Last updated on 05/02/2014
Today’s Register Guard has an op-ed on Academic Freedom from the presidents of the UO graduate student union (David Craig), the UO faculty union (Michael Dreiling), and the UO staff union (Carla McNeely):
On April 9, the elected UO Senate unanimously approved a statement on academic freedom that is among the strongest in the country. The policy commits the UO to supporting “open, vigorous, and challenging debate across the full spectrum of human issues as they present themselves to the university community.”
The policy specifically protects academic freedom in the areas of research, teaching, public service and shared governance. It affirms that “members of the university community have freedom to address, question, or criticize any matter of institutional policy or practice, whether acting as individuals or as members of an agency of institutional governance.”
… If the Beavers can do it, why not the Ducks?
Good question. Perhaps the president of the UO administration, Mike Gottfredson, will commission a responding op-ed from his $207K lawyer Randy Geller, or his $218k strategic communicator Tim Gleason, or his $450 an hour backup lawyer Dave Frohnmayer?
I’m on the Senate ad hoc Freedom committee, and can report that the sticking point for President Gottfredson is giving students and staff “the freedom to address, question, or criticize any matter of institutional policy or practice”.
That’s right, under Gottfredson’s version of Academic Freedom, the student and staff who signed this op-ed could be subject to institutional discipline for it.
Gottfredson should get over his weird obsession with controlling what people say, sign the policy already, and let us all get back to our jobs.
They cannot do it because they cannot tolerate even the most basic questioning of the happy talk wafting from Johnson Hall. How would it look if the folks who actually keep this daisy chain of joy going with their debt, beginning asking where does the money go, why am I as a senior still being taught by adjuncts? Why can’t I get my prof to give us anymore time outside of their grant safari to give us a proper lecture? Why the hell am I paying $14/hour for a tutor, when I’m graduating with over $30k in debt? Good marketing/pr presumes that yo control the message and get rid of any alternative thinking, and U of O is nothing if it isn’t a marketing/pr maven…..