SDSU Emeritus

Speaker 1: 00:00 Academic freedom is at the heart of America's higher education system. But our proposal under debate at San Diego state university is raising questions about limits to freedom of speech. The universities, academic policy and planning committee is suggesting a new policy that could strip retired professors of their Ameritas status for conduct that homed STS use reputation and the interests of disclosure. I note here that KPBS is a service of San Diego state university to explore the proposed policy. We are joined by Gary Robbins, who is the science and technology reporter for the San Diego union Tribune. And he's written about this new proposal, Gary. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. So tell us about the proposal, which would tie emeritus status to the behavior of retired professors. How did you learn about it and what would the policy do? Speaker 2: 00:52 This came as a tip from a faculty member. Um, what the university is thinking about doing is having a rule by which they could, uh, revoke someone's a Meredith status. If they did anything to harm the university's reputation either before they got that status or after it was kind of an unusual thing, because the message that came across was only about a paragraph long, and it didn't define what harm the university's reputation actually means, nor did it lay out what the impetus for this was. Um, the university is more than a hundred years old. Um, and you know, you would've thought perhaps it might have this kind of thing. So I asked the university about it and they said they were trying to close a gap, uh, that they had never put in some type of rule by which they could revoke a emeritus status. Um, if someone say committed a criminal act or violated university, uh, uh, uh, regulations, and this is coming up at a time where the university has kind of been tortured by some of his own faculty publicly. Um, there's a, um, a Meredith faculty member named Stewart Hurlbert, who has been a real critic of the university on a lot of different levels. Um, and he's gotten into it a lot with one of the biology graduate student associations. That association has called him a racist for some of the things that he's posted online and insensitive Speaker 1: 02:11 Five for us. What is the significance of a Meritus status? What does it mean? And what kind of benefits are at stake here for SDSU employees? Speaker 2: 02:18 Well, it's kind of a perk. Um, so if you're a retired Ameritas professor, you, uh, would, uh, in most cases have access to an office, you able to use it, or you would be able to use the, um, uh, computer system, for example, you would be able to continue with research. Um, so many aspects of your life would remain the same. And a lot of retired professors want that Speaker 1: 02:39 You were mentioning that the possibly one of the targets might be Stewart Hurlbert. Um, but I mean, is he really the trigger for this? Do you think at this time? Speaker 2: 02:49 Well, I don't know. And that's what made the story kind of frustrating when I found out about it, I CA I reached out to the committee, there's a small committee, uh, that came up with this idea. And I, you know, I tried to get ahold of the chairman, DJ Hopkins to say, tell me more about this. Where did this come from? What was the spark that led you guys to do this? What were the deliberations like? And how come you didn't explain what, um, harm the university's reputation means he didn't respond to me, but he passed it on to the administration for comment. And there, what they said was, well, we're closing a loophole and then they emphasized, Hey, this is the faculty doing this. This is not us. Speaker 1: 03:28 So it's unclear really where this proposal is even coming from. Uh, where would it go to be furthered? Speaker 2: 03:36 So, um, this week it was supposed to go to another committee that's larger. Um, the, the administration said that it can go through these various committees and possibly end up before the full university Senate for a vote perhaps in the fall. Um, I don't know if it's gonna remain a proposal or not. I was hearing some chatter yesterday that it might be, uh, pulled because of the controversy is in gender, but I don't know that for sure. Speaker 1: 04:00 So now, would this change the rules for somebody who was retired, who had a marital status? So they would have a different protection, freedom pre speech protections from someone who was actively still teaching at the university. Speaker 2: 04:13 So w what they're really fundamentally saying is that if you're an emeritus faculty member, you have to behave yourself. Now, the same thing applies to a regular faculty. They said they never have written a rule to specifically point to them and make sure that these things apply to them as well. Speaker 1: 04:32 You've talked to other professors apart from, um, Stuart Holbert about this, what are their concerns? Speaker 2: 04:38 They don't like it at all. They think it's, um, in infringement, on free speech, they feel like it's a method that university could use to intimidate them, to get them not to talk about controversial subjects. There's also some feeling on campus that this is an extension of castle culture. If, um, you could give the university the right to essentially cancel someone out that they don't like. You know, if that person is saying things that are making the university feel uncomfortable, then you essentially cancel it out and saying, well, this person doesn't follow the rules. If embarrass the university, the faculty is concerned that they may also try to do it for legitimate reasons to mazel free speech and academic freedom. Speaker 1: 05:17 Do you know if this kind of policy allowing revocation of America status is in place anywhere else in California universities, Speaker 2: 05:24 But we were trying to find out, uh, that, uh, over the past air. So in one of the notes we saw, it said that, um, there was a similar rule in place in some other California state university campuses, but it didn't say which ones, this has been an ongoing problem here, where we asked the university questions and they don't get back to us in a timely way, or really in a candid way. It's happening on a lot of issues with San Diego state. So there's been some confusion because the university isn't really talking very clearly about it. Speaker 1: 05:51 Well, SDSU did send KPBS a statement about the purpose of their proposed rule. And it says, uh, in part, the drafted preliminary policy language is not in response to any one individual, but rather than response to a lapse in existing policy, like you mentioned before, and that continues currently, there is no way to revoke a marital status, should an emeritus faculty, staff, or administrative violate university policy, or commit a criminal act. What do the critics of this policy say to, to that explanation? Speaker 2: 06:20 What the faculty say is, well, perhaps you do need a rule, but we're worried that you're actually doing it for another reason that you have an ulterior motive that you really want to have some type of tool that can pressure critics and keep them quieter if they want a Meredith status, or if they want to keep a marital status. Speaker 1: 06:38 So what happens next to this proposal? Speaker 2: 06:41 It's unclear. Um, it looks like it's gone through the Senate executive committee, but we still haven't heard back on that. The way the university wrote their message, it sounded like, well, this could be revised and it could literally end up before the university Senate this fall, which is, you know, it's not far away. So perhaps in two or three months, we're going to see this come before the university Senate, which where it will become more public Speaker 1: 07:04 Well, Gary, thank you for your reporting on this issue. We'd been speaking with Gary Robbins, who is the science and technology reporter for the San Diego union Tribune.