Transcript: Academic Senate
Good afternoon. My name is Ravi Prakash. I am a professor of computer science.
But today, today in my capacity as Speaker of the Academic Senate, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the first in three years State of the University address at UT Dallas.
It’s been a year since the University returned to in-person classroom teaching for most courses.
While life has returned to normal for most, there are still those among people who silently carry the scars of COVID-19. Some are still struggling silently with the lingering effects of the disease and some have lost family and friends.
Two years back, in this very forum, online, I urged all of us to show grace to others.
It’s just as important today as it was then. Disruptions to important parts of our professional life, like laboratory research, human subject experiments, field-work, and manuscript preparation will take several years to overcome. Let us be mindful of that as we, the faculty members, help each other get back in stride.
Our relatively new colleagues, who arrived when mentoring and support systems were in disarray, are most in need of our help. On a positive note, during the last year the Academic Senate has had several accomplishments.
These include work in progress to benchmark remuneration, address salary inversion and compression, creation and implementation of the emeritus faculty policy, clarity on the use of student course evaluations, and improved representation of graduate students on various senate and university committees, and steps towards sustainability by long-term elimination
of single-use plastics on campus.
We have reason to be proud of shared governance at UTD. Healthy shared governance doesn’t mean we never have differences. Health of shared governance is measured by how we communicate and how we resolve those differences.
The compromise on how to pay for Graduate Research Assistant health insurance out of existing grants is an example of the Academic Senate and university administration working towards a solution that both parties could agree upon.
But we could do better. Insufficient or last-minute consultation on issues that directly impact faculty performance and morale are not conducive to good decision-making. That said, I believe the university leadership has its heart in the right place when it comes to shared governance.
Dear students in this audience, if you think your professors create tough exams and ask difficult questions, you should see the questions these same professors ask President Benson and Provost Musselman every Senate meeting. You could also learn a lot from the sincerity and candor with which President Benson and Provost Musselman and all the vice presidents answer those questions!
Shared governance is also strengthened when the entire university zealously protects academic freedom. In a democracy, transient majorities, with their own ideological inclinations, may come into political power at various times.
But our permanent adherence to truth, rational and impartial analysis of facts and data, and dogged determination to go where the facts take us should persist, no matter the direction in which the political wind blows. This can, and has, created conflict since American universities came into being. In the 1830s a group of students at the Lane Seminary in Cincinnati formed an antislavery society.
The board of trustees did not like it and, in retaliation, dismissed a professor. Immediately before and during the Civil War, professors at the universities of Georgia and Iowa, and Bowdoin College, and the President of Dartmouth University were dismissed for their positions on the war that ran contrary to those of the board of trustees at the corresponding universities.
After the Civil War, professors were driven out of several universities for teaching evolution. In the 1950s and 60s, states including New York and Oklahoma required state employees, including college professors to take loyalty oaths swearing that they didn’t belong to subversive or communist organizations.
Supreme Court opinions striking down such loyalty oaths have emphasized academic freedom for professors as an integral part of the First Amendment. Justice Frankfurter characterized teachers as, “… the priests of our democracy … who foster habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens…. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied to them.” End of quote.
A few years later, in another majority opinion, Justice Frankfurter — also a former faculty member at Harvard Law School — spelled out the four essential freedoms of a university, and I quote again: “to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” End of quote.
He went on to write, “No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation.” End of quote.
But, what about the belief that the one who pays the piper gets to call the tune?
If a state provides financial support for an organization, can the state promote one kind of speech over another at that organization?
A distressing example of that is the majority opinion written by Justice Rehnquist, in 1991 in Rust v. Sullivan, which allowed congress to fund medical clinics under the condition that these clinics did not support abortion as a method of family planning.
Sounds like a different era, doesn’t it?
Even in that opinion, Justice Rehnquist explicitly states that such restrictions cannot be imposed on universities.
Hence, academic freedom is, and should be, a bi-partisan, or better still, a non-partisan idea.
We can only hope that soon academic freedom will cease to be a politically divisive issue. Until then, like any freedom, we must protect it zealously.
I’m very proud of the Academic Senate resolution in favor of academic freedom, adopted in the March meeting, and am looking forward to the Academic Senate debate on the Academic Freedom Policy, later this week — actually tomorrow.
In conclusion, we at UT Dallas have much to be proud of, including the scholarship of our faculty and students, the dedicated service
of members of our staff, and the strong support of share governance among staff, students, faculty and the administrative leadership.