Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Why academic tenure is in the national interest
Consider the following scenario – a gifted Irish undergraduate becomes
inspired by a subject like vascular biology and its potential in
alleviating human suffering. He asks for an appointment to see the
professor who most interested him in the subject and expresses interest
in doing graduate work. The professor welcomes the proposal, but
explains that he, the professor, can be summarily dismissed at any
moment without cause. In fact, there is no way he can guarantee that he
will be in office in 5 minutes, let alone the decade or so that the
student will need him as a mentor to navigate the slippery slope of
Ph.D., postdoctoral assignments, and initial tenure track position if
he remains in academia.
Being a responsible and compassionate professional, the professor will point out that there are over 400 universities in the USA to which the student can apply and that academic tenure is established there. He will add that no American university has ever argued to its highest court the case for summary dismissal of academics without cause that the Irish supreme court heard on 29th June, 2009. The role of the public university in the USA has evolved over time to include the education and rounded formation of undergraduates, providing a forum for the debate of pressing societal issues in an impartial environment, and research. The institution of academic tenure co-evolved with this magnificent ideal of the public university and is granted only after an often harrowing apprenticeship, with few achieving it under the age of 35. It is important to note that tenured academics can in fact be fired for misconduct, and rightly so; however, they cannot involuntarily be made redundant. Of course, the USA has acquired almost a monopoly of the word's top universities; we shall look later at how to get around the redundancy issue.
The notion of the modern private university is almost uniquely American, and largely reflects the accumulation of capital that US society allows; yet tenure has not been seriously compromised even in the American private universities. The Irish situation is almost unique in world terms. Even if, as fortunately seems likely, DCU loses its quixotic and generously (if inadvertently so) taxpayer-funded appeal to Clarke's high court judgement, both academic tenure and job security in Ireland were effectively destroyed by the 1990 industrial relations act. By prohibiting strikes for “individual dismissals”, this act allowed summary dismissal without use of any agreed procedures. The affected worker can try his luck with the effectively unenforceable recommendations of Ireland's various labour relations boards, and watch as management appeal, defer, adjourn, and the case eventually makes its way through the circuit and High courts to the Supreme court a decade or more later. Alternatively, (s)he can attempt to use the common law immediately through the courts system; the employer, if state-funded, knows full well that here, too, it can simply run up the costs and run out the clock. A final irony is that even the high court has proven unable to insist that a reinstated employee be returned to her duties; the one case that has run the whole gauntlet of courts at UCC cost the taxpayer an estimated 5 million Euro.
The public sector unions have shown little resilience in dealing with an aggressive state-funded management; the economic climate of the next decade might demonstrate that they became little other than firemen who put out industrial brushfires while the state announced the largesse it was distributing to the “union's” closed-shop “members”. In particular, the unions in blushing virgin fashion refuse to hire legal teams at fora like the EAT wherein management has no such cavil. Yet that is not quite the worst aspect of the academic industrial relations set-up in Ireland today. In fact, it could be sorted out immediately by insisting on “double jeopardy” in unfair dismissals, giving the employer only one shot within a period of 3 months (as the legislation seems originally to have intended) and, similarly, by upholding the 2005 European court of Human Rights judgement (Morris and Steele vs. UK) that prohibits use of massively disproportionate legal firepower even by private companies, let alone state bodies like Irish universities, against individuals.
Universities originally arose from the will of students and scholars, respectively, to learn and teach. The administrative infrastructure was initially conceived of as subordinate to the university community, and in particular the community of scholars called the faculty. Yet, after gestures in the direction of academic freedom, the Irish 1997 universities act enshrined an executive in the “chief officer”, and Dail proceedings (for example, 18/12/2002) indicated that the state had little or no role in intervening in what it called the “day to day” operation of its universities. It is fair to say that this kind of management ideal is very Irish; efficiency is confused with centralization of power. The result is that an utterly unaccountable source of power has emerged – as we have seen – one that can dismiss staff, ignore students' petitions, and indeed publicly humiliate High Court judges brought in as chancellor without any governmental sanction. Coupled with the recent overtures to “business interests”, the result is a structure in which academics may ultimately be powerless fronts for billions of state research funding that ends up directly serving short-term corporate interests at the expense of the nation. Regrettably, facets of the Irish media, including the Times, portrayed this craven surrender to short-term corporate interests as exciting and new.
