Defend Higher Education

SIGN THE PETITION

Catholic Higher Education is undermining seniority and tenure.

As recently as the 1960s Catholic higher education in this country was widely regarded as inferior to its secular counterparts. Its faculties were religious, nuns, priests or brothers. Its curriculum was then dominated by required classes in theology, Thomistic philosophy, or Catholic Church history. Those credits, seen as more religious than academic, could not be transferred to non-Catholic institutions. Gradually many factors transformed the situation, or so it seemed until now, when a new situation confronts its largely lay faculty.

Since the 1960s the upward mobility of immigrant families led them to seek admission into mainstream public or private colleges and universities. In addition, federal grants could only be used for secular subjects. Eventually, to remain competitive, Catholic colleges had to remove religious requirements, and they became institutions without required religious courses or even faculty vowed to a religious order. They became institutions with a Catholic history, or as one of the oldest American Catholic colleges on the East Coast put it: Manhattan College is a “Lasallian Catholic institution dedicated to the treatment of all people with dignity and respect.” Nowhere is it mentioned that such a college would fail to respect the tenure and seniority rights of its faculty, that it would do something that no respectable secular institution, public or private, would contemplate. As the American Historical Association described it in its recent letter of January 25: “The College’s failure to adhere to its own contractual faculty handbook, not to mention generally accepted ethical guidelines, is an especially striking embarrassment for an institution committed to Lasallian values.” The American Association of University Professors in its letter of February 2 noted that tenured faculty, in preference over non-tenured, were dismissed without any consultation with the faculty, without “faculty access to critical financial data.” Furthermore, as the AAUP notes, the criteria for termination, are so vague that affected faculty “are unlikely to be able to discern or contest the reasons for their election.” Clearly the national professional associations that oversee the standards required of colleges and universities are deeply concerned.

Founded in 1853 by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, Manhattan College was once staffed by men in a religious order. Now it has an overwhelmingly secular faculty; many have families with children. Currently there are no requirements that a student (or faculty member)be a Catholic. Students are required to take one course with a specifically Catholic content. Jewish or Muslim students have associations that meet regularly on campus.

On the website of Manhattan College nothing tells the prospective student or enquiring parent that it has recently eliminated 62 out of 225 of its faculty, and egregiously broken both tenure and seniority in so doing. It just issued these firing notices in January, at the beginning of this calendar year, at a time when most hiring for the following academic year has already happened. Despite its Faculty Handbook that claims to apply to all faculty and asserts that Manhattan College adheres to AAUP guidelines in upholding tenure, it has now violated an essential norm that applies to higher education in the rest of the country. Once one of the oldest and respected Catholic colleges Manhattan College has now put itself in a singularly unethical ranking with implications for all higher education. This has happened at a time when other Catholic colleges are opening new buildings and expanding their student bodies.[1] Clearly some sort of fiscal and ethical mismanagement has occurred at Manhattan College.

Rather than address the source of its problems, the College passed it on to the careers and livelihood of its faculty, all of whom were hired with the clear understanding that tenure was a life-long possibility – only of course if the faculty member met the strict teaching, research and service requirements. In anticipation of what appeared to be lurking in its future, the College even hired as counsel, Jim Ryan, who has conducted other purges at a few largely unknown Catholic colleges. Never were the faculty at Manhattan warned – some in their late fifties – that unemployment, and even the end of their careers, would be the reward for many years of dedicated service.

This is not the sort of treatment that, decades ago, clerical members of the faculty ever experienced. They were never fired, their careers abruptly terminated. Clearly the ethic that befits the rest of the world of higher education, has no relevance for the lay faculty at Manhattan College. Everybody who cares about tenure, and of course Catholic higher education, needs to rally, to assist the soon-to-be-unemployed faculty who have suffered from deeply unethical, and almost certainly illegal, dismissal. Seldom has one of the bulwarks of American higher education, that is tenure, been so fundamentally threatened; the time has come to challenge this egregious behavior.

Margaret C. Jacob, Distinguished Professor of Research, UCLA

Teo Ruiz, Distinguished Professor of Research, UCLA

[1] St. Joseph’s University, until recently St. Joseph’s College for Women, has opened a new student center on its Long Island Campus, at a cost of 17 million dollars.

Local officials

please write to one or all

This is a list of local officials with an interest in the vitality of higher education. Please think of writing to one or all. There are sample letters included.

Jamaal Bowman

Richie Torres  

Erick Dinowitz

Jeff Dinowitz 

Betty A. Rosa