consider whether to censure the University of Dubuque. But the university's response to the investigation foretells how administrators may react to such a sanction. "It is interesting to observe the growing lack of impact that AAUP censure has on institutions," the response states. The university's response also questions why so many religious institutions have been censured. "Notable also is the apparent discriminatory bias operating within AAUP against religiously affiliated institutions," the Dubuque officials wrote. "Twenty-three of the 50 censured institutions have religious sponsorship or affiliation. This is very significant evidence that shifts the burden to AAUP to offer proof that it has not allowed a systemic prejudice against the influence of religious thought in higher education to infiltrate its processes and practices." Mary Burgan, the AAUP's general secretary, said the association does not target religiously affiliated institutions. "On many religious campuses around the nation, AAUP has gained new respect over the past five or six years for its defense of academic freedom in the context of religious freedom," she said. AAUP Report and University's Response AAUP Report on University of Dubuque University's Response Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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