Roll of Dishonor - Case Study Introduction
Case studies result from research into hundreds of authenticated documents
accumulated over two decades. They describe some of the most disgusting people
the author has met during sixty years in business and the academe.
|
Contra Cabal web sites have achieved an extraordinary readership. If Paul Trummel dies before he completes his work, then trustees have authority to continue publication as an educational project through the newly formed Contra Cabal Foundation, London which will own all publication rights. The Foundation will publish Contra Cabal in perpetuity in the way that Sonia Orwell posthumously published the collected works of George Orwell. Foundation trustees and directors (professional people, lawyers, and academicians in UK and US connected directly and indirectly with the International Federation of Journalists) will supervise editorial and design functions using young investigative reporters and graphic designers who wish to further their education in journalism. They will receive trade union freelance rates of payment for their work. The Foundation will respect former trustee the late William D Winn's last admonition "Go get 'em!" by continuing to report academic malfeasance and to expose morally repugnant academicians and public officials. Readers should consider the articles and case studies as a work in progress. More information about academic or government fraud and deceit frequently surfaces after victims or their associates read Contra Cabal. That information becomes part of a relevant case study after verification and validation. Students and current faculty members write letters to the editor on politically sensitive issues. Some correspondents request name withholding to avoid retaliation. Contra Cabal electronic magazine contains expose and satire. Probably one of the first to appear on the web, it has now published since 1992. The hits/month range between 100,000 and 150,000 with more than 1.5 million hits by about 60,000 unique visitors during the past twelve months. The "New Releases" menu lists new, updated, or revised articles on the four Contra Cabal sites. |
||
Introduction
Individuals listed in the Roll of Dishonor have all contributed to the present anarchical state at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and University of Washington (UW) by allegedly committing criminal acts or acting as accessories after the fact. They will probably never come to trial because they control the process; however, each of them will have their unethical conduct and criminal activity exposed in the series of case studies linked to this introduction.
University officials consistently abrogated established legal procedures designed to safeguard the rights of individuals. Their despotic behavior and failure to conform with promulgated regulations has transformed minor issues into matters of vast proportions. They have regularly conspired to act illegally and subversively. They have denied due process of law and ignored important issues which have now reached an irrevocable state. While under investigation, some of them committed more crimes in attempts to cover up their original acts and those of their colleagues. [Arbitrary and Capricious Evaluation]
University administrators and faculty members of such ilk present a real threat to academic freedom when they thrive upon the non-selection and non-promotion of individuals with nonconformist views. That process results in a standard of quality and excellence emanating from institutional judgment with a cultic instinct toward conformity. Such conformity eliminates inconvenient nonconformity (also honest dissent) so that those in administrative control can impose their ideologies instead of allowing individual freedom of thought and expression.
RPI officials recently announced a review and modification of its faculty governance structure which they claimed would strengthen the role of tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the faculty governance process. Reportedly, the review responds to a directive by the board of trustees that restricted definition of the faculty for governance purposes to tenured and tenure-track faculty. It also requested modifications to the faculty senate constitution. [Jackson]
Somewhat hypocritically, bearing in mind her neglect to address civil and human rights issues which span two decades, President Shirley Ann Jackson reportedly claimed that: A strong university must have effective faculty governance to assure progress and to advocate for the faculty as a whole. By that, Jackson evidently means to define “whole” as a special interest group of faculty members which does not include all professors or faculty members.
The interchangeable terms “professor” and “faculty member” determine the essential quality of all academic instructors regardless of rank or affiliation. Jackson has no authority to adulterate language to create new meaning for established terms. In fact, to covertly try to do so shows a lack of ethics and uncontrolled hubris.
A recent RPI press release (28 Jun 07) describes a classic example of administrative incest. It announces the recent appointment of Robert E. Palazzo as provost. Jackson announced: “Robert E. Palazzo, acting provost . . . has been appointed to the position of provost after a rigorous national search. . . .” Her statement implies that the search committee could not find a suitable candidate nationally so it returned to a policy of inbreeding and double-dipping. That type of administrative inbreeding resulted in the Judd/Phelan/Halloran disaster (described in detail in the case studies) which has now become a matter of international concern. [What Goes Around . . .]
