Faculty Members Joined a Day of Action to Protest Racial Inequality.
Now 2 Are in Hot Water.
They say participation in the national Scholar Strike is a matter of
academic freedom. But at two universities, that claim is being
contested.
By Emma Pettit
<https://www-chronicle-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/author/emma-pettit>
Chronicle of higher education, SEPTEMBER 21, 2020
PettitStrike-0918-art
ILLUSTRATION BY THE CHRONICLE
Two tenured professors at different universities are in hot water after
participating in the Scholar Strike, a national action meant to call
awareness to police brutality against Black people.
At the University of Mississippi, the state auditor, Shad White, told
the university to pursue terminating James M. Thomas after the associate
professor of sociology engaged, according to White, in an illegal work
stoppage. White’s targeting of Thomas — first reported by the/Clarion
Ledger —/has been_criticized
<https://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/2020/09/19/ole-miss-prof-scholars-strike-shad-white-opinion/3491530001/>_by
other scholars as intimidation and an attempt to score political points
in a red state. (White did not respond to a request for comment but said
on Twitter that people want him to “give this professor a pass” because
they agree with the professor’s politics. “No,” he concluded.)
And at Texas A&M University, the dean reported Wendy Leo Moore, an
associate professor of sociology, to the provost after Moore indicated
she would participate in a work stoppage. For several days, Moore
told/The Chronicle,/she thought she was going to lose her job.
Both Moore and Thomas say their decisions were well within their rights
under academic freedom, and believe they shouldn’t face professional
consequences for what were pedagogical decisions. And they fear the
moves will intimidate their colleagues, including those who don’t have
the security of tenure.
Teach-Ins About Racial Justice
Two scholars, Kevin Gannon and Anthea Butler, came up with the_Scholar
Strike <https://www.scholarstrike.com/>_in the wake of this summer’s
protests against racism and police brutality. Universities are not
immune to these problems, Gannon, a professor of history at Grand View
University, who writes regularly for/The Chronicle/, and Butler, an
associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the
University of Pennsylvania, wrote in an_essay explaining the movement
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/08/opinions/starting-a-scholar-strike-butler-gannon/index.html>_.
So for two days, on September 8 and 9, professors, students, and staff
members would “step away from their regular duties and classes to engage
in teach-ins about racial injustice in America, policing, and racism in
America,” they wrote.
Some instructors, including those sympathetic to protests and labor
movements, criticized the action. It’s the wrong tactic, commented one
professor on the_A
<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>merican<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>A
<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>ssociation
of<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>U
<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>niversity<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>P
<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>rofessors
<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>’s blog
<https://academeblog.org/2020/09/02/scholar-strike/>_, because it
negatively affects students who were already anxious about this semester.
Some scholarly organizations, including the American Sociological
Association, put out_statements
<https://www.asanet.org/scholarstrike>_in_support
<https://www.museumanthropologyblog.com/homepage/2020/9/8/aaa-stands-in-solidarity-with-scholarstrike>_.
The American Political Science Associationsaid it
<https://www.apsanet.org/Portals/54/Advocacy/APSA%20Statement%20on%20ScholarStrike%209%209%2020.pdf?ver=2020-09-09-105233-157>“recognizes
and respects the academic freedom of political scientists who participate.”
ASA’s statement is partly what swayed Moore. During the pandemic, Moore
said she’s tried to be more available than ever to her students, so she
thought hard about what it would mean to be inaccessible for two days.
But ultimately, she felt a responsibility — as a white, tenured
professor — to engage in a work stoppage, not a teach-in, because it was
in her power to do so.
On the morning of September 7, Moore explained her reasoning to her
students. For two weeks after George Floyd’s death, she and her children
had worked at pop-up food banks and participated in protests in St. Paul
and Minneapolis, she wrote in an email. She saw the Scholar Strike as an
extension of those social-justice activities. She included links to
learn more about the strike and about police violence and racial inequality.
She canceled her Tuesday office hours and told students who normally had
a Zoom class that day that they could drop in on Thursday’s class if
they wanted to.
Moore also offered to stay on Thursday’s Zoom meeting an extra hour to
answer any questions about class materials, the strike, or issues of
racism and police brutality. She’d hold office hours later that day and
would be available for meetings that Friday and over the weekend, she
told them.
