A Philosophical Fable Entitled ‘Follow the money’

~by David Aiken~

 

Diogenes with his lantern

Let us play a little imagination game—just to pretend for an instant, for the blink of an eye really, that we have all been called to be the guardians of a Liberal Arts & Sciences college. Let us equally pretend, in this playful reminiscence, that every time financial pressure has been visited upon the hallowed halls of our imaginary LAS faculty, i.e., when some big bill or another comes due, it has fallen to the LAS teachers and their classes and programs to pay that bill. With their jobs; with their classes; with their programs; with their livelihoods.

It could be an interesting by-the-way kind of reflection, just in passing, that the jobs, classes and programs that are cut or reduced to reimburse the various come-due and past-due notices, seem to come from the Liberal Arts & Sciences – e.g., theater, film, languages, general anthropology, general sociology. And so the powers-that-be are still able to invite us, over and over and over again, with a funereal shake of the head but a sigh of relief, to yet greet the news that jobs and classes and programs in disciplines related to science and technology, those that are obviously important because they are immediately useful and productive, are protected when the bill collectors descend upon the flailing institution. Softly muttered, the phrase, ‘silver lining in the dark cloud’ can be heard twittering around and about.

And yet the common denominator, the thread linking all of our institutional crises, does not seem to be due to any particular failing in the LAS teachers or their model of LAS classes and programs, which are regularly sacrificed in order to pay the bills for the whole faculty. Rather, it seems that Ariadne’s desperate thread leads us inexorably back into a labyrinthine and very secretive black-hole in the world of finances and management of institutional funds, funds initially entrusted to the institution and replenished through the years, that LAS might thrive in this place.

The institutional crises that have historically undermined our imaginary LAS establishment, inevitably suggest that the philosophizing fabulist needs to ‘Follow the money’.

Now, there are some fairly traditional paths to follow in narratively exploring, in seeking out adequate translations for, these financial and managerial crises that have been plaguing our imaginary LAS educational institution. Narrative options allow authors to weave tales that are plausible for a viewing audience. So, we will develop our little philosophical fable along the two traditional and entirely predictable narrative lines of Tragedy and Comedy.

First, the tragic narrative of the Life & Times of our LAS college, with perhaps a high tragycall twist. This would have to include the wanton destruction of jobs, laying waste to real people and lives; the dismantling of LAS classes and programs; and very tragically indeed, the willful destruction, especially for students in quest of a vision for life, of the possibilities associated with the enormous variety of life-visions that are consistently born out of LAS models of education. Sadness, loss of livelihood, loss of vision, depression, youthful potential hindered or wasted, expense incurred, etc.—all the hallmarks of the tragic narrative, which leaves everyone exhausted and completely depleted.

The high tragycall twist, of course, which would be the totally depressing bombshell in this narrative, is if it were in fact to be demonstrable that the LAS ideas our institution is trying to ‘sell’ are simply not saleable to the world, that there really is no intellectual market for such LAS programs; and this could perhaps, or not, also be aggravated by repeatedly inadequate marketing presentations of the product to potential student-buyers and interested parent-investors.

But while this question of marketing competence could be a minor plot twist to introduce perhaps at some point, it is not a realistic narrative addition. Because it so happens that most thinking citizens are aware that academic studies world-wide actually show that LAS programs are in fact very desirable, demonstrated by indications that investment world-wide remains consistent and robust in such educational programs. And it is because this information is so painfully ubiquitous, much like the educational equivalent of Melville’s Moby Dick—"the ubiquitous white whale” of American literature, that a different data-driven narrative development suggests itself, one that, instead of moving our fablelike drama along the tortuous paths of tragic development, suggests that we should instead lend a comedic evolution to our little philosophical moral tale

So, faithful to the more realistic goal of telling the happy tale, of lending comedic twists and turns to the narrative of our imaginary LAS college: Our philosophical fable remains centered around an LAS-place that is historically plagued by crisis after crisis. And yet, adding confusion to frustration, thereby creating narrative tension, it is also obvious to All & Sundry that these institutional crises are not educational in nature. Because those involved in this tale of our LAS community—students, teachers, parents, et al, choose to be associated with us by commitment to precisely the educational ideals of LAS.