Double-dipping by administrators defines as drawing a high salary and two pensions by holding conflicting academic and administrative positions. Double-dippers receive additional income as bonuses and salary increases funded by outside organizations in the form of awards, grants, and consulting fees. As insurance, they retain their tenured faculty position as a bolt hole to which they can run when things get too hot for them in the administration.
On the current governance score, Palazzo remarked in a manner laughable for its naiveté or ironic implication: “Some have suggested that adversarial relations between administration and faculty are inevitable and even healthy. I reject that premise and strongly disagree with that view. I believe that a system of trust and cooperation that enables debate and collegial expression of views, while providing mechanisms to assist in the resolution of conflict, however it may arise, is a preferred state that we should strive for”.
|
|
||||||||
|
The term “contingent faculty” itself reflects our awareness that several groups of teachers - including part-timers, full-timers off the tenure-track, and graduate employees who teach well beyond the needs of their own training—endure overlapping forms of exploitation and present comparable risks to higher education. We have warned repeatedly that the excessive employment of faculty without job security would eventually undermine both academic freedom and shared governance. That time has arrived. When most faculty are at risk of summary dismissal, the freedom for faculty to speak forthrightly is diminished. And faculty control over the curriculum is also undercut. - Cary Nelson, AAUP President
|
||||||||
Palazzo then defines the ideological special interest group that he suggests should hold absolute power: “. . . the vitality of a university as a whole depends on a faculty governance system that encourages mutual respect, the greatest possible participation of the tenured and tenure-track faculty, and provides avenues for trusted and fluid communication among tenured and tenure track faculty also key administrators”. That statement evidently precludes “trusted and fluid communication” by anyone else. The more things change the more they remain the same. [Palazzo]
Palazzo has obviously not done his homework and read the many articles in Contra Cabal that deal with issues on Rensselaer campus; otherwise he would not make such ridiculous assertions.
Unrealistically, he expects a system of trust and cooperation in collegial expression and debate without first resolving existing conflicts among hubristic H&SS faculty members and addressing the damage already caused to their victims. Palazzo must first sort the sheep from the goats and insure independent investigation of all illegal behavior.
Without an adversarial policy, some tenured professors and administrators will continue to form cozy relationships with impunity. They will continue to deny constitutional and human rights and restrict democracy and academic freedom to the detriment of both clinical faculty and students.
E. Bruce Nauman, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Vice President of the now-defunct Faculty Senate, and a frequent Jackson critic, said: "We are behaving like a dictatorship, not a university." Since, faculty members voted 200-21 for the Senate's reinstatement. The number eligible to vote was 359.
The current crisis boils down to conflicting views over who gets to vote for members of the faculty senate which has a say in who receives tenure and which classes the university offers. RPI's board of trustees has decided voting privileges should be limited to tenured and tenure-track professors, replacing a policy that also granted the franchise to librarians, research faculty and some retired professors.
Some faculty members have broached the possibility of organizing a vote of no confidence in the administration if it ignores the referendum results. Larry Kagan, a sculptor and professor of art also president of the deposed Senate, downplayed that option by saying: "I think that votes of no confidence don’t get anybody anywhere. They create more turmoil than is really needed. The faculty came within six votes of declaring no confidence in Jackson during 2006".
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) criticized the administration approach. AAUP, whose mission is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, sent a five-page letter to Jackson and Samuel Heffner, chairman of RPI’s board of trustees, recommending reinstatement of the Senate. AAUP wrote: "We find it troubling that the administration appears to believe that the faculty cannot be trusted to govern itself or to maintain the best interests of the entire institution in making decisions in those areas designated as coming within the faculty’s purview".
