Apparently, there is trouble at Rutgers University. I have, for the most part, only known the school for it's amazing football team, but it appears that there might be other issues going on as well. Here is an email that was forwarded to me after being written by one of their faculty:
Dear Ziva,
>
> After agonizing deliberation, I am tendering my resignation as chair of
> Africana Studies as a way of protesting the dismantling of our
> department.
> As I believe the Rutgers faculty, the Rutgers student body, and the
> people of New Jersey want a vibrant and robust Africana Studies
> discipline, I am making my resignation public so that the dismemberment
> cannot occur under the cloak of darkness.
>
> I am troubled by SAS's contention that setting up a tiny department for
> African, Middle Eastern and South Asian languages is so imperative that
> it legitimates the hasty razing of Africana Studies. The issue before us
> is not whether there is intellectual merit for the proposed department;
> there is intellectual merit for many kinds of academic reconfigurations.
> The question is whether the benefits of having such a new department
> make it worth decimating an older department that is central to the
> university's undergraduate mission. Since the benefits are not
> apparent, I have very reluctantly been forced to wonder whether SAS's
> plan is yet another attempt to dismantle our discipline. There is a mass
> of potent circumstantial evidence to support a gloomy conclusion.
>
> You are aware of the important background:
>
> * When the Africana Studies department was formed in 1969, it
> comprised
> three Africa-related curricula - 013 African Languages and Literature,
> 014 Africana Studies, 016 African Studies. This is the model of Africana
> Studies departments at many other first-class universities, including
> the one at Harvard. Moving away from this proven configuration
> constitutes a serious dismantling of the discipline.
> * In the 1980s, shrouded by a very active and successful program
> of
> diversifying the student body and faculty, FAS initiated the dismantling
> of Africana Studies. During that decade, scores of new lines were handed
> out and curricula decisions were made that took much of our subject
> matter and distributed it throughout other FAS departments. Although
> those were days of financial plenty, FAS deans ignored the department's
> requests for resources on the grounds that the available funds were only
> for departments that were underutilizing people of color. They were not
> persuaded by our argument that, like other units, Africana Studies
> wanted to expand intellectually, 'racially' and in terms of gender.
> Since then, our curricula proposals have often been rejected with the
> explanation that other departments are now teaching this material, or,
> as under your administration, simply ignored.
> * Though the posture of your more immediate predecessors has been
> a kind
> of 'benign neglect', one of them was so openly hostile to our discipline
> that he prevented the promotion of one our faculty by falsifying the
> record that was sent to the PRC. (There is a paper trail and a number of
> reputable faculty to confirm this. I hope doubters will request the
> documentation.)
> * In the late 1990s, FAS created the Center for African Studies by
> removing the 016/African Studies curriculum from our department. Due to
> the fact that this was a faculty-led initiative with which we agreed
> (perhaps naively), Africana Studies supported that change. Nonetheless,
> the Center for African Studies could have been incorporated into the
> Africana Studies department and removing African Studies from our
> portfolio constituted a further chipping away at our disciplinary
> subject matter.
>
>
> The substantive evidence of your administration's attempt to wipe out
> Africana Studies is:
>
> * Your immediate predecessor asked Africana Studies to develop a
> departmental master plan. She signed off on a plan that gave prominence
> to African Languages and Literature - an area in which we had been
> investing heavily. Given the normal continuity between SAS deans on
> matters of this kind, your administration's proposal to take away that
> curriculum is an act of unjustified dismemberment.
> * You are well aware that African Languages and Literature is
> Africana
> Studies' most promising growth area. We live in a world in which there
> is burgeoning interest in Arabs and Islam and in alternative sources to
> Middle East oil. Two-thirds of the world's Arabs are Africans; Islam is
> the largest religion in Africa; and, most of our planet's new sources of
> oil are in Africa. Our intention, as you well know, is to capitalize on
> the current political climate to pursue Title VI and other major grants
> that would further develop the African Languages and Literature
> curriculum. To strip the department of its most promising area for
> expansion at this uniquely propitious moment must also be understood as
> an act of dismemberment.
> * African Languages and Literature has been a distinguishing
> feature of
> Rutgers Africana Studies since 1969. The intellectual and curricula link
> between language, culture and other aspects of the black experience has
> been increasingly recognized and programs around the country, if they
> have not already done so, are modifying themselves accordingly. (It was
> only in 2003, for example, that the Harvard department inaugurated its
> African languages curriculum.) Taking African Languages and Literature
> out of Africana Studies would plunge our department into the ranks of
> the ordinary after we have always been ahead of the pack in this
> respect.
