CUCFA President Constance Penley participated in a UC Regent’s townhall soliciting input on the hiring of a new UC President. Here is what she said:
The Council of UC Faculty Associations is an umbrella organization for each UC campus’s Faculty Associations (FAs). The Faculty Associations are comprised of all ranks of UC Senate faculty, emeriti, and lecturers with security of employment. With the ongoing severe erosion of shared governance experienced by UC faculty, the Faculty Associations have been working closely with and alongside the Academic Senate to preserve the delegated authority of the Senate on academic and personnel issues, including curriculum, hiring and evaluating faculty, and matters of discipline and grievance, especially around infringements on academic freedom and free speech.
The President serves as the critical link between the parties of shared governance. That link has failed in recent years when the President has not listened to or responded to faculty concerns when the Regents have ignored the Academic Senate’s expertise and delegated authority. They have allowed the politicization of everything from using SAT/ACT test scores, high school math and ethnic studies requirements for admission to UC, rules on the amount of online versus in-person learning, and the autonomy of faculty speech on departmental websites. The President has also failed to protect the faculty’s authority from attempts to infringe on that authority by the Regents, donors, outside political organizations, state legislators, and, in the current climate, federal policy limiting the autonomy of higher education institutions and, in fact, all public education. The President has failed to be an advocate for the public funding of public higher education, choosing instead to depend on private equity, private wealth, and increasingly high tuition paid by California families.
As a member of the UC Union Coalition, CUCFA is well aware that the current President has chosen to ignore all correspondence with the unions. Letters sent to him received no responses (except an email auto-response that the message was successfully delivered).
The Faculty Associations’ responsibilities to Academic Senate faculty and its role as a member of the UC Union Coalition merged recently in its Unfair Labor Practices filing last September. We charged that UC harmed faculty engaged in speech related to the war in Gaza, Palestine Solidarity, campus policing, labor organizing, and other issues. University administrators through the Office of the President have repeatedly issued vague and overbroad warnings asking faculty not to speak on these topics. They engaged in selective discipline of faculty who have engaged in their First Amendment right to do so. The University further harmed faculty by failing to protect them from physical violence, as well as homophobic, racist, and xenophobic verbal abuse from counter-protesters across campuses. UC also harmed faculty through the use of law enforcement and the violent eviction and arrest of students and faculty from encampments across campuses. In the wake of other labor groups’ response to these violations, UC administrators issued overbroad rules preventing faculty from speaking with students and colleagues and have pursued disciplinary charges across campuses.
We need a President who can speak for the faculty, not speak at it and allow its historic delegated to be ignored. We need a President who will respect all of its academic employees. We also need a President who can full-throatedly advocate for the public mission of the University of California.