Dear University of Oregon community, I am thrilled to announce that Christopher P. Long, dean of the College of Arts & Letters and the Honors College at Michigan State University (MSU) and professor of philosophy and MSU Research Foundation Professor, will join the University of Oregon as provost and senior…
UO Matters
I’m no astronomer, but in my family’s “faith tradition” we were taught that this annual increase in light was caused not by hope, but by the tilt of the earth’s axis of rotation relative to its solar orbit – and also that springtime for us was a depressing advance of darkness for those in, say, Patagonia.
On Apr 5, 2024, at 12:32 PM, Yvette Alex-Assensoh <[email protected]> wrote:
Welcome to Spring Term 2024: A Time of Light and Hope
Ultimately, Springtime in Eugene is beautiful, but that beauty only emerges after months of a dreary sky and rain. The fact that beauty can and, often does, emerge from the rainy seasons of our lives is an encouragement, as people across our world experience wars, conflicts, unnecessary suffering as well as death at home and abroad.
This year, Springtime in Eugene is a time that diverse members of our community are celebrating Ramadan, Easter, and Passover. As members of a university community, we are called to life-long learning, which hopefully includes broadening our understanding of the diverse ways that people worship and connect to their collective memories and tradition. Our shared commitment to one another, therefore, invites us to support the time that our students, staff and faculty take to honor cherished beliefs and traditions.
Email from the UAUO Union:
United Academics is back at the bargaining table this week, Thursday April 4, from 12:30-3:30 in Chiles 125. Come out and support your bargaining team! The administration has promised to walk us through their lackluster salary proposal which fails to keep up with inflation, puts us farther behind our comparators, and excludes raises for many of the faculty in your bargaining unit.
Let’s pack the room again!
Your presence in the Zoom also makes a difference, but in-person sends a stronger message! …
Presumably Bruce McGough, Soc Sci Assoc Dean and Professor of Economics, will take the lead on explaining why President Scholz has not bothered to make a serious response to UAUO’s modest proposal to get faculty pay to average, three years from now.
Presumably GC Kevin Reed will be on the board this time. More here:
About UO Faculty Club
The Office of the President, Office of the Provost, and Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art host the UO Faculty Club. In its third incarnation, the Faculty Club means to provide a place where faculty can gather in a welcoming and collegial space. Gatherings take place weekly on Thursdays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm in the JSMA. Snacks and soft drinks provided; beer and wine available for purchase at the bar.
Posted on 4/3/2019: GC Kevin Reed believes “toxic” Faculty Club “reeks of white male privilege”
Over the past year or so I’ve received many angry emails from UO’s $352,612 a year VP & General Counsel Kevin Reed, above, accusing me of various things and threatening me with various forms of retaliation. I’m posting this latest because he cced others, and because it might be of more general interest:
From: Kevin Reed <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: University Service Opportunities
Date: April 3, 2019 at 9:10:31 AM PDT
To: Senate Executive Coordinator <[email protected]>, “William Harbaugh” <[email protected]>, Elizabeth Skowron <[email protected]>
Cc: [names and addresses of OA, SEIU, and ASUO student leaders redacted]
Bill [Senate Pres Harbaugh, me] and Elizabeth [Senate VP Skowron]
I write in my capacity as a proud Officer of Administration at the University of Oregon. In that capacity, and as a person who is committed to improving the functioning of shared governance at UO, I write to question your decision to hold “informational sessions” relating to opportunities to serve the Senate at the “Faculty Club.”
The Faculty Club is not open to OA’s, classified staff, GE’s or students. It is not an environment where any of those crucial constituencies are likely, in my view, to feel welcome or to show up. Neither to I believe it to be a place where members of UO’s marginalized communities feel in the slightest bit welcome. Indeed, the Faculty Club has earned a reputation on campus as being an exclusionary group, dominated by white men. Exactly the sort of “good ole boys club” I think the Senate would want to distance itself from. Curiously, however, Senate leadership has chosen to treat it as its clubhouse.
Indeed, a respondent to a recent campus survey on faculty hiring had this to say about the Faculty Club:
“The faculty club – an extension of UO senate and Bill’s blog is a place where gossip takes place in an exclusive zone. Sidebar conversations empower those who show up to a space that is less than welcoming to anyone outside a core group of faculty. It reeks of white male privilege – even the name Faculty Club is destructive and screams of exclusion and privilege. Why does the UO community not actively resist these toxic activities?”
As an OA who truly thinks UO deserves better, I could not have said it better. I add, however, that the message this sends is especially toxic in the context of the current budget situation, in which the president has called for significant cuts to programs. On his blog, the Senate President has been posting conversations that suggest that there is bloat that should be targeted for cuts in the ranks of student workers, classified staff and officers of administration who are dedicated to making this university a safe and highly effective organization.
