Translation of Provost’s interview in News-Gazette

Original document: the Provost’s interview in the News-Gazette (April 21, 2016).

Detect language: admin-speak

Translate into: reality

Administrators want multiyear contracts to be based on merit and performance…

Translation – Administrators have set up a system that excludes almost all non-tenure-track faculty from multiyear contracts. The system is working! Merely 19 non-tenure-track faculty members campus-wide have multiyear contracts.

The hundreds of non-tenure-track faculty members at UI-Chicago who won multiyear contracts through their union bargaining must be undeserving.

Feser noted that most UI employees, aside from tenured faculty, are “at will” employees without multiyear contracts…

Translation – The administration regards everyone except tenured faculty as disposable. Non-tenure-track faculty should stop agitating for a better deal.

“we do not regard questions of academic freedom as a matter of wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment”

Translation – The administration sees no need for non-tenure-track faculty to gain contractually enforceable procedural rights in academic freedom cases (as is the case at UI-Chicago). Such contract rights would force the administration to follow its own rules.

Published by CFA

The Campus Faculty Association (CFA) is an advocacy organization for faculty and other campus workers committed to shared governance, academic freedom, and a strong faculty voice on campus.

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