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The Dartmouth AAUP Statement on the Proposed Arts & Sciences Reorganization 10/27/24

We write to express our serious concerns about the proposed Arts & Sciences reorganization. We respect our colleagues’ herculean efforts on the current proposal. Like them, we recognize the necessity of restructuring A&S given the crisis of understaffing at the College, the national political assault on the liberal arts–“the arts of free people”–, and the imperative to preserve the small programs and departments essential to Dartmouth’s mission of “educat[ing] promising students for a lifetime of learning and responsible leadership.” The current proposal falls short of its goals for two reasons: it does not provide adequate resources for A&S, undermining the College’s commitment to the liberal arts; and it fails to provide for democratic faculty governance while increasing administrative autonomy and power.

The proposal currently on the table does not reflect even the priorities of the Committee on Organization and Policy (COP) and the Committee on Priorities (CPR), the two committees currently charged with representing the will of the A&S faculty. COP and CPR have explained that a financially viable A&S requires reserves funding of $16.2-18.5M and 1.5% of the current Central budget over the next 20 years. In the current proposal, the administration has committed to “additional reserves funding of $2.7-5.0M that come from DOF and DoSA subvention savings in FY24 and FY25. These savings are combined with $3.5M of uncommitted reserves provided by Central and $2M of additional Central funding annually starting FY27 for five years.” Even in the most generous possible interpretation of this funding commitment, the administration has granted A&S approximately 52% of the reserves funding ($8.5M / $16.2M) and 5% of the annual funding ($10M / $200M) that the faculty committees deemed necessary for A&S to thrive. Similarly, CPR and COP requested 20.0 FTE in A&S Advancement. So far the administration has granted only 6.0 FTE.

This means that CPR and COP, despite their own priorities and generous efforts, successfully bargained for only 30% of what they declared necessary for a robust A&S fundraising division. In place of the requested funding, the proposal encourages its liberal arts core to fundraise with a skeleton crew and to pursue collaborations with the professional schools. It is not hard to imagine the kinds of knowledge and pedagogy that will suffer in such a vocational model.

Indeed, requiring humanistic disciplines to justify themselves in terms of immediate vocational utility is how the self-declared opponents of liberal education achieve their ends.

This plan thus envisions a weak and financially insolvent new school of Arts & Sciences, particularly in comparison to the professional schools. This is not a restructuring, then, but an abandonment of the undergraduate liberal arts mission of the College, and especially the humanities side of the Arts & Sciences. To address the funding crisis the proposal creates, COP and CPR recommend that “financial officers and upper administration continually engage with faculty governance to make sure the budget models fit the stated goals of the new A&S

structure.” But we do not yet possess forms of faculty governance that allow us to achieve the goals of A&S. Under the current governance model, the hard-working faculty committees sitting in purely advisory roles have secured only a fraction of what a school of Arts & Sciences needs to thrive on its own terms. Given that the administration has ignored the faculty committees’ recommendations and even created a new unit, Community and Campus Life, with zero faculty input, we do not trust the administration to respect faculty input going forward. This administration’s continual attacks on academic freedom and free speech on campus further erode that trust.

Logically, A&S budget and administrative restructuring cannot be disentangled from matters of faculty governance. For this reason, autonomous faculty governance structures must be guaranteed by any proposal that reimagines A&S. We must establish from the outset checks and balances, such that no Dean of Arts & Sciences can disregard input from the faculty. Faculty can no longer accept an advisory role on the campus we are supposed to help lead. For the sake of our students and our scholarship, we require shared decision-making power.

In requiring this change, we echo the concerns of colleagues at peer institutions like Harvard and Yale. We expect parity with our colleagues at peer institutions, like Columbia University, where “the University Senate [is] a policy-making body,” and the University of Chicago, where “The Council [of the University Senate] is the supreme academic body of the University, having all legislative powers except concerning those matters reserved to the Board of Trustees, the Office of the President, or the other Ruling Bodies.”

We believe that a visionary reimagining of A&S is possible. But that reimagining must keep the liberal arts at the heart of a Dartmouth education by responding to the priorities of its guarantors, the A&S faculty and staff. It must ensure that our intellectual and pedagogical work remains fully funded regardless of its utility to the technical and professional schools. Rather than adding new layers of administrative authority, any reorganization of A&S should strengthen faculty’s decision-making power and intellectual leadership.

Many who have raised these concerns in town halls and discussion fora have been told that faculty governance is a faculty prerogative unrelated to this proposal. But to sever faculty governance issues from a major budget restructuring of A&S sends shared governance into that indefinite future where many hopes for change are historically delivered--and where they still await their chance. Shared governance and adequate resources for liberal arts priorities as we define them are central to any school of Arts & Sciences, here as elsewhere.

Therefore, we oppose the current proposal for the reorganization of the Arts & Sciences. We look forward instead to contributing to a proposal with substantive guarantees that the A&S faculty, acting independently, will decide on a shared governance structure for the new school of Arts & Sciences.

October 27, 2024

Welcome

For latest announcements please see our News page.

To strengthen voice and governance for all faculty-- in both the Arts & Sciences and the professional schools, and for both tenure track and contingent/adjunct faculty and researchers -- we have revived a chapter of the American Association of University Professors at Dartmouth.

Dartmouth faculty formed one of the original AAUP chapters in 1916. The chapter was instrumental in winning Dartmouth faculty crucial rights, most importantly academic freedom and tenure.

Our chapter’s current work builds on this tradition, focusing on four main goals:

1) Guaranteeing academic freedom,

2) Advocating for the workplace rights and job security of contingent faculty, and

3) Promoting greater transparency and consistency in tenure and promotion procedures.

4) Creating productive and healthy working conditions, including preventing and dealing effectively with sexual misconduct

Please see our Working Groups page for details on how we are working toward these goals.

Our chapter includes tenure line and adjunct faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research scientists. It is easy to join and dues are scaled by income. Our chapter is working in tandem with the national AAUP organization, the 165-member Coalition for Academic Freedom here on campus, and the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric Faculty Task Force. We are also consulting with the Faculty Council of the Geisel School and requisite faculty committees at Tuck and Thayer.

We look forward to working with Dartmouth’s standing faculty committees, a range of faculty, administrators, staff, students, and alumni to bolster faculty voice and governance at the College. We are working to strengthen unity among the entire faculty in keeping with the AAUP national One Faculty campaign.

We encourage your questions, input, and support. And we hope that you will join us. Upcoming events are listed here and you can email our co-presidents here.

Sincerely yours,

The Executive Committee of the Dartmouth CollegeChapter of the AAUP