Yet the situation in Ireland is worse still. The USA distinguishes the accreditation bodies, private enterprises to whom all colleges subscribe, and the various public and private third level institutions. In Ireland, HETAC is a state body. Therefore, education at the level that will dominate the cultural, economic, and industrial progress of the country is an oligarchy. More importantly, it is conspicuously not working. The billions thrown at research since 2000 are, rather famously, yielding little or nothing by way of new businesses. Tens of millions are being spent by university administrators in often vexatious legal processes to get rid of (equally often) very high-performing academics – one can only assume, pour encourager les autres. Academic appointments to radically new disciplines are made by ill-qualified “old guards” with the expected disastrous consequences; the sclerosis in the university departmental structures is best attested by the fact that Ireland is the only OECD country not to have a bachelor's degree in , to take but one example,a multidisciplinary area like Cognitive Science.
So what is to be done? The 1997 act needs to be rewritten; the CEO role adds nothing except rancour, and the idea that the CEO should get involved in disciplinary procedures involving suspension and dismissal, formerly the sole province of the minister, has already ruined several lives. No attempt has been made by university administrators correctly to define tenure, and they should be held to account for this as for other examples of their waste. Giving them unbridled use of legal firms like Arthur Cox and McCann Fitzgerald, as we have seen recently, is like giving submachine guns to children.
Finally, the sublime ideal of the public university needs to be affirmed, and yet they need proper monitoring. One idea might be to subject their accreditation to a suitably re-constituted HETAC; none of the Irish universities has been subjected to US-type of scrutiny for several decades (or, indeed, for centuries in the case of TCD). This accreditation body might also consider proposals from private colleges to teach courses that do not yet fall within the conventional purview of state universities; for example, computer science, now a core university subject, might have been initially farmed out in this way on a trial basis 50 years or so ago. Should the subject have legs, the state might invite the private college to teach it within a state university as a stepping-stone to creating tenured positions. The state might thus invite tenders to teach whatever subjects it views as promising, but not yet worthy of the full mechanism of state university incorporation, and tenured faculty. This will introduce the necessary dynamism.
When the attack on academic tenure in Ireland began in earnest about a decade ago, it was in the context of a state arguably heading toward dangerous waters indeed with e-voting and other such initiatives. That is no longer the case; while we are likely to be broke for a decade at least, we shall at least have the consolation in society as a whole of intellectual freedom as defined by Terrence MacSwiney; the right to live our lives by our personal beliefs. Academic tenure can perhaps best be seen as a salutary and ultimately efficient intensification of this dynamic within our universities. Should university managements, having lost all battles to date, eventually win the war, the loss will be the state's; brighter students will seek out independent colleges where academic freedom is the norm.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D. 30u Mean Fomhair 2009
PS For the record, here is the sequence of attenuation of tenure at DCU
1979
NIHE act. Suspension and dismissal reserved for Minister of Education
1985
Comprehensive agreement between FWUI and NIHE empowers NIHE to do suspension and dismissal, but only according to specified procedures.
A contract of employment is drawn up under this comprehensive agreement with an explicit specification of tenure in uneasy juxtaposition with 3 months' notice. However, the courts interpret "tenure" as superceding the notice requirement and the 3 months is a dead letter after probation
1995
DCU publish a new industrial relations document, one not agreed by the union. However, they photocopy the signatures from the 1985 agreement to imbue it with (fake) legitimacy. The make-believe signers in 1995 include Pat Cullen, who had left DCU 4 years before. This, of course, is fraud
Employment contracts are changed as follows;
1. Tenure is excluded from all contracts post 1995
2. A "place of work" is specified; before 1995, the understanding was that employees could work from home, as academics do internationally
3. Academic freedom was removed
1997
The universities act is passed, with the requirement for a new disciplinary procedure and specification of tenure.
2000
In their new disciplinary statute, DCU decide to specify tenure as the 3 months' notice requirement. It is rejected by DCU governing authority
2000 - later
A university president claiming competence in industrial/employment law (as distinct from industrial relations, which he rejects as a pointless exercise) is appointed at DCU. His previous employment is at Hull, notoriously the source of the Edgar Page case which destroyed tenure in Britain.