Rather, the stream of continual crises that beset our beleaguered LAS place, seem always to be financial and managerial crises. And because this retelling of our fable is comedic—plot oblige, we would be permitted to imagine that the educational community would get to remain intact, this time and in this telling. And we could well imagine, instead, a different destiny for those to whom the financial and the managerial well-being of our imaginary LAS program have been long entrusted, the ‘guardians of the funds’ in our imaginary narrative. For the long history of crises that have continued to shake and define the institution, makes it more than obvious that these ‘guardians’ have not been very faithful stewards of their charge. Or is it just that they have been distracted by other interests, which could have kept them from discharging well their managerial and fiduciary trust toward our imaginary LAS college? (This could inspire another minor plot twist, eventually… perhaps.)

In the outworking of this comedy about our LAS college, then, it would be the turn of such as these to pay, with their jobs and their livelihoods, the bill that is even now coming due. And in the high moment of comedic realization, the viewer would discover that, for once, he is watching a dramatic tale where teachers would no longer have to pay with their lives and livelihoods for misdeeds of finance and management.

You’ve just got to love a Hollywood-style happy ending!

The movies have long popularized the catch-phrase that acts as the title of our little play, and which comes from the fact that plots almost always unfold when the players ‘Follow the money’.  How very tedious it would have been to always hear from Hollywood: ‘Follow the LAS teacher’.

Further reading:

·      https://nonimprimatur.blogspot.com/2019/04/liberal-arts-at-university-college.html

·      https://nonimprimatur.blogspot.com/2019/04/further-on-liberal-arts-at-university.html

·      https://nonimprimatur.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-question-of-self-and-co-governance.html

·      https://nonimprimatur.blogspot.com/p/teacher-musings-and-rants.html (from 03 May 2019)

·      https://nonimprimatur.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4833.html (from 03 May 2019); but especially the TED-talk video-clip argument, with Eric Berridge, for the marriage between LAS & STEM. This suggests a desirable outcome, entirely different from a wholesale destruction of programs and lives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2XPF6rQ6fs&fbclid=IwAR25yNzl5JsrQi-yC_mhKkvm3RJZe8aq8ImHX3Buvy78M2waKFO7mT2BxhI

The Question of Self- and Co-Governance in Open Society_Ways and Means

 

Following up on the question of

“Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP”

~by David Aiken~

The 1^st of May, May Day, was created an official federal holiday in the United States in the early 1890s, after just about 10 years of being knocked around in the various state fora in debate. The idea, as ideas sometimes do, gained impetus and took hold, eventually becoming a recognized public holiday all over the world, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, from Argentina to Venezuela, from Bahrain to Vietnam, from the countries of the Eastern Block to Oceania. The idea that won the day almost 130 years ago was simple enough –that Workers were a disregarded lot.

It is the world’s workers who actually create the wealth for the wealthy; it is the world’s workers who have created the world that has grown up around us, and that we all use every day everywhere at every level. From garbage cans to toilets, from physical buildings to the edifices of classroom ideas. And—the simple audaciousness of the idea astounds and amazes— it seemed appropriate and good to the Powers-That-Be nearly 130 years ago that there should be a very deliberate public reminder to celebrate the workers of the world. Per our Wiki source:

1 May was chosen to be International Workers' Day to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. In that year beginning on 1 May, there was a general strike for the eight-hour workday. On 4 May, the police acted to disperse a public assembly in support of the strike when an unidentified person threw a bomb. The police responded by firing on the workers. The event lead to the death of eight and injury of sixty police officers as well as an unknown number of civilian killed or wounded. Hundreds of labour leaders and sympathizers were later rounded-up and four were executed by hanging, after a trial that was seen as a miscarriage of justice. The following day on 5 May in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the state militia fired on a crowd of strikers killing seven, including a schoolboy and a man feeding chickens in his yard.

Ideas, such as the one that inspired May Day, seem to take root more readily in soils where public debate thrives, with all of the roiling messiness and awkwardness that attends when the public gets involved in just about everything. At University College Roosevelt, right now, today, the idea on the table, indeed the chopping block, is an educational vision, a dream really, of a broad and traditional faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences. That dream, because it is old, older at least—which is certainly implied by the idea of ‘traditional’, is today being forced to yield the field to a different academic agenda, one that is fueled by financial arguments.

And yet this change does not have to represent a depressing step backward in educational philosophy, really, if the debate surrounding the adoption of this ‘different vision’ actually reflects the interests and engagements of the greater UCR community.

Unfortunately, though, the ideas behind this change did not get to have their day in the court of public opinion & debate in the UCR community.

§ Self-governance at University College Roosevelt.

