My name might unfortunately be familiar to you. Six weeks ago, I received a letter in my campus mailbox from Dean Robert Newman telling me that my appointment of more than 35 years at the U’s Middle East Center was being moved to the Languages Department.
The only explanation given was that it had come to the dean’s attention that I had “contributed consistently” to creating an atmosphere in the Middle East Center that lacked “collegiality” and could “no longer be tolerated.”
I was surprised by this allegation, as I had been when the dean issued a similar letter to one of my center colleagues only days before. I have heard that “lack of collegiality” is the new catch-all criticism that can be used to deny tenure to assistant professors when no specific fault can be identified. Most commonly, this claim is made by a department’s faculty to exclude an unwanted colleague from a permanent position.
What seems to be unique in my case, and that of my colleague, is that my center colleagues did not complain that I was uncollegial, nor were they asked whether I was. Rather, the dean somehow reached an independent conclusion that the center’s “atmosphere” was uncollegial and that I was to blame. I do not yet understand on what basis this conclusion was drawn.
Newman claims that he had the authority to undertake my removal, and that of my colleague, from the center without due process. In my initial efforts to reverse the dean’s action, I raised the point, through my lawyer, that the dean’s assertion that I had contributed to an uncollegial atmosphere — indeed, his assumption that such an atmosphere existed in the first place — had no basis in fact. The dean responded, through his lawyer, that the facts were irrelevant. The authority was what mattered.
The only attempt the dean has made to provide a factual basis for his decision was not offered to me or my colleague in the letters that he sent us, but was issued three weeks later via e-mail to hundreds of U faculty and students, as well as journalists.
In that public statement, the dean for the first time linked my removal from the center to the departure of five junior center faculty, four of them women, to other universities, and the voluntary transfer, some seven years ago, of two women from joint center appointments to a 100 percent appointment in Languages, my own home department.
He again invoked the center’s supposedly uncollegial atmosphere, this time adding the adjectives “intimidating,” “unprofessional” and “toxic,” and called me one of the two faculty members “most responsible for creating” this atmosphere. The only source of information that he cited in this letter was the center director, but confusingly, the director and associate director both resigned in protest soon after Newman’s original letter informing me and my colleague of our removals.
Based on subsequent interviews with the dean, The Chronicle reported that the four women faculty who left had told the dean they found the atmosphere “intolerant” and “demeaning.” Not true. In fact, all four women have recently written to the dean assuring him that no such atmosphere existed, and explaining that neither I nor my colleague contributed in any way to their departures.
The letters from these women confirm what I and all my center colleagues have long known to be true — that they left the U because the new jobs they had found paid better and were, for them, in more desirable locations.
The Chronicle also reported that the dean’s action followed “investigations and consultations” with U officials, including the vice president for diversity and the director of human resources.
What the dean apparently did not mention is that the human resources and diversity investigations into faculty retention issues failed to substantiate the dean’s suspicion (indicated in his memo initiating these investigations) of a “sexist environment” in the Center, and instead concluded that the dean could have addressed retention issues by paying higher salaries.
Although the dean had initially requested that a report be produced at the end of the investigation, and faculty were told there would be a report before they agreed to participate, the dean halted the process after learning the nature of the drafted conclusions, and no report was ever publicly issued.
I have lost my affiliation with the Middle East Center — the reason that I accepted the university’s offer more 35 years ago, and the focus of my career here ever since — and am still at a loss to know why.
The U has endorsed the dean’s public statements about me, but I have not been shown any evidence that supports these statements, nor have I been given a chance to refute them. I cannot judge the legal validity of the U’s position, but I would have thought that facts would matter to the administration whether or not they believe they can win a lawsuit. I would have thought that the U would seek the truth before endorsing such drastic action against a tenured professor’s career.
The only conflict involving the center at the time the dean issued his letters was between center faculty and the dean and the languages department, over the choice of an Arabic language candidate.
The center faculty in that conflict expressed a legitimate point of view regarding the pedagogical needs of the center, and I cannot imagine why that should be a basis to remove two of us from their ranks, unless it is intended that from now on center faculty should not dare to oppose the dean in any way.
I would like to be wrong, and I hope that I am, but as long as the U refuses to look at the facts of the situation — refuses even to express any interest in what the truth is — I am left to wonder.