Departmental Reductions: A Disturbing New Trend?
The sober analysis by AHA Deputy Executive Director James B. Gardner of the decline of faculty salaries in 1990–91, published in the November 1991 Perspectives (p. 1–3, 4), is important and merits further discussion.
The article correctly stresses that the “very troubling” data on history faculty salaries constitute part of a larger picture: “Clearly the nation’s economic recession is having substantial impact, and the situation is not likely to improve in the short run. …”
Let me share an example taken from my own experience. Our department of history, which had lost several positions between 1975 and 1985, still had thirteen full-time teachers three years ago. Since then, positions in (1) German and military, (2) English and British imperial, (3) Iberian and Latin American, and (4) American intellectual and Southern history have become vacant due to (early) retirement. Another position ([5] East Central Europe and Russia) will become vacant due to my own retirement at the end of this academic year. By September 1, 1992, there will be only eight members teaching full-time in the department, which has not been authorized to fill any of the positions enumerated above or any combination thereof.
Consequently, as of July 1, 1992, my university, with about 7,200 students, more than half of whom are in graduate studies, will have no teacher of the modern history covering the areas from the British Isles across the Eurasian continent to the Pacific Ocean, with the exception of France and China. German unification has become a fact of enormous economic and international implication, while high school and even junior high school students have begun to wear armbands with swastikas in six school districts of the State of Colorado in recent months; yet for over three years there has been no search to replace the colleague who had taught German history. Our single largest ethnic minority is of Hispanic background; yet there is no search for a permanent replacement of our former teacher of Spanish and Latin American history. The same holds true for the vacancy in English history, for the benefit of our American studies, also truncated most recently.
Such drastic and disproportionate reductions in both numbers of full-time teachers and fields taught in a relatively small department of history is demoralizing, particularly in the absence of a financial exigency. Students, “surviving” teachers, and the school itself are bound to suffer the consequences of such disruption of normal procedures. I should like to hope that what has been happening at my university is not representative of major trends nationwide, but I fear it is.
When I first joined the faculty in September 1960, I also joined the AHA, and have been an active member since. I should like to submit the statement above for the consideration of the entire membership, to find out whether the sad pattern observed at my own institution happens to be unique, or whether it has also emerged at other institutions of higher learning. The membership, especially the Professional Division of the AHA, may also wish to discuss what should be done in order to stop this incipient trend of the erosion of history positions, i.e., if it occurs on the national scene. I happen to believe that inquiries and suggestions coming from high officials of the AHA should be treated by administrators with the same attention and courtesy with which they treat the caveats of the American Bar Association whenever our law school is evaluated.
George Barany
Professor of History
University of Denver
Amending the “Bill of Rights for Library Services”
The article by Morris, Kazmierczak, and Schoen, “A Faculty Bill of Rights for Library Services” (Perspectives, March 1992), had much to say about the performance of librarians and what university libraries owe to faculty. Somehow the authors neglected to discuss an equally important matter: responsible faculty conduct in return.
If we assume that university libraries exist not just to serve the faculty, but students and the general public as well, then the book loan policies of most campus libraries, and faculty abuse of those privileges, can be a major problem on the many campuses where professors enjoy almost unlimited borrowing power.
If schools allow faculty to borrow books for a year, or for the remainder of any given academic year, that is bad enough. But when books are not returned even after that length of time, timid librarians seldom do anything except automatically renew the books. The idea of faculty paying fines for overdue books seems to be some kind of blasphemy against the profession, maybe even a violation of “academic freedom.” I have taught where professors have held books for over seven years; one teacher had 435 overdue books checked out. Another had to die before the library retrieved its hundreds of books and journals. Some individuals come to consider these books part of their own personal library and react very rudely and uncooperatively when librarians ask for returns. At times I’ve waited several months for a text to return from an unknown colleague, with the library terrified at the idea of pressing matters.
When confronted with the inequity of such loan policies, college faculty have many pious answers, all of them self-serving: “I need it for my research … I am writing a book … It’s a major work in my field … My time is too valuable to waste in renewing library books … No one else uses this technical work … I’m underpaid by the school … It’s in my specialty … I’m working on a very long-term project.”
No one, including college faculty, really needs to borrow any book for more than a few weeks. If they can’t read a book in that time, they are clearly in the wrong profession. If they frequently need it for reference and consultation, they should buy a copy. Technical books, research tools, and classics in a field are a professor’s “tools,” and are tax-deductible as such. One has a hard time imagining a carpenter constantly borrowing a skillsaw, level, hammer, and the local construction code, much less repeatedly borrowing these tools from other carpenters and then not returning them until harassed.