Totalitarianism
Current Rensselaer lifestyle compares with the apathy and compliance rampant among university apologists in Nazi Germany who had their modus vivendi exposed by Martin Niemöller's statement. This parody applies today.
|
Modus Vivendi of Academic Apologists Officials first deprived undergraduates of their freedom of expression. That did not concern me because I strictly conformed to a politically correct ideology. Then they deprived graduate students. That did not concern me because I held a faculty position. Then they deprived untenured professors. That did not concern me because I held tenure. Then they deprived tenured professors. That did not concern me because I held a department chair. Then they deprived me and that concerned me. I soon discovered that the politically correct ideology to which I had given my academic life had paid only lip service to academic freedom. I cried out to my colleagues for help but they had all adopted politically silent attitudes. I desperately turned toward my former students but they also remained silent in the way that they had learned from their mentors. They had all lost their freedom of expression and, consequently, could not speak out for me.
|
||
|
Moral Decline of Big Mama at |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||
|
The RPI return email message claimed: “Message rejected because of unacceptable content” which admitted censorship and violated federal law. Systems administrators probably do not realize that they implicitly condone crimes reported in the content they suppress or to which they deny access on the web. In effect, they admit that they knew about the wrongdoing before they suppressed the information which could make them accessories after the fact in a cover-up of racketeering - a much more serious federal crime than prior restraint. Ironically, the next generation will not have to deal with officials who advocate censorship. If technocrats continue the present way, and academic apologists continue to maintain political silence, then nobody will know that any form of censorship ever existed. |
||||
Palazzo’s public statements have contained similar platitudes to those which RPI administrators have used to assail faculty members for many years. He wants to strengthen the role of tenured and tenure-track professors; however, faculty members have their own ideas about who can participate. They have voted to expand the franchise to include clinical faculty hired to teach on three-year contracts. Clinical faculty members have very few of the rights and privileges afforded to tenured faculty members although they have the same responsibilities. [Blackballing and Blacklisting]
The present academic process guarantees mediocrity at undergraduate level and extends into the graduate population. Many students admitted to universities under affirmative action quotas have acquiesced to coercion to compensate for their lack of merit and ability. They have graduated through a process of record falsification and grade inflation to become the next generation of faculty members. Their lack of education and ability does not allow them to compete for jobs in the public sector so they remain forever indebted to the process that admitted them into the academe.
First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty to speak and to write without fear of restraint. This freedom of expression closely links with freedom of the press. Fourteenth Amendment requires that state laws grant equal protection to all persons. However, the extrajudicial censorship that exists in academic institutions in the United States parallels that which exists in underdeveloped countries. A covert, extrajudicial act of censorship exists for every act that complies with law. The end of ethical academic standards has resulted in an apolitical, totalitarian ideology within which cultic forces compete.
Both administrators and faculty members have diluted the integrity of the institutions that they pretend to serve. Conceited, many of them pose as superior intellectuals but cannot sustain that posture through lack of personal integrity and acumen. They do not obey the law; instead, they manipulate it to serve themselves and have abandoned codes of professional ethics. An inherent low level of intellect denies them the ability to discourse so they resort to using administrative power and risk management policies to attack their colleagues.
Shared Governance
The worth of a higher education in US has declined for two decades for social and moral not ideological or intellectual reasons. Most problems can be traced to the lack of respect for intelligence and civility - the two qualities upon which higher education depends. That trend is reinforced by a cynical underestimation of the intelligence and experience of people whom tenured faculty and administrators consider they have under their control. They try to practice in loco parentis over people senior in age and experience to themselves to cover up their own inadequacy and misleading credentials.
The public prestige of elite universities has apparently not suffered despite the "myriad imbecilities" they have practiced, taught, and institutionalized over three decades. Universities have become academic "bordellos" with administrators denying academic freedom for fear of violating politically correct sensitivity codes.
The growth of consumerism has fostered an antithetical sense of individualism. Many institutions have drifted from their moral and intellectual moorings. Corporate management techniques combined with self-regulation have caused the virtual demise of shared governance which remains vital to originating, refining, and disseminating knowledge and restoring academic integrity.
Part time or clinical professorial positions have replaced many tenure and tenure-track appointments. Universities have become neglectfully run businesses with despotic administrators who treat professors as temporary hired help. They deny a large segment of the faculty shared authority, academic freedom, and due process: conditions that they have traditionally enjoyed and that form an essential part of the accumulation of knowledge. Moreover, the widening disparity in salaries has justified a growing mistrust of administrators.
