Letter to the Provost
Ilesanmi Adesida Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost 217 Swanlund Administration Building601 E. John Street, M/C 304
Champaign, IL 61820 iadesida@illinois.edu
Dear Provost Adesida:
As President of the Campus Faculty Association, I write to request clarification on the hiring, promotion and tenure process at the University of Illinois. Many of our members have requested information about these matters and I have therefore undertaken to write to you.
President Easter and the Board of Trustees wrote in reference to a well-known hiring decision on August 22, 2014, that “To succeed in this mission, we must constantly reinforce our expectation of a university community that values civility as much as scholarship.”
The Campus Faculty Association disagrees with this assertion, but if the President and Board’s statement is to stand as the official position of the administration, then the following issue must be addressed.
The President and Board of Trustees have placed civility on a par with scholarship. They provide no guidance on the practical implications of this decision for search committees, for junior faculty, for promotion and tenure committees, and for external letter writers.
Further, we note the Provost’s Communications (such as Communication #9 on Promotion and Tenure) mention scholarship a great deal, but nowhere do they mention civility.
Therefore we urgently request that the Provost’s office explain how civility is to be defined and evaluated in hiring, promotion, and tenure cases at the University of Illinois.
Respectfully,
Bruce Rosenstock
President, Campus Faculty Association
Cc: Heidi Johnson, Director, Office for Diversity Equity and Access
Campus Faculty Association 