Last week, I wrote about how the UCLA faculty senate overstepped the bounds of decency and protocol when 187 members of the more-than-three-thousand-strong senate passed an anti-war resolution on behalf of the entire UCLA faculty. In particular, I noted that the attempt of a tiny number of UCLA professors not only to speak politically for their absent colleagues but to dictate an official faculty position on the war could and should be understood as a serious violation of the principle of academic freedom. There are UCLA professors who agree, and three of them published an op-ed in yesterday's L.A. Times saying so.

Here's what UCLA law professors Kenneth N. Klee, Daniel Lowenstein and Grant Nelson had to say about how the vote was arranged, and what it means that it took place at all:

We were mugged by about 200 of our faculty colleagues at UCLA. These colleagues condemn the liberation of Iraq and wanted to say so publicly. But they were not content to speak out in their own names, as they had every right to do. Instead, they insisted on speaking in our names ó and in the names of the more than 3,000 people on the UCLA faculty.

How did they do it? First, they circulated a petition to call a special meeting of the academic senate. Every UCLA faculty member with tenure or with prospects for tenure is a member of the senate, which represents the faculty in its dealing with the university administration. Because the academic senate does and should include people with widely divergent opinions on most public issues, it is of crucial importance that it confine itself to curriculum, academic standards, admissions and other matters within the mission of the university.

But apparently not everyone on the faculty sees it that way. According to the rules of the academic senate, 200 members can convene a special meeting by signing petitions. Two hundred members did so, and the meeting was held last week, at a time when many on the faculty were busy teaching or preparing for class.

By the time they voted, the 200-member quorum had apparently vanished, but they went ahead anyway: 180 for the resolution, seven against and nine abstaining.

The resolution they adopted puts the academic senate on record as saying "to our fellow citizens, to the president of the United States and to our senators and representatives" that we "deplore the administration's doctrine of preventive war and the U.S. invasion of Iraq."

The academic senate includes us. A rump group of our colleagues put these words ó words that we find loathsome ó into our mouths.

When our colleagues did that, they trampled on principles of academic freedom, which protect the rights of students and faculty to hold and express their own opinions, subject only to the requirements of reasoned discourse and respect for the same rights in others. They trampled on the crucial norm of collegiality in a university. And they struck a possibly fatal blow at the UCLA tradition of shared governance between administration and faculty, which is supposed to be the sole purpose of the academic senate.

Unless the academic senate is prohibited from taking political positions unrelated to the university, mandatory membership in it should be ended. It is unconscionable that we or anyone else should be required, as a condition of teaching at UCLA, to be a member of an organization that speaks in our name and against our views on such controversial issues.

True, legislatures speak on political issues in the name of all of us, whether we agree or not. But legislatures are intended to be political. If we don't like what legislators do, we can vote them out of office. Politicization of the academic senate is precisely what should be avoided.

The academic senate has made clear that it no longer represents the entire UCLA faculty. It therefore has no standing to participate in the system of shared governance. So either shared governance must be terminated or a new organization must be created that can represent the entire faculty.

Nelson said the resolution reflected UCLA faculty's desire to "institutionalize (their) private political views" through the "machinery of the faculty senate," a notion he rejects.

While Nelson himself is tenured, he fears that young, untenured faculty will feel pressure to adhere to the "official position" of the senate, since personnel decisions are often tied to the Academic Senate.

He also acknowledges all faculty are biased and that their opinions will occasionally find their way into teaching, but also is afraid tenured faculty will feed off the political backing of the senate and use their classrooms for indoctrination purposes.

Thanks to reader Fred R. for the link.

This op-ed by the UCLA law profs is welcome as a statement of their opinion, but its argument is bad and probably proof why they are academics and not big-time entertainment corporate professionals...

At the level of theory, they do raise an interesting point -- should a hot-minded political minority be allowed to speak for a politically numb majority..."politically numb majority" is not equivalent note w/ "non anti-war" or "pro-war" as these profs would have it, it simply means too busy or a-political to bother showing up for the record. So, it could be 2000 pro-war or anti-war, we don't know. All we know is the overwhelming majority of profs. who did turn out for a legal meeting of the academic senate -- which does have the right to pass such measures should they come up for a vote.

Still, the question remains, should a minority vote in the face of an apathetic majority? Isn't this vanguardism -- should any vote be had that doesn't include the full (or near full) participation of the community? Again, this is an intriguing question and my own personal answer might in fact be inclined toward saying yes -- we should not vote democratically unless the entirety of the demos is included.

Of course, this would mean altering the entire system of American representative government in the process -- the very same system in which a hot-minded minority of legislators voted in the name of an apathetic majority to GO TO WAR in the first place. It would mean that presidents should not be elected when a majority of the voters vote in a different direction or not at all.

But truth be what it may, for better or worse, the American system of democracy (if we want to call it that) is that everyone has at least the potential opportunity to be involved in the decision making process, to be political, to have their side represented. Then it is just a question of the agonistic nature of it all -- fighting in the agora for political victory, no holds barred, the constant struggle and counter-struggle.

In this sense, the pro-war profs who are whining to the LA Times "no fair" have to be joking. Arguments like the vote was held "at a time when many on the faculty were busy teaching or preparing for class" betray the total emptiness and authoritarianism of those here charging empty authoritarianism. No, if these profs felt that an outrage was going to occur in their name, they had every opportunity to mobilize their side and have a pro-war contingent on hand to prevent the now infamous outcome. In fact, the pro-war contingent -- from the students -- was on hand, outside the voting room, picketing w/ signs and boos and hisses. Apparently, class work wasn't enough to keep them from activating their right to political protest...

The fact of the matter is, and I'm sure you know this as well as I, that getting academics to take an active part in their institutional government is difficult at best. If it weren't part of the requirements for professional enhancement, hardly anyone would even regularly bother. In this case, the academic senate is not part of that enhancement process, and guess what -- hardly anyone bothers. Except this time -- on the left -- when the troops were mobilized (the law professors are right about that) and they outflanked a sleeping right-wing contingent...a rarity, but it happens.

The high-strung reaction to this by the Right -- that the system of governance is jeopardized is ludicrous at best. Governments -- academic or otherwise -- pass measures all the time that go against the very grain of people (sometimes large groups of people). Again, I do think this is a question that can be debated: is such governance just when its legislation is minoritarian? But let's remember that this is usually the case, from the level of the town hall up to the US halls of legislation proper themselves.

Maybe this isn't democracy -- but it seems to me that the answer by people committed to democracy is to continue the struggle on the issue and attempt to amend the decision. If this is what the small UCLA pro-war prof contingent is doing in the LA Times, and what you appear to be involved in here, far be it for me to have a problem with it.

But don't overreact when myself and others point out what's really going on and cut the rhetoric down to its proper size as a fair return either...

Yours,
Richard Kahn
UCLA Education