2001
The statute is is accepted by DCU governing authority
2002
Staff vote unanimously against the statute; the labour court pronounces it illegal
2003
The Fleming judgement; statute illegal
2006 -2007
The Clarke injunction and judgement; statute illegal, and the 3 month's notice provision is found inaccessible on the printed form of the statute, giving rise to speculation of what DCU governing authority actually passed
2008
For the first time in Irish history, a "no-confidence" vote in university management is carried by secret ballot open to all staff.
2009
The supreme court to rule on the statute.
Being a responsible and compassionate professional, the professor will point out that there are over 400 universities in the USA to which the student can apply and that academic tenure is established there. He will add that no American university has ever argued to its highest court the case for summary dismissal of academics without cause that the Irish supreme court heard on 29th June, 2009. The role of the public university in the USA has evolved over time to include the education and rounded formation of undergraduates, providing a forum for the debate of pressing societal issues in an impartial environment, and research. The institution of academic tenure co-evolved with this magnificent ideal of the public university and is granted only after an often harrowing apprenticeship, with few achieving it under the age of 35. It is important to note that tenured academics can in fact be fired for misconduct, and rightly so; however, they cannot involuntarily be made redundant. Of course, the USA has acquired almost a monopoly of the word's top universities; we shall look later at how to get around the redundancy issue.
The notion of the modern private university is almost uniquely American, and largely reflects the accumulation of capital that US society allows; yet tenure has not been seriously compromised even in the American private universities. The Irish situation is almost unique in world terms. Even if, as fortunately seems likely, DCU loses its quixotic and generously (if inadvertently so) taxpayer-funded appeal to Clarke's high court judgement, both academic tenure and job security in Ireland were effectively destroyed by the 1990 industrial relations act. By prohibiting strikes for “individual dismissals”, this act allowed summary dismissal without use of any agreed procedures. The affected worker can try his luck with the effectively unenforceable recommendations of Ireland's various labour relations boards, and watch as management appeal, defer, adjourn, and the case eventually makes its way through the circuit and High courts to the Supreme court a decade or more later. Alternatively, (s)he can attempt to use the common law immediately through the courts system; the employer, if state-funded, knows full well that here, too, it can simply run up the costs and run out the clock. A final irony is that even the high court has proven unable to insist that a reinstated employee be returned to her duties; the one case that has run the whole gauntlet of courts at UCC cost the taxpayer an estimated 5 million Euro.
The public sector unions have shown little resilience in dealing with an aggressive state-funded management; the economic climate of the next decade might demonstrate that they became little other than firemen who put out industrial brushfires while the state announced the largesse it was distributing to the “union's” closed-shop “members”. In particular, the unions in blushing virgin fashion refuse to hire legal teams at fora like the EAT wherein management has no such cavil. Yet that is not quite the worst aspect of the academic industrial relations set-up in Ireland today. In fact, it could be sorted out immediately by insisting on “double jeopardy” in unfair dismissals, giving the employer only one shot within a period of 3 months (as the legislation seems originally to have intended) and, similarly, by upholding the 2005 European court of Human Rights judgement (Morris and Steele vs. UK) that prohibits use of massively disproportionate legal firepower even by private companies, let alone state bodies like Irish universities, against individuals.
Universities originally arose from the will of students and scholars, respectively, to learn and teach. The administrative infrastructure was initially conceived of as subordinate to the university community, and in particular the community of scholars called the faculty. Yet, after gestures in the direction of academic freedom, the Irish 1997 universities act enshrined an executive in the “chief officer”, and Dail proceedings (for example, 18/12/2002) indicated that the state had little or no role in intervening in what it called the “day to day” operation of its universities. It is fair to say that this kind of management ideal is very Irish; efficiency is confused with centralization of power. The result is that an utterly unaccountable source of power has emerged – as we have seen – one that can dismiss staff, ignore students' petitions, and indeed publicly humiliate High Court judges brought in as chancellor without any governmental sanction. Coupled with the recent overtures to “business interests”, the result is a structure in which academics may ultimately be powerless fronts for billions of state research funding that ends up directly serving short-term corporate interests at the expense of the nation. Regrettably, facets of the Irish media, including the Times, portrayed this craven surrender to short-term corporate interests as exciting and new.