ADVERTISEMENT
Later that morning, Moore got a Facebook message from her interim
department head, Pat Rubio Goldsmith, asking her to give him a call.
According to Moore, he told her that the upper administration wanted her
to walk back the work stoppage by sending another email to her students,
saying she’d do a different sort of action, like a teach-in. He told
her, “I don’t want to lose you.” The impression she got, Moore said, was
that she could be fired.
Reached for comment, Goldsmith confirmed he spoke with Moore about her
initial email but declined to comment further.
That afternoon, Moore’s dean, Pamela R. Matthews, circulated a memo
about the Scholar Strike written by the university system’s chief legal
officer.
In the memo, Ray Bonilla said that he’d been advised there was a
national effort to organize a strike or temporary work stoppage among
faculty members. “I do not have information on the details of this
effort,” he wrote. “Even so, it is important for you to know that any
A&M System employees participating in such a strike or walkout will be
violating Texas law.”
Citing a state law, Bonilla said that any employee who violates the
statute “forfeits all civil-service rights, re-employment rights, and
any other rights, benefits, and privileges the employee enjoys as a
result of public employment.” So the consequences are “significant,”
Bonilla wrote.
Matthews sent Bonilla’s memo to department heads. “If you anticipate
that it is necessary or even simply helpful,” the dean wrote, “feel free
to communicate with faculty and staff so that they are aware of the very
serious potential consequences.” Moore’s department chair disseminated
the memo to all sociology faculty members, graduate students, and staff
members.
By that point, Moore says she was hysterical over the possibility of
being fired. She had a conversation with her adult children about what
to do, and they supported her sticking to her ideals. She’d also gotten
a couple of positive emails from her students, who said they were
grateful for her action.
And Moore, who is also an attorney, read over Bonilla’s memo, and she
disagreed with his interpretation of Texas law. That evening, she
emailed Goldsmith and Matthews, telling them why.
First, her decision, which was in “solidarity with national
social-movement activities,” was not part of an organized work stoppage
against the university or the state of Texas itself, she wrote.
Secondly, the subsection of the law that Bonilla cites is part of a
larger body of legislation that concerns work strikes “in conjunction
with organized labor for the purpose of influencing labor negotiations,”
Moore wrote. Whereas the Scholar Strike, while it includes work
stoppages, is not related to labor negotiations.
“As I hope you can see, my decision to express my support of Black Lives
Matter, the #ScholarStrike, and racial justice through participation in
a work stoppage was taken with thought and care,” Moore wrote. “I
informed students that I was balancing participation in this important
social movement with their needs in this already difficult time.”
Matthews, the dean, wrote back, telling Moore she appreciated and
respected Moore’s position, but was obligated to notify the provost and
the general counsel’s office. The next morning, she emailed the provost
to say that Moore was participating and had been “informed of the
potentially serious consequences of her decision.”
Moore says she asked her department head to forward the email she’d
written explaining her rationale and her legal interpretation to the
provost. Then, she waited.
Meanwhile, word spread about Moore’s decision among students and their
parents. “I’m not paying for them to take a day off,” wrote one parent
on a Facebook thread about Moore’s email. “The best part of waking up
isn’t Folgers in my cup — it’s getting the ability to get rid of
horrible professors who broke the law and lost all of their employee
rights, including tenure,” commented another user.
ADVERTISEMENT
On Monday, September 14, Moore says she met with the university’s chief
risk, ethics, and compliance officer. According to Moore, the questions
he asked did not seem geared toward a decision of termination. She said
he told her he’d be writing up a report and sharing it with the dean of
faculties.
At this point, Moore says she’s not sure what’s going to happen. (The
university communications office did not respond to a request for
comment, nor did Matthews, Bonilla, or Kevin McGinnis, the chief
compliance officer.)
Moore said she’s less afraid of losing her job than she was a week ago.
She thinks she’s on solid legal ground. But the ordeal has cost her, she
said. She lost a week of work. She had to turn off her camera during a
faculty meeting to keep her colleagues from seeing her cry.