It is difficult to know where, exactly, to begin in the critical assessment of an educational institution that continues to publicly defend imposing confidentiality on the supposedly open processes of democratic co-governance. Especially on questions so central to its educational core and vision.

It is a natural and stimulating good, in Open Society, that we should get caught up in the earnestness of representing our own thinking and our own convictions about the essential philosophical questions that concern the academic institution where we work or study; whether the debate is about the traditional role of Foreign Languages in Liberal Arts & Sciences, with the very real possibility that the co-governing community might decide in open deliberation to redesign for their own purposes, and even to part from that tradition, or whether the question in the public forum is to deliberate and determine whether a particular institution might even wish to abandon its commitment to the LA&S tradition. These are weighty matters indeed; and discussions are heated.

            So, how are we to respond, how to act, when an educational institution, whose public reputation has been erected on the foundations of democratic processes, elects to liquidate an established core element of the Liberal Arts & Sciences tradition, and where the political will of the institution seems to be to abandon their educational mission and orientation?

The question, frankly, is academic. Because while the humanities philosopher may be opposed to such radical changes in educational mission, and the social science philosopher in favor, at the end of the day both points of view are in matter of fact arguable in models of higher education.

The question is academic, because in democracy we understand the idea of trying to seek out the will of the unified many, even when that will might not agree with our own personal point of view—for is this not a foundational tension in the idea of self- and co-governance? And, at the end of yet another day, we can school ourselves to learn to live with opinions and directions that may differ from our own, as long as we remain persuaded that such decisions were arrived at fairly, that the openness, the integrity of the deliberating processes of the many has remained inviolate.

UCR recently made public a document that argues that faculty, staff and student representatives were compelled to treat as confidential the deliberations that had taken place in closed quarters on these weighty questions of UCR’s mission and educational philosophy. “Council members are obliged to treat information confidentially whenever they can reasonably assume this is necessary. Information about persons always needs to be treated confidentially, unless indicated otherwise.”

The argument is interesting, because we are driven to conclude that there was either managerial incompetence in the way the meetings of our representatives were run, which is a disconcerting thought for the community to have about UCR leadership, or we must accept as an assumption of management that concerned UCR citizenry is incompetent to think through, together and openly, issues related to our mission and educational philosophy without necessarily getting into the private affairs of individual colleagues. Which is to conclude that the democratic ideal is a fool’s errand.

What would the Roosevelts have thought about that?

But then, why would UCR administrators discuss in the first place specific human resource issues in such an inappropriate venue as debates about general mission and educational orientation? Why would any administrator think that such a discussion reflects any sort of appropriate focus, or professionalism, or that it is ethically, or legally justifiable?

In the best of circumstances, it is challenging for all democratic venues to navigate the delicate tension between the personal ambition of leadership and the discovery of the will of the community. So, the response of UCR management to this situation has simply been not to deal with the challenge at all; instead, the management team chose to impose non-disclosure agreements on UCR faculty, staff and student representatives. All exchange of information between representatives and represented was shut down by administrative fiat.

When the UCR administration elected to pursue paths of secrecy and closed-door “discussions,” they created a de facto structure of tyranny—a tyranny of the few “representatives,” who were called upon to replace the open debate and participation of the many. The imposition of non-disclosure agreements on faculty, staff and student, flies absolutely and unequivocally in the face of any democratic governmental will or structure, and certainly contradicts the institution’s self-declared policy of institutional co-governance.

So, it is really not possible for individual committees and councils to discuss the value, for example, of having a philosophy track at UCR, without necessarily involving the specifics of the philosophy instructor? If so, then the idea itself of the public roundtable, where issues that concern the good of the people can be openly debated, is a wretched, dysfunctional lie.

What would the Roosevelts have thought about this Closed Process circumvention and co-option of co-governance at UCR or about the dismissal of LA&S? Certainly, the Roosevelts and their 4-Freedoms would have found the first to be problematic. As for the dismissal of LA&S, that would probably not have been very high on their list of desirable solutions, either. If one can extrapolate from the fact that Franklin was educated at Harvard College, the Liberal Arts & Sciences bastion of the America of that period, and that Eleanor was educated by “a noted feminist educator who sought to cultivate independent thinking in the young women in her charge,” and … learned to speak French fluently and gained self-confidence.”

If UCR management has its way, the young Eleanors of today will not speak French, or if they do, they will not learn it at UCR.