Yet the situation in Ireland is worse still. The USA distinguishes the accreditation bodies, private enterprises to whom all colleges subscribe, and the various public and private third level institutions. In Ireland, HETAC is a state body. Therefore, education at the level that will dominate the cultural, economic, and industrial progress of the country is an oligarchy. More importantly, it is conspicuously not working. The billions thrown at research since 2000 are, rather famously, yielding little or nothing by way of new businesses. Tens of millions are being spent by university administrators in often vexatious legal processes to get rid of (equally often) very high-performing academics – one can only assume, pour encourager les autres. Academic appointments to radically new disciplines are made by ill-qualified “old guards” with the expected disastrous consequences; the sclerosis in the university departmental structures is best attested by the fact that Ireland is the only OECD country not to have a bachelor's degree in , to take but one example,a multidisciplinary area like Cognitive Science.
So what is to be done? The 1997 act needs to be rewritten; the CEO role adds nothing except rancour, and the idea that the CEO should get involved in disciplinary procedures involving suspension and dismissal, formerly the sole province of the minister, has already ruined several lives. No attempt has been made by university administrators correctly to define tenure, and they should be held to account for this as for other examples of their waste. Giving them unbridled use of legal firms like Arthur Cox and McCann Fitzgerald, as we have seen recently, is like giving submachine guns to children.
Finally, the sublime ideal of the public university needs to be affirmed, and yet they need proper monitoring. One idea might be to subject their accreditation to a suitably re-constituted HETAC; none of the Irish universities has been subjected to US-type of scrutiny for several decades (or, indeed, for centuries in the case of TCD). This accreditation body might also consider proposals from private colleges to teach courses that do not yet fall within the conventional purview of state universities; for example, computer science, now a core university subject, might have been initially farmed out in this way on a trial basis 50 years or so ago. Should the subject have legs, the state might invite the private college to teach it within a state university as a stepping-stone to creating tenured positions. The state might thus invite tenders to teach whatever subjects it views as promising, but not yet worthy of the full mechanism of state university incorporation, and tenured faculty. This will introduce the necessary dynamism.
When the attack on academic tenure in Ireland began in earnest about a decade ago, it was in the context of a state arguably heading toward dangerous waters indeed with e-voting and other such initiatives. That is no longer the case; while we are likely to be broke for a decade at least, we shall at least have the consolation in society as a whole of intellectual freedom as defined by Terrence MacSwiney; the right to live our lives by our personal beliefs. Academic tenure can perhaps best be seen as a salutary and ultimately efficient intensification of this dynamic within our universities. Should university managements, having lost all battles to date, eventually win the war, the loss will be the state's; brighter students will seek out independent colleges where academic freedom is the norm.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D. 30u Mean Fomhair 2009
PS For the record, here is the sequence of attenuation of tenure at DCU
1979
NIHE act. Suspension and dismissal reserved for Minister of Education
1985
Comprehensive agreement between FWUI and NIHE empowers NIHE to do suspension and dismissal, but only according to specified procedures.
A contract of employment is drawn up under this comprehensive agreement with an explicit specification of tenure in uneasy juxtaposition with 3 months' notice. However, the courts interpret "tenure" as superceding the notice requirement and the 3 months is a dead letter after probation
1995
DCU publish a new industrial relations document, one not agreed by the union. However, they photocopy the signatures from the 1985 agreement to imbue it with (fake) legitimacy. The make-believe signers in 1995 include Pat Cullen, who had left DCU 4 years before. This, of course, is fraud
Employment contracts are changed as follows;
1. Tenure is excluded from all contracts post 1995
2. A "place of work" is specified; before 1995, the understanding was that employees could work from home, as academics do internationally
3. Academic freedom was removed
1997
The universities act is passed, with the requirement for a new disciplinary procedure and specification of tenure.
2000
In their new disciplinary statute, DCU decide to specify tenure as the 3 months' notice requirement. It is rejected by DCU governing authority
2000 - later
A university president claiming competence in industrial/employment law (as distinct from industrial relations, which he rejects as a pointless exercise) is appointed at DCU. His previous employment is at Hull, notoriously the source of the Edgar Page case which destroyed tenure in Britain.