> * The SAS deans have surreptitiously called several of our tenured
> faculty
> members to one side and attempted to lure them away from the department
> by misdirecting their attention to the 'conceptual merit' of the SAS
> plan .
> Whether or not there is conceptual merit to the idea of a new
> department, deliberately fomenting rifts within a faculty is promoting
> dismemberment.
> * Your 'plan' only targets Africana Studies. Only Africana Studies
> will be
> required to surrender a long-standing, growing curriculum. Only Africana
> Studies is being asked to relinquish 40% of its full time faculty,
> including its last three hires. If there is a compelling need to have
> all the languages of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia together, as
> you have argued, why does your plan leave the teaching of Hebrew in the
> Department of Jewish Studies? Does this fact not obliterate your claim
> to having only intellectual and pedagogical motivations?
> * As you know, word gets around in academia. Knowing that
> successive
> Rutgers administrations have been slowly taking apart Africana Studies,
> how are we going to be able to attract outstanding Africana scholars in
> the future? Creating these difficult hiring conditions strongly suggests
> that SAS does not want an outstanding Africana department.
> * Finally, Africana Studies has always wanted to promote the
> interests of
> SAS and the university. Indeed, in response to your proposal, we have
> offered lengthy verbal and written explications of how Africana Studies
> would be destroyed by your plan and have suggested several alternative
> approaches through which SAS could pursue its purported objectives
> without destroying us. The decision to press ahead without modifications
> says a great deal about SAS's intent.
>
> The other evidence of SAS's dismantling objectives rests on the
> implausibility of your professed desire to create a new department and
> on the faulty procedures that have been followed. I disagree with the
> judgment that the benefits of a department of African, Middle Eastern
> and South Asian Languages outweigh the harm of disassembling Africana
> Studies.
> But, should this not be a faculty decision? And, even if it is an
> administrative decision, the procedure for forming a new department at
> our university bears little resemblance to the activities SAS has been
> undertaking.
>
> * Your administration quietly invited several SAS units to covet
> resources
> that have been vested for many decades in Africana Studies. It has also
> conspired with these other units to develop a strategy to strip Africana
> Studies of those resources. Hence, the 'plan' you are pursuing.
> * According to your presentation to our faculty, these covert
> activities
> had been underway for more than six months before the chair of Africana
> Studies was summoned. Moreover, he was called at the conclusion of the
> process to be informed that African Languages and Literatures was being
> taken from his department. Instead of involving Africana Studies from
> the very beginning, we were the last to know about the 'plan.' Was this
> a strategy to deprive the department of even a modicum of agency in
> matters that threaten its existence?
> * Even as you seek endorsement of the 'plan', there is no
> well-articulated
> basis for it. There is not a single document stating mission, structure,
> student demand, funding, intellectual rationale, etc. As it stands now,
> the 'plan' to be implemented just involves taking resources from
> Africana Studies.
> * Full and complete disclosure is essential to everyone's informed
> evaluation of the SAS proposal. Africana Studies requested copies of
> minutes of meetings, memos, emails and other correspondence pertaining
> to SAS's "deliberations." We have been told there are no records of the
> meetings with the faculty you say are 'supportive.' Having been
> separately summoned to 77 Hamilton Street, these three or four faculty
> members have only spoken with the deans individually. They have never
> met with each other, so, in the absence of a written record, there is no
> way of knowing what they agreed to and whether they agreed on the same
> things. In fact, my follow-up conversations indicate that creating a new
> department was not a faculty idea at all. It has been an administrative
> concoction that has other objectives and SAS has been overstating the
> nature and extent of faculty support for it.
> * There are emails and other correspondence at SAS having to do
> with the
> 'plan' but Africana Studies has been denied access to them. Despite the
> fact that the parties have been acting in their official capacities,
> have been discussing university matters, during business hours, you have
> curiously dubbed the relevant correspondence "private". Moreover, SAS
> has not acceded to our requests to seek permission from the
> participating parties to share the correspondence with us.
> * Obfuscation is everywhere. Since you will be leaving office soon
> and
> since these matters are of critical concern to our future, I asked to
> tape record the last meeting I had with the deans. That request was
> denied on the grounds that a written record would be sufficient. Upon
> receiving the draft minutes from SAS, I made some additions. Though
> agreeing that my revisions accurately reflected what had transpired in
> the meeting, SAS nevertheless said it did not want to include some of my
> additions in the permanent record and the vice dean gave me instructions
> not to circulate the corrected minutes. Consequently there is no record
> of that important meeting.