At this point in our finally public discussion at UCR, it seems certainly obvious, to me at least, that co-governance has been cheaply sacrificed; and this has led to a certain number of very specific and real consequences. So, let us judge the tree by its fruit.

Perhaps principal among the consequences, is the sacrifice of the sacred principles of Open Society, the principles of self- and co-governance, on the altar of some personal ambition by the interested few.

Among the consequences we are currently experiencing at UCR, is the economic demolition of the lives of those teaching faculty who have been terminated or who are in the process of being forcibly downsized.

And among the consequences, is the demolition of one example of a Liberal Arts & Sciences vision of education in the Netherlands, which has argued that in LA&S there is a greater good than just the material courses our students follow in the pursuit of some future employment, but which goes to the very heart of creating the good human in all of us who value democracy, and out of which will, eventually, hopefully, flow virtue and beauty as we create the future of our world.

Autocratic systems of government can be trusted because the vision of the ruler is worked out, predictably, in the rules and activities of the systems the ruler creates; and there is none of the messiness of Open governance. But in those places where the Open Society remains a value, it is not possible to have confidence in a type of management that pretexts a publicly democratic system of government, and which shows itself in point of fact to not be Open at all, but rather hidden behind closed doors. The employed can have No Confidence in this environment. So, let us judge the tree by its fruit.

The promise of the Open Society is the dream that a Brotherhood of Man is in fact possible; but it will only become a true possibility when each one of us learns to stand, back to back, and to dare together to speak truth to power.

For united we stand. Divided we fall
And if our backs should ever be against the wall
We'll be together, Together, you and I.

References:

·      https://firstladyoftheworldroosevelt.weebly.com/early-life.html

Further, on “Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP”

Some Elucidations and an Emendation

~by David Aiken~

 

Detail from Picasso's Guernica

Last Friday, in response to the Reorientation plan published by the administration at UCR, I published on Phrontisterion an editorial comment entitled “Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP.” The public response was amazing, and voluminous, and frankly entirely unanticipated; I thought I was just another one of those discontented ‘lone voices’ lamenting in my own little wilderness, while the funeral cortege of just-another defunct Liberal Arts and Sciences program wended its way to the local boot hill. But still, some statements that I made in that editorial need a little further clarification.

This is a chance to set my record just a little straighter.

§ On the Question of Foreign Languages at UCR.

In “Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP,” I reported that,

“1) The Academic Core as a department was dissolved, and the remaining supported Core tracks are to be dispersed into either the departments of Arts & Humanities or the Social Sciences.”

and that,

“2) AC Foreign Language teaching faculty were either given notice of termination yesterday, or given the possibility of being retained on reduced and temporary contracts to allow the institution to get students presently in the language pipeline to the end of their course” (bold emphasis mine).

I must amend the conclusion in 2) as being possibly misleading, not because it is necessarily incorrect, but because I really do not understand at all why UCR intends on keeping around one part-time teaching faculty in French, one in Dutch, and a possible TBA in German. So, to set the record a little straighter here, let me amend my statement to report simply: UCR no longer intends to encourage the study of Foreign Languages. Why the institution has chosen, quite arbitrarily, at this particular time to retain any teaching staff at all in just these particular languages, will be a story for the future to unfold.

In “Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP,” Phrontisterion made a little more public, information communicated by UCR administrators to All & Sundry in public meetings last week and in an institutional document, ‘Towards a Reorientation for University College Roosevelt’. According to much-touted and very-public statements by UCR administrators over the course of this process of Reorientation, the decision to liquidate the UCR Foreign Language requirement was in fact motivated by the results of an AAC Facebook poll - April 2015 (UCR Curriculum Committee Report, December 5, 2017), conducted by students, where it became statistically “apparent” to all concerned parties that a “significant” number of UCR students really did not want a core requirement in foreign languages. So, according to UCR administrators, it is on the advice of the UCR student body that Foreign Languages, and indeed the entire core department, was dismantled. This official institutional position was confirmed in a recent article from PZC over the weekend: “Het bestuur van het college heeft de beslissing onder andere genomen op advies van studenten…”

So, this quite specific attack on Foreign Languages, which bodes poorly for the well-being of other Liberal Arts subjects at UCR in the near future, obviously has quite distinct consequences for human resources: “…UCR is dismissing teaching faculty in Spanish, French, German and Dutch, and perhaps in Academic Writing; and it is reducing senior faculty in Sociology, Anthropology, and Philosophy. Anywhere from 8-10 teachings colleagues are being shown the door.”

