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Although it was announced last December that a total of 19 non-tenure-track faculty have not had their contracts renewed for the following year, questions remain among students and professors alike as to who those 19 professors are and in what department they teach. In fact, not one member of the campus community—save for top College officials—could outline information regarding the names and respective departments of professors who will be leaving their teaching posts at the College.
As a result, many have been left confused about what “19 unrenewed non-tenure-track contracts” will actually mean for the curriculum, and about how that statistic will have an effect on individual departments. Chair of the Religion Department and Associate Professor of Religion Michael Walsh explained that, even as a chair of a major department, he “doesn’t have a full grasp of what’s happening in departments across the curriculum.”
“All that I do know is solely by word of mouth and conversation,” he continued. “I’m unclear whether the Office of the Dean of the Faculty can even release names, but ideally I would love to know exactly who will be let go, whose teaching load was reduced, and I would like to see explanations.”
Many, particularly students, share Walsh’s frustration—so much so that the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Executive Board requested last semester that the Office of the Dean of the Faculty release some kind of a list of the names of professors whose contracts were not renewed. “I think it’s really, really important not only for students within each department to know which professors are leaving, but for students at large to know,” noted VSA President Caitlin Ly ’10, “because there are students who take classes outside of their major who need to know if a professor is going on leave, going on sabbatical or leaving for good.”
Ly, however, added that while students should be entitled to know if one of their favorite professors—or even their advisor—will be departing from the College, it is equally important to respect the privacy of individual faculty members. “I don’t think that it’s actually a possibility for a College to give out names of departing professors, just because the administration is taking a very hard line—and rightfully so—that employees’ privacy needs to be protected at all costs,” she explained.
Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger explained that the issue was not a legal one, but merely “a question of respecting people’s right to decide whether their employment situations should be broadcast to the whole community or not.”
“Imagine if you had your contract terminated,” continued Kitzinger, “and this was made public and students decided to demonstrate to reinstate you. You might not want to be the center of that kind of controversy—so it really is a question of a right to privacy.”
Visiting Associate Professor of English Karen Robertson—who actively advocated last semester for more transparency in the face of necessary budgetary cutbacks—argued that “the argument about the privacy of contracts has been used continuously for the last year to disguise cuts,” she said, explaining that when “you don’t know who is going, you don’t really know what areas of the curriculum have been shrunk.”
Robertson, however, acknowledged that from the perspective of the terminated professor, a list of names released by the Dean of the Faculty would be extremely problematic. “This would make teaching your last semester extraordinarily difficult,” said Robertson. “It’s not just embarrassing, but it undermines your professional credibility, and it casts a shadow on your confidence, even though these cuts are about economics, not about professionalism; from the cuts that I know about, the individuals singled out have had entirely positive teaching evaluations. I think it’s a very painful conundrum,” said Robertson.
Because the Office of the Dean of the Faculty has no current plans to release such a list of professors’ names, some individual department chairs have taken measures to inform their student majors of cuts made to their discipline. Chair of the English Department and Associate Professor of English Peter Antelyes explained that he will be holding a meeting with majors on Feb. 12 “to discuss the effects of this year’s cuts on our faculty and curriculum.”
Antelyes indicated, however, that he was still unsure of whether he would chose to disclose the names of faculty members who were affected by the cutbacks to the department. “It’s not clear whether at that meeting we will identify which particular faculty members have had their course-load diminished, have been removed from teaching in the department or have been fired altogether,” he said. “I have been guided by the desires of the individuals involved, but we will definitely be detailing which [course] offerings have been cut.”
Conversely, Walsh had no hesitations about informing his students of cuts made to the Religion Department; he was equally open with The Miscellany News, assuring the newspaper that it could release the names of those affected within his department. “In Religion,” began Walsh, “Max Leeming—who used to teach five courses all to do with Islam—was reduced to a three-course workload, which is exactly a 50 percent cut in salary, meaning that she’s going to have to find extra work. And then we completely lost Agi Veto, whose courses centered around classical Jewish texts and traditions.”
According to Walsh, Veto and Leeming were the only two adjunct faculty in the department, and therefore were the only two professors at risk for a reduced work-load. Walsh explained that while “every department’s culture is different and has a different sensitivity,” he wanted to inform his student majors of the cuts as soon as possible.
“One of the first things I did when I got the news was to obviously speak with [Leeming] and [Veto], and to speak with the professors within the department,” Walsh said. “Then I spoke with our senior majors—they had some very strong reactions and were extremely upset. Then I started communicating with our juniors as well. What I’m planning for this semester is to hopefully in the next few weeks have a major’s social—to try to get all of our majors together—and to have a really frank conversation.”
Unlike the English and Religion Departments, however, some areas of the curriculum—such as the Economics, Philosophy and Film Departments—were relatively unaffected by cuts to the curriculum and have no plans to meet with student majors. That said, chairs within these departments still remain unaware of how other departments were affected by curriculum cuts. Chair of the Economics Department and Professor of Economics Shirley Johnson-Lans explained that she “knew nothing about firings in other departments.”
Similarly, Antelyes said that despite the information released earlier this year by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, he is still unsure whether the curriculum will change from department to department. “While the Dean of the Faculty’s office recently released a list of numbers of courses cut in each department and program…the list did not indicate how the curricula of those departments and programs were affected,” Antelyes continued. “Thus, it is very difficult to acquire that global view of Vassar’s curriculum.”
As a possible solution to such confusion, Robertson suggested that perhaps individual professors who are leaving should be able to choose to have their names released to the larger community. “It should be up to the individual professors,” said Robertson. “If they decide that they would like their names to be used, then I would say them, but that decision should absolutely be up to the individual—it’s their professional reputation in some ways.”
Ly agreed, saying that individual professors “could potentially volunteer to say that the Dean of the Faculty can send out an e-mail releasing their name,” said Ly, “but I don’t know that any employee has yet done so or even wishes to do so.”
Considering that such a list of terminated professors’ names is unlikely to appear, Ly encouraged students to explore alternate routes for more information. Ly explained that a second option for students wishing to know more would be to speak with department chairs or, she said, “go speak to professors and ask them point-blank what their situation is.”
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