University
Senate Proposed: November
1, 2002
Adopted:
President Lee Bollinger called the Senate to order shortly after 1:15 pm in the Schapiro Engineering Auditorium. Sixty-five of 92 senators were present during the meeting.
Minutes and agenda: The agenda and the minutes of
April 26, 2002 were adopted as proposed.
President’s report: The president said he is
still trying to learn as much as he can about Columbia, but he is very happy to
be at this university, in a position that enables him to meld his academic and
personal interests. A number of issues have already surfaced, including an
incident involving the Columbia band’s halftime show at the Fordham football
game, which he thought was now behind the institution. Over the next months he
expected to lay out the issues that he considers critical, but said he would
mention only one now—space. By itself space means nothing, he said; what
matters are the academic, intellectual, and artistic issues that involve space.
He praised the efforts of present and past administrators to enhance current
facilities and add new ones, but said it is clear that a great deal of work
remains. The critical question is how
Columbia should expand—into areas adjacent to its present campuses? Into other
areas of New York City? Beyond New York City? This decision will require
careful, highly intelligent deliberations. There are some exciting
possibilities, he said.
Sen.
Luciano Rebay (Ten., A&S/Hum) called attention to a space issue from the
past decade: the University’s secret sale of the Casa Italiana to the Italian
government. He will continue a campaign he has waged for the past eight years
to rectify this error, he said.
Sen.
Roosevelt Montas (Stu., GSAS/Hum) asked if a member of the Senate Education
Committee could join the president’s task force that is considering the mission
of the Journalism School and searching for a dean.
The
president said the committee was already so large that he was hesitant to add
more members. He said there will be other ways to participate in these
deliberations. He invited Sen. Montas to come talk to him about this question.
Sen.
Joan Ferrante (Stu., A&S/Hum) said the Senate, on which she has served for
a long time, had some difficult times with the previous administration. She
said the Senate wants to work cooperatively with the new administration, and
hoped the president would make use of this resource. The president thanked her.
Sen.
Rebay called on the president to take the pledge that Jimmy Carter had made as
a presidential candidate—to tell the truth always and never lie. The president
willingly took the pledge.
Sen.
Michael Castleman (Stu., SEAS) asked the president what the budget was for his
inauguration ceremony, and how he would spend that amount of money to improve
the quality of the education and research at Columbia. The president said he
didn’t know how much his inauguration cost, and would prefer to have as little
to do with planning his own ceremony as possible. As to how he might spend that
amount of money, he said Columbia is a big place, with many worthy projects.
Sen.
Paul Duby (Ten., SEAS) noted that the Trustees are planning the inauguration,
and questions about its cost should be addressed to the chairman of the board.
Nominations to committees: Sen. Duby, chairman of the
Senate Executive Committee, presented a standing committee roster for Senate
approval, along with a sheet of late changes in committee assignments that had
been at the door. He praised the efforts of the Senate staff, which had helped
produce a fuller committee roster and a bigger Senate—with 92 members--than
Prof. Duby had seen this early in the fall for some years. He noted that two committees on the
standing roster, Rules and Alumni Affairs, have been on standby for some time,
but could be reactivated on short notice. The Senate approved the committee
assignments.
Report of the Executive
Committee chairman: Sen. Duby welcomed the president to his first plenary Senate meeting.
He also welcomed new and returning senators, and urged them to get acquainted
with President Bollinger at a reception outside the auditorium after the
meeting. He also said a substantial Senate delegation would participate in the
president’s inauguration ceremony on October 3, and said stragglers could still
sign up. He noted that the Trustees had decided that all classes will be
canceled and all students are invited to participate. He said the academic
calendar is a Senate responsibility, but he hadn’t heard objections to this
decision from any senators.
Sen.
Duby said a few committees, including Faculty Affairs and Structure and
Operations, had continued working after the last Senate session under summer
powers. These committees’ chairs would be reporting later in the meeting.
Sen.
Duby mentioned two other items of business from last session. One was a request
for nonconfidential information on the salaries of language lecturers, which
was made in a resolution unanimously adopted by the Senate in March.
Unfortunately, he said, the committee had not been able to obtain that
information from the administration.