FOR THE RECORD: Here are the results of the AAC Facebook poll - April 2015. 217 students responded to the student poll, a number that corresponds to less than half of the total student body; 159 were in favor of UCR language requirements, which includes the 1 who thought the requirement needed a facelift, which is not the same as not wanting the requirement at all; and 57 were not philosophically opposed, either to requirements or to foreign languages, but thought the language requirement was irrelevant. So, 159 = keep; 57 = toss. Call me old-fashioned, but I fail to see any statistical apparent-ness in this poll that would indicate that a “significant” number of UCR students are opposed to a foreign language core requirement.

Total responses: 217

·       156 (71.84%): The language requirement is fine, but needs improvement.

·       57 (26.27%): The language requirement is irrelevant and I shouldn't have to do it at all.

·       3 (1.3%): The language requirement is perfect the way it is, I see no reason for change.

·       1 (0.46%): The language requirement is really bad and needs a big revamp.

The UCR Curriculum Committee that originally took up in 2017 this question of what to do about the student poll, makes a certain number of suggestions in their Report, none of which involve faculty reduction or track or department closures.

·       -more flexibility in language combinations, e.g. take 200 French and 200 German

·       -take at least 2 consecutive language courses, don’t have to reach 200-level

·       -explain about exemptions, filing special requests, etc.

·       -offer other languages (that are not offered in Dutch high schools): Arabic, Chinese, Russian,

·       etc.

·       -offer a Sign language course

·       -focus language courses on literature and linguistics, rather than becoming fluent

-consider dyslexia and other learning obstacles

Caveat 1: During the public announcements of ‘Towards a Reorientation for University College Roosevelt’ to the UCR community, which took place on April 25^th, UCR administrators rolled back on their statements concerning the importance of the AAC Facebook poll - April 2015 in their decision-making.

Caveat 2: The precise contractual status of some of our UCR Foreign Language colleagues is unclear at this point. It is clear that the colleagues from Spanish have been terminated. Other Foreign Language teaching colleagues, however, who have permanent contracts, were not directly terminated; but it remains unclear for how long the institution will honor their contracts, which have been forcibly reduced to 50%, and whether their contracts will remain permanent or are to be phased out.

§ On the Question of Prerequisites.

In “Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP,” Phrontisterion drew the obvious conclusion that the key strategy of the Reorientation was simply “to remove classical Liberal Arts classes as requirements, a shift that guarantees the attrition of student population for those classes.”

In the UCR document, ‘Towards a Reorientation for University College Roosevelt’, one can read under the rubric: More choice for our students

Another important step is that our curriculum will confront students with fewer general graduation requirements; both the language requirement and the 200 level course ‘Writing across the disciplines’ will no longer exist. The measure regarding the languages is a liberal one: students will still be allowed to take language courses, both at UCR and off campus. Dutch, French, and German will continue to be offered at UCR, Spanish will become an off campus option. Students will be free and indeed supported to take language and culture elements during a semester abroad and in off campus courses. The academic skills central to the 200 level ACC course ‘Writing across the disciplines’ will be integrated in the disciplinary tracks. By means of a ‘Writing and Skills center’ UCR will keep investing in skills teaching and enable more tailor-made solutions to skills learning for our students.

That UCR will have fewer graduation requirements implies that there will be more room for choosing options for our students. Given that UCR has introduced a 15EC Senior Project, this extra room for adding some self-chosen breadth and depth to their programs will help students prepare for their Senior Projects and masters’ programs in greater freedom.

So, reorientation at UCR was relatively straightforward: simply remove classical Liberal Arts courses as core requirements. As the institution is not opposed to requirements in other academic areas, it is plain that this is not a philosophical attack on required courses as such; just on some; just on those not deemed (really) academically useful to furthering the agenda of (obviously useful) sciences and technologies; just on traditional liberal arts classes. For those who need public media confirmation, there is this recent article in the PZC: “Ongeveer een derde van het programma bestaat uit verplichte vakken…”

It needs to be clearly said that by reducing the number of possible choices for Liberal Arts classes at UCR—no theater classes; no foreign languages; fewer anthropology courses, for example, there is now obviously more curricular room for students to spend their time studying subjects more specifically relevant to them in their science and technology majors, and for them to dedicate more time to the significant undergraduate student research component (15 ECTS!) that has recently been introduced into the 3-year UCR program.

