...Administrators have learned that the AAUP probably will never do anything, and a simple payout usually solves the problem quietly. When the University of Southern Mississippi then-president Shelby Thames fired two tenured AAUP leaders in 2004 for investigating an administrator's credentials, the AAUP never took any formal action because  the university simply paid off the faculty....

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Wilson's comments regarding the USM Chapter of the AAUP during the Thames administration could not be more off base. The AAUP consistently represented the issues and battled the administration on every point or decision that was rendered in opposition to the basic academic tenets of the AAUP.

I agree that the statement needs to be challenged.

I want to add that, as someone who regularly teaches writing, I've become allergic to the word "simply."  It's used incorrectly more and more.  There was nothing simple about the circumstances that forced two courageous colleagues of mine to settle three years ago.

Jameela

The USM chapter of AAUP has acted honorably and courageously over the last five years.   To say otherwise is to ignore the facts.

It is arguable that the national did not do enough -- but they did not "do nothing". They communicated directly with Commissioner Crofts and provided some limited legal aid and a witness.

The National is (and has been for some time) in great difficulty. Is it a chicken or egg issue? My belief is the opposite of Cossack's -- I worked for a unionized faculty in New York and I can visibly see the difference in how faculty in my school (and in the 64 school SUNY system) were treated.

Can unions be corrupted? Yes. So can Boards of Directors but no one suggests getting rid of them. The truth is that professional organizations and unions are as strong and have as much intergrity as the MEMBERSHIP promote and allow. Because that is who unions and professional organizations are. The leadership of these groups are us, folks.

The key here is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In employment disputes there is no substitue for organization and numbers. They are the only tools we have because the other side (management) will always have greater resources in terms of money and private and political influence. We already concede, in most unionized service areas, the right to withhold our labor -- which is the strongest piece of leverage we have.

I'll say this as well -- as corrupt as some think unions may be , they are far less corrupt than the big business and political interests that have combined to paint a picture that the general public has now bought of the big, bad, corrupt unions. To the degree that the interests of power have won the PR battle (bigger and better resources) they have damaged labor organizations deeply because in contests of interest, public support is everything. Once upon a time, when people remembered what it was like to have a boss's goon kick them in the teeth, that lesson was widespread. Now that the boss just quietly fires a dissenting employee, or (even more clever) actually makes use of the current climate in employment to make it so uncomfortable that an employee eventually is marginalized and forced to leave, labor abuse is much more subtle.

I don't want to paint unions as perfect -- but what I want is a counterbalance to the overwhelming power of employers. Without labor organization, there is no counterbalance. You cannot organize a job action easily or effectively after you have been abused. As we learned at USM, people are too frightened; too confused; or feel they have too much to risk. Organization has to be in place and it has to be large enough to transcend any single site of labor abuse.

Sorry -- I've had too many bad experiences with abusive bosses and I've seen it happen to too many families I grew up with.

Rod Sterling may have to agree with Cossack, but I have to agree with Stephen that an organization is only as strong as the numbers behind it.  For those who were too frightened before, now is the time to join AAUP.

Jameela

I agree with you SCM. I think many of us wished the national had done more while the controversy was at its height. But I wanted to make it clear that to say it did nothing is not quite true.

The other point I want to make is that there have been some serius struggles in the organization in the last few years. Some of these are the usual struggles of power and personality in any organization.

However, some of the struggles have also been occasioned by genuine philisophical disagreements and others have been over strategy. These fissures have been exacerbated (as they have in the union movement) by the loss of public support, drop in membership and decreasing revenues. I know some of the leaders of AAUP at the regional and national levels and I can assure Cossock that they are not, in the main, the power grabbing bureaucrats you might think. Most of them are exactly like many of us -- faculty who have been, for one reason or another, galvanized into action. For many of these people, these commitments to the cause of governance and quality of higher education motivated them to move into state, regional offices (all while retaining their positions as faculty) or, in some cases, to the national level.

I don't want to paint a rosy picture here -- in all human institutions there are people operating from complex motives. But my experience with AAUP suggests that, if anything, it suffers from the very same problems many "populist" organizations possess -- many of these people are not necessarily professional bureaucrats or managers, but people who pursued a calling and found themselves at increasingly high levels of service. It is often a case of too much heart and perhaps too little managerial and organizational savvy.

But again, that is yet another reason why groups who job really is organization and management, and have the resources to hire the best professionals to organize and manage, will always have an advantage over populist institutions and movements. The fact that they also generally control the technology of persuasion makes for a pretty potent and dangerous combination. Arguments made by big business against labor have the ring of truth because they have the most, biggest, and loudest clangers -- and while I tend to believe that truth generally resides on some continuum between contending arguments, my primary question is always "who stands to gain the most, and who to lose the most"; and "who possesses the most power" when I decide who to side with, when it comes time to make a choice.

That is undoubtedly simplistic . . . but I'm basically a pretty unsophisticated guy at heart and learned way too many of my lessons about bullies in the school yard.

stephen judd wrote:

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I agree with you SCM. I think many of us wished the national had done more while the controversy was at its height. But I wanted to make it clear that to say it did nothing is not quite true.

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 I'd love to know what the national AAUP did back in 2004 to help its local at USM? From my vantage point in the Liberal Arts building, I saw nothing. Zip, Nil, Null, Nada. No visits from AAUP officials, no statements to the press. No denuciations. No help for Gary and Frank in the legal arena. All I recall were second-hand statements about an investigation. What ever came of that? What does a university administration  have to do to receive censure from the AAUP? There was a period between the firing in March and the hearing in April when Mader and SFT were propagandizing about criminal charges and all that b-s when a strong statement from a national organization like the AAUP could have played a decisive role.

Maybe I missed something that spring. What's the substantive action by the national AAUP that lies behind your statement. I'd love for you to set the record straight.

Back when we were organizing the AAUP chapter at USM as the Thames presidency became imminent one of our early meetings was attended by a representative of the UAW.  I agree that a more muscular national union like the UAW, which has organized some campuses of late, may have been better in the long run in terms of getting outside assistance.  I do remember a few visits from regional leaders of the AAUP who came to offer advice etc., but there is no question that the local membership did all of the heavy lifting.  We also need to remember that many faculty at USM are against the idea of unionization and therefore the AAUP, which is not a union in Mississippi and most other states, was the best compromise.  Despite Thames's and the local business comunity's claims, I would guess that at least half of the faculty at USM are politically "conservative" (or Republican anyway) and therefore anti-union.  The AAUP, despite all its flaws, is perhaps the only organization other than Faculty Senate that can represent a broad cross-section of the faculty.  I'd like to be proved wrong, but I'm not delusional about where we are located.

Cossack wrote:

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I fit your description of the conservative faculty.I voted for Nixon the first time he ran and have voted Republican ever since.As I posted earlier, the current crop of administrators are destroying USM at a rapid pace. I withhold placing Dr. Saunders in that category at present, but if she allows the current crop of administrators to hang on, they will soon be hers.I noted that a union at USM would likely be an improvement given these administrators.If there were a Union election, vote me yea.I was a member of the UAW for several years when I worked for Chrysler.

 

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Thank you Cossack for proving me wrong about political leanings and views on unions.  That's what I get for following elected officials' rhetoric too closely.