Call to Conversation: Strategic Academic Positioning

On October 24, 2011, Provost Gregg Kvistad sent an email to the faculty list about Renew DU, the Strategic Academic Positioning Plan that is the result of significant efforts by the Faculty Senate, administrators, and six committees formed to explore the themes of internationalization, interdisciplinary programs, academic research, academic technology, undergraduate academic experience, and faculty enhancement. The Renew DU initiative will be discussed in, and submitted for approval by, the Faculty Senate on November 18. Following this important conversation, the Faculty Forum invites contributions about the plan, initiatives, and incubators proposed. What are you excited about?  What concerns you? Do you have suggestions for moving particular aspects of the plan forward?  This is your opportunity to share ideas as we move forward with strategic academic positioning. If you would like to submit a formal post, please email it to Jennifer.Campbell@du.edu.  You can also post comments directly in response to this call or as comments on your colleagues’ posts.  We look forward to an energetic discussion of these issues.  Thank you!

Comment from Arthur Gilbert

The following short essays deal with my recent ordeal at the University of Denver.  After fifty years of teaching, I was dismissed from my long and successful career as an undergraduate Professor.  My two undergraduate courses with 77 students and two TAs in place were cancelled on seven days notice for the spring quarter, 2011. Three weeks into my graduate course, The Domestic and International Consequences of the Drug War, I was removed from the classroom and banished from the DU campus for over one hundred days.  During this period I was ordered to have no contact with any DU students and to have no conversations about my case with faculty and staff.  I had to ask permission to be on DU property, even to attend the Lamont School production of two one-act operas by Puccini. I cannot go over the entire case, but I do want to let the faculty know some of the charges I faced in two of my courses.  Thus, essay number one deals with vibrators and the construction of masculinity and femininity in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe and America.  Essay two is about the Drug War and its relationship to the construction of sin in American life.  My discussions of the links between drugs, alcohol, fear of homosexuality and minorities and, yes, self abuse, is what resulted in my abrupt dismissal from my graduate course and three and a half hours of questioning by Human Resources in order to determine if I was guilty of sexual harassment.

Sex, Pedagogy, and Academic Freedom

by Dean Saitta, Professor of Anthropology and President, DU Chapter AAUP

In the last two weeks the Arthur Gilbert sexual harassment case has blown wide open.  An article by Peter Schmidt appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  A piece by Peter Bonilla was posted to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) website.  A column by Vincent Carroll appeared in The Denver Post.  All focus on the issue of whether Professor Gilbert’s due process rights were respected in the run-up to his being removed from the classroom, suspended from campus, investigated by authorities, branded as a sexual harasser, and sentenced to sexual harassment re-education.  Much less was said, even in official case review circles, about whether Professor Gilbert’s classroom speech was justified by academic context and thus protected by academic freedom.

Our campus AAUP chapter expressed concern about the due process and academic freedom dimensions of this case when it first broke last spring.  We worried about the consequences for all DU faculty—especially contingent faculty, given their much greater vulnerability—if Professor Gilbert is wrongly busted for justifiable classroom speech.  Combining what I now know about this case with what I knew going in, I believe that Professor Gilbert was unfairly charged with sexual harassment and, based on the available evidence, did not even come close to crossing the line of protected academic speech.  Professor Gilbert should be fully exonerated of the charges against him and fully restored to his teaching position in the Korbel School of International Studies.  It remains to be seen, however, whether the judgment against him will be vacated by DU administrators as requested by FIRE in a letter sent to Chancellor Coombe.

2011 Provost’s Conference Overview

Reinventing the Classroom:New Terms of Engagement

On October 28, teaching faculty, administrators, and several members of the board of trustees gathered at the Cable Center for this year’s Provost’s Conference. Provost Kvistad noted that, while the title for the conference was “Reinventing the Classroom:  New Terms of Engagement,” it could be called “Reinventing the Faculty,” as the real focus of the work represented at the event is on how faculty can develop their teaching to best meet the needs of DU’s students. Improved teaching is a cornerstone of the new Academic Strategic Positioning plan, Renew DU, as well as the faculty senate’s Teaching Excellence Initiative, so the conference theme is particularly timely.

The conference began with an opening keynote address by Candace Thille, Director of the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University. Thille provided an overview of “The Science of Learning,” explaining methods for studying student learning behaviors and some key findings from her department’s research in web-based learning environments. She noted that students employ a small set of learning mechanisms, they learn what they practice and only what they practice, and therefore faculty should focus on desired cognitive tasks. The work of the OLI is based on an iterative feedback loop that uses educational technology to simultaneously teach and gather data, which can then be theorized and used to improve the teaching and learning environment. Thille’s final message was that teaching should be a community-based research activity. During her luncheon keynote, Thille further discussed the work of “The Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative,” providing examples of the feedback loops discussed earlier in the day. Several OLI publications, including results of a study of the efficacy of the initiatives online learning tools for calculus, are available from the OLI website.