This is a textbook illustration of how ‘the bell tolls’ for Liberal Arts and Sciences programs.

           

Co-governance. (Reflections based on COU-UCR Council Rules Regulations 2014)

A teaching institution that makes Social Justice and Human Rights a hall-mark of its institutional virtue, should practice carefully and deliberately what it preaches. The decision-making structure of UCR is defined by the institutional documents as co-governmental, which is to say that the Administration, the Faculty, the Students, and the Staff, are all supposed to co-share in decisions that affect the institution. A noble political ideal indeed—but only in theory, apparently, at UCR.

The following are foundational documents publicly available on the UCR website: “Council” refers to the UCR Council, the official co-decision making body of University College Roosevelt, as defined in the Reglement [sic] of University College Roosevelt,” and “UCR” refers to University College Roosevelt. So, the UCR Council shares in the following types of institutional decision-making, per Article 2 of the UCR Council Rules Regulations of 2014:

o   Giving, or deciding not to give consent to the UCR “reglement”, including the “kiesreglement”, the Academic Rules and Procedures, the UCR strategic plan, the UCR regulations on working conditions and the UCR policy with respect to specific groups.

o   Giving advice on the proposed UCR budget, student facilities and any other business affecting the prosperity and/or growth of UCR.

o   Giving advice on any other proposal that is presented by the UCR management whenever applicable.

o   Giving, or deciding not to give consent to the UCR’s academic program quality control system as well as monitoring the quality of the education offered at UCR.

o   Inquiring for clarification or explanation whenever deemed necessary on the decision making process within the UCR management.

o   Proactively initiating new projects or proposals that aim to improve UCR in the broadest sense of the word.

o   Making itself aware of the interests and opinions of the students or staff / faculty members it represents whenever deemed necessary.

o   Taking up issues brought up by individuals whenever deemed appropriate and necessary.

Given this co-governmental structure, which is both clearly and publicly articulated and which has been validated in the historical practices of the institution, it is therefore surprising that UCR administrators have required faculty and student members on the UCR Council to sign non-disclosure agreements during this process of Reorientation. Compelling members of democratically structured representational bodies to sign non-disclosure agreements during a major curricular Reorientation effectively gags faculty and student representatives, and prohibits them from consulting with and representing the interests of those whom they are called to represent—the faculty and the students.

This style of top-down political manipulation and intimidation is the staple of autocratic governance schemes. But from a liberal arts education we learn about another model of self-governance, and we teach this other way to our students. We allow ourselves to be reminded by a certain Thomas Jefferson of America, that the people need to be educated precisely “to protect against the corruption of political power into tyranny.”

“The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny],” suggests Jefferson, “are, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes” (Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526).

§ Forced Retirement.

In “Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP,” the statement was made that “The UCR philosophy program is Humanities based, which is to say broadly conceived, and this is consistent with a Liberal Arts institutional model. The UCR philosophy instructor was informed yesterday, publicly, that he will not be offered the possibility to teach after retirement, but that he will be replaced by the current dean, a Social Sciences political philosopher.”

UCR administrators floated this vision as a general idea in an early draft version of the Strategic Plan:

(D_1, p. 11-12) “Another important field to work on is the role of UCR at the beginning of academic careers. UCR is a very attractive place for young scholars and scientists who want to work at the forefront of undergraduate teaching for some years before applying for more senior positions at research universities. The latter are more open to teaching careers than they used to be and profiling UCR as an excellent learning school for junior staff could benefit both UCR and junior colleagues. In order to create room for younger colleagues it is important that colleagues who retire but want to remain active in teaching, will operate as super-subs in their areas of expertise, but step aside for the new generation to come in, and build a new future for the college.”

That said, there was such an instant hue and cry from UCR faculty that this early version (D-1, February 2017) was entirely edited from the final version of the Strategic Plan (November 2017)—at least the language, if not the intent. Perhaps it would not be superfluous to note at this point that the faculty budget lines that have been selected for the chopping block are from traditional Liberal Arts & Sciences subjects.

In an aside a little closer to home: perhaps it is also unnecessary to note that the academic Dean, a political philosopher by education, chose to announce publicly the ‘other’ UCR philosopher’s retirement, when in fact the ‘other’ philosopher has been formally negotiating with both Head of Department and Dean to teach beyond mandatory retirement. This would reduce the senior teaching faculty in philosophy at UCR from two, one actual and one potential, to just one—the potential.