The
other item, first presented during the previous session, was a code of conduct
for deans and department chairs. The Faculty Affairs Committee was hoping to get
feedback from deans and some chairs before its next meeting, to help the
committee shape a final version of the resolution, perhaps for the November 1
meeting.
Sen.
Duby reported on the Trustees’ June 1 plenary meeting, which he had attended
along with Sen. Montas, and which took place hours after Lee Bollinger had
become president of the university. The
Trustees commented favorably on their dealings with the Advisory Committee on
Socially Responsible Investing, chaired by Prof. Harvey Goldschmidt. The
Trustees also devoted considerable attention to the space issues and budgetary
problems at Health Sciences.
Sen.
Duby said that a subcommittee of the Senate Executive Committee will deliberate
with a Trustee committee to nominate candidates for the Board of Trustees. The
group recommending “Senate-consulted” Trustees will have the same members as
last year—Richard Bulliet, Letty Moss-Salentijn, Paul Duby, Mary Clare Lennon,
and Roosevelt Montas. Sen. Duby urged all senators to suggest nominees for the Board
of Trustees.
At
its last meeting, on September 20, the Executive Committee took up its
recurring September duties, of making appointments under the Rules of Conduct.
The University Judicial Board, which hears appeals in cases tried under the
Rules, consists of faculty members Peter Strauss of the Law School and Sen.
Edward Mullen of Social Work, students Michael Novielli of Columbia College and
Sen. Roosevelt Montas, and administrator Raphael Kaspar.
Also
on September 20, the Executive Committee had exercised its authority under the
Statutes to extend the current terms of the two research staff senators until
January 1, to facilitate the extended deliberations of Structure and Operations
on a proposal to expand Senate representation for researchers. The proposal may
reach the Senate soon.
Old business:
--Late annual committee reports:
--Faculty Affairs:
Chairman Eugene Litwak (Ten., A&S/Social Sciences) noted that since his
committee is mandated to consider faculty grievances, it inevitably runs into
conflict with the administration. Continuing the report he had started to
present at the April Senate meeting, he identified what he saw as a troubling
recent trend in dealings between Senate groups and senior administrators. He
gave two examples.
One
is the Provost’s refusal to provide information on language lecturers’ salaries
that was requested in a Senate resolution unanimously adopted last March. One
reason the Provost gave was the need to protect the confidentiality of salary
information. When Sen. Litwak had explained that the Senate resolution tried to
protect confidentiality by asking only for ratios between the lowest-paid
lecturer and the lowest-paid assistant professor in each department, the provost
replied that even ratios would reveal individual salaries in very small
departments. Sen. Litwak said for such cases the committee could waive its
request, or it could ask for a composite picture incorporating several
departments.
Another
reason for the Provost’s unwillingness to cooperate with the Senate resolution,
Sen. Litwak said, is the view that language lecturer salaries are not the
Senate’s proper business, but an Arts and Sciences budgetary matter. Sen.
Litwak countered that the language lecturer title was approved by the Senate in
the late 1980s, and it is appropriate for the Senate to review the experience
of this rank of faculty now. The Faculty Affairs Committee also believes more
generally that fairness in faculty salaries is a legitimate concern of the
faculty, he said.
A
second case involved a language lecturer who was terminated after only one
year, possibly in violation of Arts and Sciences guidelines that seemed to
require a showing of “gross failure” for any such decision. No such showing had
been made in this case. More than one faculty member who has taken part in
overseeing language lecturers confirmed the understanding in practice that
language lecturers could be terminated after one year only if they had
demonstrated gross failure. David Cohen, Vice President for Arts and Sciences,
did not accept this finding, and responded by rewriting the guidelines,
deleting any mention of gross failure in first-year reviews. The Faculty
Affairs Committee believes this action was contrary to the spirit of the Senate
resolution establishing the language lecturer title.
These
incidents give raise to an important question, Sen. Litwak said: What can the
Senate do about unresolved disagreements with the administration? What recourse
does it have? Can it bring its findings in grievance investigations to the full
Senate? Should the Senate appeal to the president and the Trustees? Should it
pass a resolution condemning the actions of the Vice President for Arts and
Sciences and the Provost?