University faculty should be treated like everyone else. Library books are due on time. If late, we pay fines.
I’ve often heard that unlimited library privileges are a “perk” of the job and that we professors cannot be fined or denied the right to unlimited borrowing because we are practicing our trade. If the library somehow cannot legally fine faculty who abuse the most important facility of any school, there is a more effective way to pull us into line: simply revoke another sacred academic prerogative—that of parking on campus.
I am a historian and a professor, not a librarian.
Robert H. Keller
Visiting Scholar
University of Arizona
In the March 1992 issue of Perspectives, L. Morris et al., present an excellent article on a faculty bill of rights for library services. In the article they state, “Periodicals subscriptions should not be cancelled just because they are expensive … ”
Without modification, this point of view places libraries in a trap. They must carry reputable journals without regard to the cost charged to the publisher. If the libraries are constrained by faculty rights not to exert the pressures of the marketplace on the publishing industry, periodical prices will continue to rise at over 10 percent per year.
In the long run, the results of this passivity will erode library collections rather than build them. A few highly priced publications will drive many others out of the collection. I believe that librarians should consider price of journals as one of the criteria in making the current sadly required price cuts. I also urge that social scientists begin to consider journal price as one of the criteria for the journals in which they communicate their results.
David L. Stonehill, Director
Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceanic Institute Library
Multiculturalism and the Hiring Process
In the October 1991 Perspectives, a job listing closed with these statements: “The University of ________________ is building a multicultural faculty and strongly encourages applications from female and minority candidates. Preference will be given to applicants who can serve well an increasingly diverse University community.”
This language goes far beyond a simple statement that Equal Opportunity Employment and Affirmative Action guidelines and procedures will be followed and that females and minorities are encouraged to apply. The second sentence is blatantly discriminatory.
The hiring committee that filed this announcement would consider the views of an applicant on multiculturalism as a key factor in its hiring criteria. If this committee cannot determine an applicant’s views on multiculturalism during the interview process, how then can they ascertain the suitability of the applicant for their multicultural faculty? Only by observing the race, gender, ethnic origin, religious creed, or even the sexual preference of the applicant, either when selecting applicants to interview or during the interview process. The committee may not ensure a faculty that is multicultural in outlook, but it can at least strive for a faculty that looks multicultural.
At what point does the push for a multicultural faculty infringe on the legal rights of job applicants? Can hiring committees brazenly predetermine who they will interview and who they will hire based on such a nebulous notion as multiculturalism? Will this crusade be guided by the absurd goal of having a professor of a different color or gender in every classroom and office? If not prescribed by statistical parameters, will this drive be delimited only by the political and philosophical predilections of the hiring committee?
The quality of teaching and scholarship at American universities will decline if this goal of building a multicultural faculty becomes paramount in the hiring process, replacing the accepted criteria of teaching and research ability and professional competence.
This headlong rush into a new age of discrimination is deeply troublesome. Where will it stop? No matter how lofty the goal, discrimination always produces the same end—hatred.
E.L. Rountree, Doctoral Candidate
History Department, Ohio University
The AHA’s Professional Division opposes discrimination in hiring, and the guidelines for the Employment Information section of Perspectives make clear that advertisements containing discriminatory language will not be published. While the above letter views the quoted job listing as discriminatory, the wording is not discriminatory per se—the ad encourages applications from women and minority candidates but does not restrict the pool of applicants on that basis. Furthermore, while many departments indicate interest in building more diverse faculties, the demographics of the profession make the attainment of that goal highly unlikely for most. According to the most recent profile of the discipline compiled by the National Research Council, just over three-fourths of all Ph.D. historians are white males. The NRC reports that only 5.4 percent of those individuals receiving their Ph.D.’s between 1946 and 1988—essentially the universe of employable historians—come from minority ethnic or racial backgrounds. And only 18.8 percent of historians are female. The overlap between the two categories is small—only 16.2 percent of minority historians are female. With the overlap eliminated, that leaves only 23.6 percent of all historians within the category of “female and minority candidates,” and there is no evidence to suggest that they are employed in greater proportion than white males. In fact, NRC reports that women constitute only 16.7 percent of academically employed historians, below the level one would predict based on their share of doctorates earned and certainly not even beginning to approach overrepresentation. In other words, there remains a strong case for affirmative action and little support for charges of reverse discrimination.
The Professional Division