I believe the University and the Senate deserve better.
Kevin S. Reed
219 Johnson Hall | Eugene, OR 97403-1226
(541) 346-3082 | [email protected]
My response:
Hi Kevin,
The Knight Campus, Ed School, and Journalism faculty are doing OK (and this does not include their lucrative consulting gigs or summer money). Business is at 91% of peers. CAS at 86%. Law salaries are the worst at 83%. All comparisons are to the other AAU publics, data and computations from the AAUDE. In the past I’ve found significant errors in the data JP Monroe’s office of Institutional Research submits to the AAUDE, but I have not checked these most recent numbers.
You can drill down to the department level at https://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir1.uoregon.edu/files/AppendixIIIALLAAUPUBLICSHighLowAvgbyDisc_2012-13.pdf and find individual salaries by name at https://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir1.uoregon.edu/files/Unclassified%20110123.pdf
Thanks to our UAUO Faculty Union, the Senate, Michael Dreiling (sociology) and John Bonine (law) UO’s policies were already much stronger than the oversold and poorly written “Chicago Principles”, in that they give the faculty, and all UO employees, explicit protection to criticize the university administration.
Former President Gottfredson’s failed efforts – with the collaboration of then Senate President Margie Paris (law) – to keep this protection out of the policy under the guise of promoting “civility” earned him one of many critical news reports, this one in Inside Higher Ed:
The union’s proposed statement is similar to existing policy, calling free inquiry and free speech “essential components” of academic freedom. The statement is also more expansive, and includes language guaranteeing faculty the “right to engage in internal criticism, which encompasses the freedom to address any matter of institutional policy or action, whether or not as a member of any agency of institutional governance.”
The Senate passed this despite Gottfredson and Paris’s efforts, and in the wake of the alleged basketball gang-rape coverup Gottfredson signed it shortly before the Trustees fired him.
So it’s disappointing but not surprising to hear the rumors down at the faculty club that Sandy Weintraub, the JH administrator charged by Pres Scholz with keeping the Senate in line, tried to keep the Faculty Union’s presentation about uncompetitive UO salaries off the agenda – on the same day that the Senate will take up a recommendation from our accreditors at the NWCCU, led by former OSU administrator Sony Ramaswamy, that UO consolidate and reiterate its academic freedom policies.
General Counsel Kevin Reed is already dealing with one lawsuit claiming that UO violated the First Amendment by blocking a critic from commenting on DEI’s twitter feed – does he really want another? I guess not, since the Union is on the agenda:
March 13, 2024 Senate Meeting Agenda:
Pres Lincoln: It may seem strange that any men [sic] should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. Alicia Santiago of The Daily Emerald has more on the lawsuit…
The UO Trustees presentation is at ~9AM Tuesday at https://youtube.com/live/M9VWXXsCDtY?feature=share and the UO Senate one will be sometime after 4PM Wednesday, at https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/97954327496. Supporters are asked to chant What do we want? Average! When do we want it? In three years! at their computers (while muted of course, we’re not…
I’ve taught at UO since 1995, and thanks to my students and colleagues in economics and other departments, and the many helpful staff and OA’s, it has been a wonderful place for me. That said I’m looking forward to a new and different life at the end of a dirt road on Orcas Island. The blog will continue with help from others, so keep those rumors and documents coming. Guest posts, including non-defamatory ones, are always welcome. uomatters at gmail dot com.
To my students: Yeah it is weird that my paycheck stops a week before the end of the term, but I think they’ll still let me post your grades.
Back in 2014 UO’s VPFA Jamie Moffitt signed off on this deal giving millions in subsidies to the law school, which at the time was run by her husband Michael Moffitt. The money came from UO’s “Education & General fund”, which is to say mostly undergraduate tuition and state support:…
Hi folks! The UOM editorial board asked me to write a post about faculty salaries and the faculty union’s proposal for the readers of this blog and I am happy to do so. For those who want to listen/watch instead of read, I re-recorded the presentation I made to the…
Senate President Gerard Sandoval (PPPM) has extended the deadline to sign up for the Senate and its committees until March 8. Apparently President Scholz and his well-paid PR flacks won’t let the Senate email this news to the university, so I’m posting the signup link here, along with the original…
Thursday is the day! We need a strong turnout this Thursday, 12:30-3:30 in Chiles 125, as the UA Bargaining Team presents our economic package to the administration. Our Article 26: Salary represents a significant increase to faculty pay through across-the-board, merit, and equity raises, as well as promotion increases. The UA…
Currently serving as dean of something or other at UCSD. His Ph.D. is in Higher Education & Organizational Change. You can find his cv and letter at https://president.uoregon.edu/uo-search-provost-and-senior-vice-president. According to his Google Scholar page he’s done research on athletic scandals and faculty satisfaction. Seems like a good fit! Whoops, Ed…