In
a good discussion last spring, Sen. Litwak said, Vice President Cohen had
conveyed to the Faculty Affairs Committee that there are certain prerogatives
the administration will never give up. The vice president had expressed little
interest in standard arbitration procedures in which, for example, each side
appoints one arbitrator, and the two of them pick a third, and the three-member
panel makes a decision on the issue in dispute.
With
the president’s permission, Sen. Litwak invited senators, including Provost
Cole and Vice President Cohen, to comment on the dilemma he had outlined.
Sen.
Ralph Holloway (Ten., A&S/Social Sciences) recalled that in 1968 he had
linked arms with other professors in front of academic buildings occupied by
students in an effort to encourage a non-violent solution to the basic problem
of that crisis, which he identified as an unanswerable administration. A
solution to that problem was the creation of the University Senate a year
later. Sen. Holloway commended Sen. Litwak for raising this issue.
Sen.
Rebay praised Sen. Litwak as a hero for daring to challenge the establishment.
Sen.
Herbert Gans (Ten., A&S/Social Sciences) asked how other universities deal
with unresolved disagreements between faculty and administrators. He invited
senators with experience at other universities to comment.
Sen.
Litwak said the arbitration procedure he had suggested was a common solution to
labor-management disputes. He did not know if it would be suitable in disputes
in university governance.
Sen.
Ferrante, a former chair of Faculty Affairs, said she saw no alternative in
grievances where the committee gets no cooperation from the administration but
to report its findings to the full
Senate.
Sen.
Eugene Galanter (Ten., A&S/Natural Sciences) urged senators to put their
thoughts about this complex issue on paper and transmit them to the Senate
office for Faculty Affairs to consider.
Sen.
Edward Mullen (Ten., SW) asked the parliamentarian, Associate General Counsel
Howard Jacobson, what guidance the by-laws offer on impasses between Senate
committees and administrators.
Mr.
Jacobson distinguished two grievance functions for Faculty Affairs. One is a
mediation role. The other is a more serious role in particular types of
grievances, such as a complaint that a candidate for tenure was rejected for
reasons of race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation, or a complaint that a
faculty member’s academic freedom was violated. The cases Sen. Litwak had
recounted did not seem to fall into this more serious category. If mediation
does not work in such cases, Mr. Jacobson said, the grievant always has the
right to sue the University.
Sen.
Mullen concluded that there is a gap in the by-laws on the question of how to
resolve an impasse between the Senate and the administration. He suggested that
the Executive Committee set up an ad hoc committee to draft procedures for
handling such situations, which might become amendments to the By-laws or
University Statutes.
Sen.
Litwak sensed a growing distance between some administrators and his committee.
In a recent grievance investigation, the Provost’s office advised the
grievant’s department chair not to speak to the committee. Sen. Litwak was
troubled even more by the attitude this advice expresses than by the procedural
issue he had raised. It is in this context, he said, that senators are eager to
establish cooperative arrangements with the new president.
Sen.
Litwak said the Senate is charged to look into possible misbehavior of senior
administrators, though it’s not clear whether that responsibility belongs to
individual committees. He said he was also willing to consider further
elaboration of the by-laws.
Sen.
Jonathan Cole, the provost, offered some context for the present discussion,
noting that the administration has shared a good deal more information with the
Senate on a range of issues over the past decade than it had before. He said
the issue here is the Senate’s scope of authority. Which issues are within the
Senate’s purview and which are reserved to the schools? Faculty salary issues
have been left to school faculties for generations, as far as he knew. He said
he would welcome a review of the limits of Senate authority, but he thought
that in the disagreements Sen. Litwak was describing, the Senate or its
committees were going beyond those limits.
Sen..
Carlos Munoz (Alumni) said the Faculty Affairs Committee seemed to be trying to
coerce the administration to provide information. He said that in a corporate
setting it is the role of the directors, or trustees, to call for such
information and not of a group like the Senate. He said the Senate’s recourse
might be to ask the Trustees to require the administration to produce the
information in dispute. Sen. Litwak agreed that a possible solution might be to
go directly to the Trustees.
Sen.
Gans, returning to the original topic of Sen. Litwak’s report, saw no reason
why private universities could not publish faculty salaries, as public
universities do. He noted that Columbia’s new president comes from a public
university, and said that no public universities seem to have suffered as a
result of this practice. The secrecy of salary information at Columbia breeds
unfairness, which breeds paranoia, whose effects he has seen during his many
years at Columbia.