2001
The statute is is accepted by DCU governing authority
2002
Staff vote unanimously against the statute; the labour court pronounces it illegal
2003
The Fleming judgement; statute illegal
2006 -2007
The Clarke injunction and judgement; statute illegal, and the 3 month's notice provision is found inaccessible on the printed form of the statute, giving rise to speculation of what DCU governing authority actually passed
2008
For the first time in Irish history, a "no-confidence" vote in university management is carried by secret ballot open to all staff.
2009
The supreme court to rule on the statute.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Whose university? Our university!– UC on strike
UC Berkeley has a perhaps undeserved reputation as a hotbed of student radicalism. In the 1930's, its football players were used as strikebreakers/scab labour on the docks in West Coast USA; it is notoriously associated with nuclear weapons. Its reputation derives from the reaction to a particularly asinine recommendation from its board of regents banning free assembly in the 1960's.
Let us be clear. The board of regents is not an academic body; it is currently drawn largely from business. Yet the regents have much more power than governing authorities of Irish universities, including the theoretical power to alter curricula. In general, that provision has been treated as a dead letter; however, let us note the impetus in Ireland to involving the business wonder-boys (and girls) in the governance of our tertiary education.
The response to the ban on free assembly and freedom of speech by both faculty and students was magnificent. It then mutated into a hydra-headed set of agenda, including a very deep questioning of what the process of university formation was about. It culminates in the student leader Mario Savio's declaration that “when the operation of the machine becomes so odious....you've got to put your bodies upon the gears...and you've got to make it stop”. The ban was in violation of the first amendment of the US constitution, and eventually academic senate voted against it on those grounds. There is now a “Free Speech” cafe on UC Berkeley campus, with excerpts from Mario's speeches on the walls and tables, and the university curates a record of the events;
Free Speech movement resources
So, until recently, the victories of Savio and the Free Speech movement (FSM) seemed secure. The has, however, been a budget tightening, mainly due to to strange restrictions on tax-gathering, and all three stakeholders- students, faculty, and non-teaching staff – are being asked to take pay cuts. In the same way as Irish university presidents are plenipotentiary, UC President Mark Yudof asked for emergency powers, and awarded himself a pay- rise. The students have been asked to accept a 32% raise in fees; all faculty and staff have to accept a pay-cut.
The response, somewhat to our surprise, was a one-day strike throughout the California system, and a massive rally at Sproul Hall, home of some of the most dangerous clashes between the FSM movement and the authorities. The chant " Whose university? Our university!" rang out repeatedly. The Daily Cal reported the events
(see http://www.dailycal.org/article/106767/ )
So where does this leave us? The proposal to introduce summary dismissal at DCU is far more radical than anything the UC Regents ever attempted. Supreme Court Judge Susan Denham described it as “the end of academic freedom”. Let us see how she extends this argument in her forthcoming judgment.
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. 24 u Mean Fomhair 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
An undergraduate cognitive science programme for Ireland
The degree was deliberately designed as a precursor to a more general cognitive science degree. This subject studies mind as an informational system; it incorporates elements of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, AI, ethnoscience and - increasingly – neuroscience and other biological sciences. The burden of the discipline currently falls disproportionately on educators and students, in my opinion, and that may not be a bad thing. I love teaching the subject.
With that in mind, I have had visiting positions in biology, neuroscience,, and computer science at UC Berkeley, AI at NRC Canada, and philosophy at Stanford. It could be the case that I am slow, and the correct response was to use Irish taxpayers' money to create adjunct positions at DCU for Edward de Bono and various already well-paid UCD academics. At the same time as bringing in these guns for hire, a savage attack on tenure is being implemented, as documented here.
Having read as much of the work of these adjuncts as I could, I failed to get the point. Again, I may be slow; but my GRE results indicate that, if I am, so is 99.92% of the American population. If the problems of cognitive science can be solved in the way that de Bono proposes, the scientists who have sponsored my work in various ways (publishing and teaching with me, endorsing my courses) at both UC Berkeley and Stanford are equally slow, Yet the international consensus is that they are not slow.