Further reading:

·      https://publicdelivery.org/pablo-picasso-guernica/_Detail of Pablo Picasso – Guernica, 1937, oil painting on canvas, 3.49×7.77m, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain

·      https://www.pzc.nl/zeeuws-nieuws/ucr-schrapt-verplichte-vreemde-taal-uit-lesrooster-drie-banen-verdwijnen~a59af236/

·      https://nonimprimatur.blogspot.com/2019/04/liberal-arts-at-university-college.html

·      https://www.academia.edu/16559958/Skepticism_Stoicism_and_the_Jeffersonian_Model_Three_Philosophical_Responses_to_the_Crisis_in_the_Humanities_The_International_Journal_of_the_Humanities_Vol._5_No._8_

·      http://www.ucr.nl/searchcenter/Pages/Results.aspx?k=UCR%20council

Liberal Arts at University College Roosevelt_RIP

~by David Aiken~

On April 26, 2019 University College Roosevelt took managerial steps to sever all recognizable ties with the educational tradition of classical Liberal Arts. While the title of ‘Liberal Arts’ will be formally retained in institutional documentation, the undergraduate Liberal Arts vision at UCR has now been completely excised. UCR is now on its way, quite officially, to becoming a venue for Engineering, Science and Technology.

This change was already clearly announced in the Strategic Plan of 2017-2021.

The key element of this strategical shift has been to remove classical Liberal Arts classes as requirements, a shift that guarantees the attrition of student population for those classes.

Among the managerial steps taken yesterday were the following:

1) The Academic Core as a department was dissolved, and the remaining supported Core tracks are to be dispersed into either the departments of Arts & Humanities or the Social Sciences.

2) AC Foreign Language teaching faculty were either given notice of termination yesterday, or given the possibility of being retained on reduced and temporary contracts to allow the institution to get students presently in the language pipeline to the end of their course.

3) The UCR philosophy program is Humanities based, which is to say broadly conceived, and this is consistent with a Liberal Arts institutional model. The UCR philosophy instructor was informed yesterday, publicly, that he will not be offered the possibility to teach after retirement, but that he will be replaced by the current dean, a Social Sciences political philosopher.

4) Several other faculty teaching positions from Social Sciences, those which also have senior faculty with upcoming retirements, will not be staffed or replaced at their retirement.

The motivation for this shift away from classical liberal arts is, as always, money.

Liberal Arts is a challenging sale in the Netherlands. The crossroads-moment for UCR has now come and gone. The institution could have committed here to a Liberal Arts philosophy fully, thereby creating a distinctive market niche in the Netherlands. This would have meant creating or re-creating, and placing emphasis on, classical Liberal Arts programs such as Theatre and Media, Film, Foreign Languages and Literatures, and other Humanities-type subjects.

Instead of this, UCR has chosen for an Engineering, Science and Technology orientation, thereby aligning itself with the more normative social science philosophy of other Dutch institutions of higher learning.

Let it be clearly said, though, that this shift is not truly motivated by money. Money is a red herring in this game. Rather, this shift has been brought about because of a philosophical incompatibility: the tradition of the Liberal Arts is an uneasy fit in a market and society dedicated to the sciences and social sciences. A Liberal Arts institution ceases to be Liberal Arts when the administrative Powers-That-Be, not zealously persuaded by the goodness of the classical Liberal Arts model, fail to aggressively ‘move their product’; but instead follow the money that countries and provinces throw at Engineering and Technology programs, and the more useful “sciences.”

So, UCR is dismissing teaching faculty in Spanish, French, German and Dutch, and perhaps in Academic Writing; and it is reducing senior faculty in Sociology, Anthropology, and Philosophy. Anywhere from 8-10 teachings colleagues are being shown the door.

The red herring dangled by UCR administration to justify this shift away from the Liberal Arts at UCR, is so the institution can increase its rainy-day savings. There is no urgency or financial crisis at UCR. This shift is simply about having a little extra pocket money—just in case. This was also clearly said in the Strategic Plan of 2017-2021:

“Over the past years, UCR as an organization has evolved towards a position of sound finances. (…) Our income consists of 60% state funding, 20% tuition fees and 20% from other revenues. Although the solvency rate has developed positively during the last eight years, the small-scale nature of UCR makes us vulnerable to financial setbacks. (…) A solvency rate (equity/total assets)*100%) of 30% is needed to secure a financially sound position (in 2017 the solvency rate is 11%).”