Sen.
David Cohen, Vice President for Arts and Sciences, said Sen. Litwak’s account
was missing some important context. In the present disagreement over the
language lecturer’s grievance, which Sen. Litwak had portrayed as a dispute
between the administration and his committee, Vice President Cohen had actually
supported a decision by the faculty in a department. In the Arts and Sciences,
faculty also play a key role in salary decisions, which are largely made by
department chairs.
Sen.
Litwak acknowledged the role of faculty in some decisions, but offered a
different perspective on the language lecturer’s grievance. He said the
department chair had repeatedly sought and received the advice and backing of
the vice president’s office in the handling of the termination of the language
lecturer.
Sen.
Litwak said the picture of salary allocation as a zero-sum game—in which larger
increases for one group can only come at the expense of another group—has
typically hampered the quest for fairness in salaries. Is another picture
possible? Sen. Litwak touched on the larger issue of discretionary funds that
are allocated to particular priorities, like a new private elementary school,
other buildings, or expansion projects. He asked how high a priority faculty
salaries are. He said he was embarrassed to find that Columbia ranks behind NYU
in average salaries for full professors, and some $20,000 on average below
first-ranked Harvard. Sen. Litwak called for some new procedure for adjusting
the University’s priorities.
--Housing Policy: Sen. Duby
said last year’s report was available at the
door,
but last year’s chairman was not there to present it.
--Structure and Operations:
Chairman Richard Bulliet (Ten., A&S) said
the
committee is continuing the work it began last spring, a review of a proposal
to expand the Senate role of research officers. On September 25 the committee
had come close to an agreement on a proposal that may be ready for the Senate
on November 1.
Since
the founding of the Senate in 1969, Sen. Bulliet said, the research staff has
grown phenomenally, both in numbers and in importance to the University. In a
meeting with Law School professor Frank Grad, one of the Senate’s founding
fathers, the committee learned that there had been no elaborate system or
algorithm for the original apportionment of Senate seats, but a somewhat
improvisatory response to perceptions of the composition of the University at
the time.
Sen.
Bulliet praised the ad hoc researchers’ committee for its hard work and
cooperation. He cautioned that since a resolution expanding the Senate role of
researchers would change the Senate by-laws and the Statutes, it will require a
super-majority of three-fifths of the full membership of the Senate to pass. He
asked senators to cooperate by making an extra effort to attend the Senate
meeting where the resolution comes up.
Sen.
Stephanie Neuman (Research Staff, Morningside), a co-chair of the ad hoc
researchers’ committee, thanked Structure and Operations for its work, and
hoped for a successful outcome on its legislation at the next Senate meeting.
Sen. Munoz suggested that some algorithm for allocating Senate seats might be useful. If the present initiative will simply add seats, new requests for seats from other constituencies are likely, with the possibility of enormous expansion in the Senate roster.
Sen. Bulliet agreed that such requests are possible, and will deserve consideration in their turn. But he didn’t anticipate claims in the near future as compelling as the researchers’, and so he didn’t expect vast increases in the size of the Senate. He opposed the idea of an algorithm requiring the removal of some seats in order to add others, noting that it might make it impossible to act on valid requests like the researchers’. He also did not think a small addition of research seats would significantly disrupt the balance of a Senate that has chronic attendance problems in any case.
Sen. Ferrante, Sen. Bulliet’s predecessor as chair of Structure and Operations, noted that the committee had presented a reapportionment proposal in the spring of 2001 that had redistributed the 42 tenured Senate seats, taking several from the Arts and Sciences and reallocating them to Health Sciences and other constituencies. In the same legislation, it had also added one student seat, raising the Senate’s total voting membership to 102.
Provost Cole said he strongly supported legislation expanding the Senate role of researchers, but added a cautionary note about further diversification of Columbia’s already unusually diverse Senate. He imagined a future situation in which the Senate might adopt a resolution affecting a particular constituency—the faculty, say—with a valid vote of a majority of those present, at a meeting without a single faculty member present. He suggested considering some specific guidelines for Senate votes affecting particular constituencies.
There being no further business, the president adjourned the meeting at about 2:35 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Tom Mathewson, Senate staff