> * Then there is the timing. One must be suspicious of SAS's
> keenness to
> rush through such major changes as creating new departments and
> dismantling others, given the lame-duck status of the senior
> administrators. If SAS's plan is a good idea, it will be a good idea in
> six months, next year and the year after, when a permanent dean is in
> place and when other actions can prevent the sacrificing of Africana
> Studies. If it is a good one, the 'plan' does not have to be implemented
> by July 1, 2008 as you insist.
> * For me, your explications constitute a terrifying example of
> what
> psychiatrists call "relabeling" aggression. ("This isn't violence, it is
> education"; "It doesn't hurt you as much as you say"; "I'm doing it for
> your own good"; "I do it because you deserve it"; "I do it because I
> love you"; "You make me do it.") The relabeling of the attack on our
> department came together most succinctly in the vice dean's memo to the
> tenured Africana Studies faculty in which he argued that the SAS plan
> was actually a plan for "strengthening" the department.
>
>
> Many inside and outside the university will resist the implications of
> this evidence, as I have in fact done. This is because well-meaning
> people do not want reality to conflict with their deeply-held values and
> predispositions. A common response in this situation is to deny the
> reality. Sadly, Rutgers has some recent experience that emphasizes the
> fact that disquieting realities can be just as they seem to be.
>
> It was almost exactly thirteen years ago - November, 1994 - that Francis
> Lawrence uttered the infamous assertion that African American students
> do not have the "genetic hereditary background" to do as well as
> European American students on SAT exams. Even the president's supporters
> acknowledged that this claim raised questions about the legitimacy of
> African American participation at all levels of the university.
>
> To calm the storm that erupted, Dr. Lawrence played the contrition card.
> He explained it was a "slip of the tongue." He said he was amazed that
> anyone could believe that the misstatement reflected his true beliefs.
> "I don't know how it happened. It is not how I live my life."
>
> Well meaning people (including most of the faculty) gave Lawrence the
> benefit of the doubt. We eagerly yielded to portrayals of him as a
> 'champion of minorities'. We did not want to acknowledge the painful
> reality encoded in his remark. We rationalized that the issue was one of
> "fairness."
>
> But what happened? Without the rest of the university even being aware
> of it, through defunding or discontinuance, the Lawrence administration
> systematically dismantled every policy, unit, initiative and program to
> help promote a diverse Rutgers. This included the admissions procedure
> that found ways of admitting more students of color without quotas or
> differential standards. It included the Affirmative Action Office,
> Common Purposes, the Board of Governors' Minority Advisory Committee,
> the Minority Faculty Development Program, the annual affirmative action
> reports to the faculty, and affirmative action lines for
> "underutilizing"
> departments, not to mention the Multicultural Program the Board of
> Governors said he had to institute as a condition of being let off the
> hook. As a consequence of the Lawrence administration, there has been a
> precipitous decrease in African American, Latino and women faculty and
> Rutgers has lost its enviable position among AAU universities when it
> comes to "diversity."
>
> The point is that we know from our own tragic experience that sometimes
> reality can be exactly the way it seems to be. Senior Rutgers officers
> can act to undermine the university's progressive initiatives. You will
> appreciate, therefore, that it was not at all reassuring to hear that
> the SAS plan had the support of Vice President Furmanski and President
> McCormick.
>
> Your proposed actions seem like attempts to dismantle Africana Studies.
> Uneasily, I must assume your plan is exactly what it seems to be and
> resigning is the only way I can protest against it.
>
> In closing, let me once again reiterate Africana Studies' commitment to
> sharing African Languages and Literatures with other units in the
> university. Many of them have already benefited from our foresight. We
> have allowed substantial cross-listing, shared faculty and promoted
> joint programming. The centers for African Studies and Middle East
> Studies, in particular, would have had a much more difficult time
> establishing themselves were it not for the languages Africana Studies
> institutionalized into the curriculum decades ago. Additionally, as it
> has been a critical part of their preparation for Africa-based research,
> our ability to train graduate students in a variety of African languages
> has been a boon to graduate programs in many departments. We are a
> reasonable and responsible faculty. We will continue to seek additional,
> innovative ways to be of service to SAS. I do not think, however, that
> it would be in the university's interest for me to stand idly by while
> Africana Studies is taken apart.
>
> As these matters are of broad concern, I am going to ask the New
> Brunswick Faculty Council to thoroughly investigate the SAS plan and to
> prepare a full report for the faculty.
>
>
>
> Respectfully,
>
>
>
> Walton R. Johnson
> Professor
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