So where does this leave us? The opinion of this writer is that, just as the pathetic self-indulgence of our financial sector has disgraced Ireland for at least a decade, so this feeble-minded adjunct system at DCU has destroyed what made DCU, if briefly, an excellent institution – a delicate combination of teamwork, and individual initiative done, as we felt, for the sake of our country.
I outline the general structure of what I believe 21st century cog sci undergraduate education must be. Ireland is, to my knowledge, the only OECD country without such a degree. I have already written many of the courses; in the cases of the ones accredited by UC Berkeley and Stanford and developed and taught by me at these institutions, I include samplers with audio files. No claim is made that this can compete with proper classroom contact.
Readers will note that the degree has a biological slant; for example, text linguistics is studied as an instance of bioinformatics. In my opinion, that is the way of the future. I look forward to proposing this degree structure to academic council at DCU on my return.
B. Sc. . In Cognitive Science
Years 1 and 2; two 12-week semesters, 7 subjects, 14 hours lectures and 14 hours lab per week. (In year 2 one subject becomes optional with consequent lessening of class time).At present, the labs are computing; it could well be the case that students will eventually have the option of doing biology lab as well.
Year 3; mainly work experience/study abroad with a project
Year 4; Mainly project with roughly half the previous class-time
Focus specialisations are Symbolic Systems and Cognitive neuroscience.
COMMON FIRST YEAR
1 Algorithms: elements of searching and sorting
2 Cognitive science one: Introduction to methodologies and thrust of the
discipline
3 Biosemiotics one: will focus on the specifics of human symbolic
behaviour in a classical linguistics course
4 Mathematics: Introduction to logic and linear systems
5 Bioinformatics one: Introduction to the molecular biology of the gene, with
classical data base, search, and signal processing issues introduced as mediated through biological
process
6 Science and society 1: . An overview of contemporary science and its controversies, with an emphasis in ethical and philosophical Issues
7 Complementary Studies: students will have the option of taking a
language, or studying universal cultural issues mediated through Irish
studies (In the manner of American studies at UC Berkeley, students have to take a module on Irish studies before graduating)
Irish studies sampler: music and song
COMMON YEAR TWO
1. Mathematics will cover the emerging sciences of chaoplexity as well as develop the first years material. Non-linearity will be a focus.
2. Cognitive science, likewise, will begin to explore the areas classically
considered as its constituent disciplines : philosophy, psychology,
linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, Consciousness
3. Biosemiotics 2 History of the area, primitive signalling systems in nature, the roots of
human symbolic behaviour.
Biosemiotics 2 sampler
4. Bioinformatics will continue to familiarise the students with the details of molecular, developmental, cell, and integrative biology, while demonstrating the application of computational techniques to these areas and their large overlapping areas,
5 Science and society 2 will cover recent innovations. It will focus on controversies in one subject as an exemplar.
Science and society 2 sampler; focus on biology
6 Software engineering will follow up on the themes from the algorithms module with an applied orientation.
7. Again, Complementary studies will either be a language or culture mediated through Irish studies. In this year, it is optional.
COMMON YEAR THREE
This will involve a year studying or working abroad for students who have taken a foreign
language, working in the gaeltacht for those taking Irish, and otherwise
job experience . Students will also do a project,and can take one or more subjects from their final year if they wish while on work placement.
SPECIALISED YEAR FOUR: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS
1 Human Computer Interaction: multimodality, enablement, making computers
invisible.
2 AI ;classical Symbolic approaches versus subsymbolic and statistical
approaches
3Consciousness studies ; Philosophy of mind: Classical approaches to mind
and brain, recent developments
Introduction
History
History and neuroscience sample
4 Computational linguistics ; exemplified in practical approaches to machine
translation and speech processing.
5 Final year project for entire last semester
SPECIALISED YEAR FOUR: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
1Neural networks: Bep, Art, Sigma pi, etc.
2Cognitive neuroscience; EEG, Fmri, problems with temporal and spatial
discrimination. Resonate and fire networks
3Consciousness studies ; Philosophy of mind: Classical approaches to mind
and brain, recent developments (as above)
Introduction
History
History and neuroscience sample
4 Clinical work It is intended to get psychology certification for the
course that will motivate practical work from "test bashing " and
elementary first aid to preliminary diagnosis
5 Final year project for entire last semester
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. 18 u Mean Fomhair 2009
