Ignorance is Business, Part 2 (Part 1 is here)
by Frederick K. Lang

One of the many criticisms made by Tremper and Matthews was that a high percentage of students withdrew from my courses. Significantly, almost all of the ìstudent complaintsî were attributed to students who had withdrawn from one of my courses quite early in the semester. If I did have a high withdrawal rate, it was because students soon discovered that the only way they would receive As and Bs would be to meet higher standards than they were used to encountering at Brooklyn College, and that to meet those standards they would have to work harder than they were used to doing. For example, they would have to spell answers on quizzes correctly in order to receive credit, and to revise their essays in accordance with my instructions and corrections in order to receive the grade they desired.

I wasnít the teacher most of my students wanted, and so I wasnít a teacher either Tremper or Matthews wanted. Both worked hard to ensure a victory for CUNY. They lied, and cited documents that I hadnít seen previously, or that simply didnít exist. I donít know which amazed me more, the nonchalance with which they invented while under oath, or by the nonchalance with which they admitted to wrongdoing.

(95% of the time Tremper, Matthews, or CUNYís lawyer did the talking while I had to listen in silence. I soon learned that even being criticized, ridiculed, and lied about became boring after a while. So my mind often wandered, and at one point I imagined that the CUNY lawyer, one of eleven working for the university, had been chosen for this arbitration, because her coarseness and underhandedness ensured that Brooklyn Collegeís presence at the hearing would be even further felt.)

Tremper, Matthews, and CUNYís lawyer had to work hard, because they all knew that I had evidence that showed misconduct on the part of both my chair and my provost. Before arbitration began, I was given the right to acquire from CUNY any document whose existence and relevance I could make a convincing argument for. I must have been very convincing, for I was given a copy of a private exchange of e-mail between Tremper and Matthews. I presented the e-mail in my closing statement, which is part of the transcript for the last day of the arbitration.

Following are excepts from my closing argument along with excerpts from the e-mail exchange.

On November 8, 2001, Tremper described me to Matthews as

A person . . . I donít much care to be around.

On November 10, 2001, she expressed to Matthews her desire to have me removed from the English department.

Perhaps if I canít abide him . . . , we can decide that the college would be better served by moving him elsewhere (I began investigating the possibility with Joan Rome last year)..

Tremper began her tenure as chair of the English department in fall 2000. Thus, when she said that ìlast year [she] began investigating the possibility of [moving me elsewhere],î she was admitting that she had started plotting to remove me from the English department almost as soon as she became chair.

Tremper wanted not only to remove me from the English department but also to end my teaching career. On November 10, 2001, she wrote to Matthews,

Iíve wondered if he could be moved into some sort of curriculum development position in Education . . .

Iím not aware that he has any more experience [in curriculum development] than any of us does. It was a thought about how we might extract him from the classroom.

On November 10, 2002, she again wrote to Matthews,

[Herb] Perluck, the former chair of the English department] wanted to serve for a fourth term and couldnít understand why I wouldnít wait for ìmy turn.î

Tremperís use of the phrase ìmy turnî suggests that she saw becoming chair as her due, not as a position to which she might or might not be elected, but one to which she would succeed. And because she felt entitled to her authority, she was enraged when she discovered its limitations, when she realized she could not destroy my career without considerable effort and the help of the provost.

Thus, Matthewsís approval was crucial to her. Indeed, she wanted the provost to approve of the spring 2002 assignment of three sections of English Composition 2 even though it constituted a work overload. On November 8, 2001, Tremper confessed in a letter to Matthews that she realized my spring 2002 assignment was ìtruly grievable.î

On November 10, 2001, Tremper wrote to Matthews that I thought I was

doing the world a favor by teaching James Joyce in Freshman Composition.

Well, I had thought I was doing my students a favor by introducing them to one of the great writers in the English language. And I was simply drawing upon my scholarship in my teaching, a traditional academic practice. Moreover, Professor Tremper neglected to mention to the provost that those teaching English Composition 2 had been asked to organize their course around a theme.

I selected ìJames Joyce: Life and Art.î The focus of English Composition 2 is research and Joyceís fiction cannot be fully understood without doing research into his life and life in Dublin near the turn of the century.

Initially, Tremper was unsuccessful in her effort to persuade Matthews to help her end my teaching career. On November 10, 2001, the provost wrote in her first reply,

Frankly, I would rather not get involved in this . . .

But she did offer Tremper useful advice on how to proceed against me:

How many of his student complaints are documented and how long? Would you be willing to begin doing this now? If we have some documentation, begin getting what we need, begin involving those who should be involved, and ultimately decide whether we are worse off inflicting him on students or somehow getting him out of the classroom altogether, we will be in a position to figure out our options and to start acting on them.

By November 11, 2001, Matthews had a change of heart.

When Denise gets back, or perhaps it would be better to go to Pam Pollack, bring everything to her (whoever she turns out to be) and get a judgment call on all this. Then we will proceed.

ìDeniseî is Denise Flannagan, Brooklyn Collegeís Director of Human Resources. ìPam Pollackî is one of the collegeís attorneys. So, in effect, Matthews was assuring Tremper that much of the collegeís legal machinery would be at their disposal as they attempted to end my teaching career.

to be continued