The university’s decisions “infringed upon my freedom of expression and
freedom of participation in this national movement in support of Black
lives,” Moore said. She worries about those in less secure positions
than her, who were already scared to stand up for what they believed in.
‘Within the Bounds of My Job Roles’
Thomas, too, sees his case as something that could have a lasting,
chilling effect on others at the university. “I was entirely within the
bounds of my job roles and responsibilities,” he said in a statement
sent to/The Chronicle/. “That my university hasn’t affirmed that yet
should worry every single one of my colleagues.”
Thomas declined to comment further but provided a memo he wrote about
the incident that explained his reasoning for participating in the
Scholar Strike.
He’s a sociologist who studies, among other things, race and racism in
the United States. The national action was a chance, he wrote, to
connect the content of his courses with what was going on in the real world.
Before the strike began, Thomas talked about the action on Twitter,
saying that “if you have tenure, your #ScholarStrike activity needs to
be a work stoppage. Tell your students you’re not working.”
He emailed his students to say that for the next two days, he wouldn’t
be responding to emails or holding Zoom meetings, including office
hours, or providing course-related instruction. He encouraged them to
learn more about the history of police violence in the U.S. and sent a
link to resources. He shared some of those resources on Twitter.
On Monday, September 14, White, the state auditor, cited the email
Thomas sent to his students and posts he’d made on social media in his
letter to Glenn Boyce, the chancellor of the University of Mississippi.
Strikes, or any concerted work stoppage, are illegal in Mississippi,
White wrote. And the penalties are clear. If an employee has engaged in
a strike, a court shall order “the termination of his or her employment.”
White requested that the university withhold Thomas’s pay and also that
the university “proceed to court to hear the matter of Prof. Thomas’s
termination.”
ADVERTISEMENT
When news broke about White’s letter, some observers criticized the
Republican’s decision as a political maneuver to target Thomas, who has
drawn ire from state Republicans before. In 2018, he faced backlash for
encouraging people on Twitter to harass senators in public. He later
clarified his comment wasn’t meant to be taken
literally,_the<https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2019/05/16/professor-who-urged-harassing-senators-given-tenure-ole-miss/3692169002/>_/_Clarion
<https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2019/05/16/professor-who-urged-harassing-senators-given-tenure-ole-miss/3692169002/><https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2019/05/16/professor-who-urged-harassing-senators-given-tenure-ole-miss/3692169002/>Ledger
<https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2019/05/16/professor-who-urged-harassing-senators-given-tenure-ole-miss/3692169002/>_/_reported
<https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2019/05/16/professor-who-urged-harassing-senators-given-tenure-ole-miss/3692169002/>_.
A colleague of Thomas’s_wrote an open letter
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tkC6dBhZynq_BmkIRmnXBtAsYwTF387z8clQUv9PHFY/edit>_,
saying that White’s action was an attempt to score “some cheap political
points” and use “intimidation tactics in an attempt to silence faculty.”
For his part, Thomas strongly disputes White’s claim that he engaged in
a work stoppage. “The irony of Mr. White’s accusations against me is
that to prepare my course materials and engage my students in the
pedagogy related to #ScholarStrike required extra effort, and extra work
time, on my part,” he wrote in his memo. “Time neither he nor the armed
agents he sent to my home considered.” (White confirmed to the/Clarion
Ledger/that his office sent two agents to Thomas’ home before he sent
the letter to Boyce. White said that Thomas “wasn’t interested” in
talking to them.)
On the days of the Scholar Strike, Thomas says he shifted his focus away
from his administrative work onto the “pedagogical and creative
activities” related to the Scholar Strike. He worked on a manuscript and
submitted it for consideration in an edited volume, and he answered
several emails.
“My choice to provide this opportunity for my students is fundamentally
grounded in my academic freedom,” Thomas wrote, “the bedrock of
everything we do at this university and others like it.” White’s
characterization of his activities demonstrates “his clear
misunderstanding of the role and responsibilities of faculty members in
institutions of higher education.”
It’s unclear where Thomas’s case now stands. The scholar wants a strong
rebuke of White’s claims from the university administration — something
he hasn’t gotten yet.
A spokesman for the university declined to comment on what he called a
personnel matter.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#1819): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1819
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/77011151/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
