Free At Last, Lord A'Mighty, Free At Last!

In 1972—when I came to Amarillo College—the school was under a cloud. Now, after decades in the darkness, Amarillo College has come into the light. Thanks to a new president—Dr. Steven Jones—Amarillo College agreed to rewrite its policies on academic freedom, tenure, and due process in termination proceedings. For the past 36 years, Amarillo College was in denial. The findings of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) that academic freedom, tenure, and due process were not genuinely and sincerely observed by the administration and Board of Regents at Amarillo College were validated by years of protestations that censure didn't matter. As a result, president after president following the original malefactor—Dr. Albert B. (Duke) Martin—spurned the annual overture from the AAUP to open discussion about Amarillo College's removal from the censure list. As a result, Amarillo College languished longer on the list than any other institution. Speaking from the vantage point of 32 years at Amarillo College, I can vouch that academic freedom, tenure, and due process were all tenuous during my time at the College. At no time did I feel that there was genuine support for these bedrock academic principles at Amarillo College. The administrators during that time were anti-intellectual louts who had no understanding or appreciation for such nonsense. The members of the Board of Regents—almost universally—had no sense of academic matters and took the lead of whichever administration that hired help had better toe the line. Well, all of the principals to the original violation of academic freedom, tenure, and due process (a professor attempted to roast an outgoing president and the humor failed and enraged the incoming president) are long dead: Professor Elizabeth ('Beth) Miesse, President Albert B. (Duke) Martin, and every member of the Board of Regents voting to uphold Martin's arbitrary firing of Miesse. The lack of any living participant to protest and the newly arrived President Steven Jones took Amarillo College off the censure list. A year ago, the newly arrived president of the University of Central Arkansas (UCO) led that institution off the censure list. Jones had come to Amarillo from a two-year college in central Arkansas. Surely, Jones was aware of the action taken by the UCO president. When the annual AAUP letter offering consultation about removal from the censure list arrived, President Steven Jones went where no Amarillo College president had gone before and Amarillo College is free at last. My only quibble is with Jones' disclaimer that making Amarillo College compliant (at long last) with the established principles of academic freedom, tenure, and due process was a mere matter of semantics. Jones' hollow bravado was graceless and rang of the anti-intellectual loutishness of his predecessors. There is a tone of insincerity in the claim that it was all semantics. Again, I wonder—if push comes to shove—whether Steven Jones will stand in the light and defend academic freedom or will he discard mere words and carry out the sort of dark deeds performed by his predecessors at Amarillo College? If this is (fair & balanced) ambivalence, so be it.

[x Chronicle of Higher Education]
AAUP Censures One College, Criticizes Another, and Removes 3 From Its Censure List
By PIPER FOGG

Washington

The American Association of University Professors voted on Saturday to add Philander Smith College to its list of censured institutions, to "condemn" but stop short of censuring Medaille College, and to remove from the censure list three other colleges.

The censure list, which now comprises 47 colleges, is intended to single out institutions that have failed to protect academic freedom and tenure. The list is also meant to warn prospective faculty members about what the AAUP deems to be unsatisfactory conditions on those campuses.

The votes were taken at the association's annual national meeting here.

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Off the Censure List

The AAUP cited improved conditions at Amarillo College...in voting to remove...[that institution] from the censure list.

[snip snip]

Amarillo College, in Texas, had been on the censure list since 1968. Steven Jones, who became president last fall, said it was time, after nearly 40 years, to resolve differences with the AAUP. The parties involved in the original incidents that had led to censure, including a professor who was dismissed, are no longer at the college.

The AAUP said the college had agreed to new policies, including one that provides a group of nontenured senior faculty members with procedural safeguards against termination that are commonly associated with tenure. Mr. Jones said the college had clarified its faculty policies but made no substantive policy changes, adding that it was "all semantics."

[snip snip]

Sharon Walsh contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education