Some administrators corrupt the truthful exchange of information by insisting upon politically and economically correct practices. Professors cannot maintain an ethic because redefinition of freedom of expression and enforced totalitarian strictures cause conflict of interest. Faculty members remain partly responsible for the present situation because they have pandered to self-interested administrators who sanction nepotism and falsify their own credentials to meet politically correct criteria.
Publish or Pontificate
For three decades, American universities have morally and socially declined. Consequently, confidence has plummeted and notions of justice and equality have turned to cynicism. Contra Cabal editor asked several prominent professors how many grants and fellowships one would expect a reasonably competent academician to receive over a thirteen-year period, the assumed periods: PhD candidate, four years; assistant professor, six years; and associate professor, three years.
They responded that given that grants generally cover two years, they would expect a competent person to receive funding for the full thirteen years or at the least for five or six grants during that period. They also said that many grants have become collaborative and that some people never apply for grants which almost always works against them.
The editor then asked them what published output would they expect from a person that received the average five to six grants or fellowships also whether the articles emanating from them would require peer review. They concurred that if an article results from a grant, then, for most journals it would require peer review but people have their networks.
The reviewer claimed that academicians develop connections with editorial boards and use those connections politically. When they apply for promotion, the people sitting on the committee often do not know about those connections and do not bother questioning the quality of the work or even read it. The review committees play like an Oscar Wilde farce with decisions made on the basis of the persona of the applicant and not real scholarship.
As a former associate editor of an IEEE journal, the author can verify what she said from his experience of the offers that he received to published trash submitted as a promotion requirement. The rejected manuscripts caused their authors to use their connections to blackball the author for his refusal to publish it and to cause his removal from the editorial position that he had held for five years.
Professors know that if they take a leave of absence financed by a grant or fellowship and do not follow up with a book or articles then that looks bad on their record. Therefore, they cover it up by republishing something for which they have taken credit previously. Some of them republish excerpts from their doctoral dissertations throughout their careers without receiving challenges from foundations or department review committees. Some self-plagiarize by publishing the same work repeatedly and obtain several million dollars in grants during their careers for publishing virtually nothing more than their dissertation.
[Sweet Cheat] [Oh, What a Tangled Web She Weaves]
It does not take a discerning eye to catch this deception; however, committees do not properly investigate applicants’ claims or have practiced the same deception themselves. They rely upon their “knowledge of the discipline” and turn a blind eye or practice “collegial undersight”. Most funding sources ask for reports but deceitful people can easily fudge them to cover up their lack of scholarship.
Conclusion
The academic system works well when people behave honestly; however, those people who decide to abuse the system can do so quite easily. Moreover, many committees rely entirely on the number of publications and not on the quality of research because they have no knowledge of the discipline themselves. The author sat on many committees and left meetings in protest when an applicant’s work received fatuous analysis based upon special interests rather than substantive research.
Safeguarding the process requires time, time committees usually will not spend. This gives intellectually challenged manipulators the opportunity to defraud the department, the university, the students, the funding sources, and the public with very little effort. They ignore the “accepted practices of the profession” and evade laws designed to deter fraud.
Shirley Ann Jackson and Robert E. Palazzo should clean up the mess that they inherited before they legislate another layer of controls. Adversarial relations between administration and faculty insure compliance with laws and thwart the anarchy that presently exists. There can be no “system of trust and cooperation that enables debate and collegial expression of views while providing mechanisms to assist in the resolution of conflict” if the administration does not appoint independent investigators to inquire into two decades of alleged criminality.
Vitality of a university as a whole does depend on a faculty governance system that encourages mutual
Nmesis.
See Portable Document File (PDF) for citations.
|
Paul Trummel PhD (RPI ABD), PhD (UW ABD), MS (RPI), MSc (UK), BSc (UK) Associate Professor, Communication and Rhetoric (Retired) International Federation of Journalists, Brussels (International Press Card)
|
||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
© Copyright 2007 by Paul Trummel |
|||||||||||||||||||
