A new low.”

That’s what Paul Levitt, chair of the faculty affairs committee at the University of Colorado (CU), hears each time scandal strikes his campus. After charges involving alcohol and sexual violence in the sports program and suspicion over fundraising records, now it’s academic freedom in the spotlight as the issue du jour.

From the state capital, the newly formed Republican Study Committee of Colorado (RSCC), a group of legislators intent on promoting “core Republican values,” targeted tenure and academic freedom as top priorities this spring. Senate Republican Minority Leader Mark Hillman compares the professoriate to “inmates running the asylum” and insists that lawmakers need to get more involved on campus. Questioning tenure seems to have become a favorite way to wrest control from academicians.

Despite these continued threats, Dave Sanger, president of AFT Colorado, remains hopeful. While Republican Gov. Bill Owens vetoed “anything that was the least bit progressive” regarding higher education during the last legislative session, at least the proposals forced him to publicly take a stand. There is a new energy in organizing as faculty grow increasingly concerned over the threatening climate in their state, and that energy could translate into a more effective union voice and eventual influence.

Already, the AFT has made a difference at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where a chartered local was established March 1. The Metro State Faculty Federation has grown from 16 to nearly 160 members in just over a year, reflecting the passion over protecting tenure rights there. Members were spurred to organize when the board of trustees rewrote the faculty handbook, suggesting a reduction in force (RIF) clause that would allow termination of faculty during budget crises without regard to tenure. “We are trying to protect academic freedom and tenure that supports it,” says Ellen Slatkin, the local’s vice president.

Faculty from other Colorado colleges have contacted Slatkin for advice. Interest in the union at the University of Colorado-Denver also has increased, says Sanger, and the AFT has fielded calls from interested faculty at Colorado State as well. He thinks the anti-tenure climate in the state, together with a perceived threat to academic freedom, may be a catalyst in motivating more and more faculty toward union membership. The faculty at colleges and universities “are seeing that they’re vulnerable and under attack—and that organizing a union” is a sure way to combat such outside forces, agrees AFT state coordinator Mark Belkin.

Colorado has been a hotbed of controversy over academic freedom since 2003, when conservative activist David Horo-witz made it the launching pad for an “Academic Bill of Rights,” proposed legislation designed to counter what its proponents view as liberal bias in academia. Then-university president Elizabeth Hoffman avoided passage of the bill with a memorandum of understanding, pledging college administrators to be mindful of conservative/liberal balance among their faculty, and the legislation went away.

But fervor was revived with CU professor Ward Churchill’s incendiary essay, published in 2001 but widely distributed in early 2005, in which the tenured professor called Sept. 11 World Trade Center victims “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Nazi operative Adolf Eichmann. The governor called for Churchill’s dismissal and the Legislature began to consider a tenure system some felt should guard against such ideology in the state education system. Academics defended Churchill’s First Amendment rights, and now the whole affair has shifted to the professor’s integrity regarding research and credentials.

The university itself is conducting a tenure review process, and CU’s new president, Hank Brown, a Republican trusted among conservative legislators, could help cool the debate. A former U.S. representative and a former university president, he has spoken in favor of tenure, academic freedom and faculty rights.

Levitt believes much of the firestorm over academic freedom is for show. “I’m really hoping that this Hank Brown can say to his Republican friends, ‘Gentlemen, let us get on with the mission of education and teaching students, and quit trying to make cheap political points, and stop the posturing.’”

It may be tough to slow the show, however. Although the majority Democrats nixed a bill to establish a state tenure review commission, the GOP study committee nevertheless suggests that every Republican legislator adopt its view on tenure—namely that the system should be scrutinized to prevent firebrands and, some suspect, particularly liberal ones, from being hired—along with a host of other issues, including abortion, marriage rights and taxes. Republicans who stray from the agenda may find themselves out of office. “These kinds of losses are not necessarily bad,” committee chair David Schultheis explained to the Denver Post, commenting on a loss by a (Republican) pro-choice candidate. “They purify the party.”

Meanwhile, in an attempt to keep the Academic Bill of Rights at bay, Democrats put forth a counter bill to preserve academic freedom. It failed.

Again, Sanger turns hopeful. He plans to draft a new version of the academic freedom legislation and try again in the next legislative session, which begins in January.

CUNY must bargain intellectual property rights

Faculty at the City University of New York won a landmark victory this summer when a court ruled that intellectual property rights should be part of the collective bargaining process.

After years of refusing to bargain on this issue, CUNY can’t deny an Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court ruling overturning an earlier decision by the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). The new ruling, that CUNY violated state law by refusing to negotiate over intellectual property, is expected to be implemented by PERB, over which the appeals court has jurisdiction.

Faculty at CUNY are frequently immersed in research that not only identifies them as professionals but carries the financial impact of copyrights and patents. “The question of who owns, controls and profits from intellectual work is both a material and an ethical issue for college faculty,” says Barbara Bowen, Professional Staff Congress/AFT president and an English professor at Queens College. “It’s as basic for us as wages and hours.”

While the point of the court ruling is the right to bargain, Bowen adds that the PSC will seek an intellectual property (IP) policy that gives members control over their own intellectual professional creations. Since the PSC contract expired two years ago, CUNY has drawn up intellectual property policy that gives more access to the university and less to faculty. “The right to intellectual integrity and professional standards are at stake,” says Bowen.

The ruling reaches beyond intellectual property, as the decision addresses CUNY’s adoption of any policy of employment. While CUNY has the right to implement policy unilaterally, the court confirmed PSC’s right to negotiate those issues, even if they have not previously appeared in union contracts. Such issues might include use of facilities, for instance, or workplace violence protection, notes Bowen.

The IP ruling also reaches beyond CUNY to all state workers. Instead of narrowing the issues that could be bargained, this expands them. “Public employee unions in New York potentially stand to benefit because this upholds the rights of workers to bargain,” says Bowen.

continued on page 5