Due Process

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Although the article on the controversy over my dismissal from a tenured faculty position at Central Washington University (Crimson, October 14) was, on the whole, a competent summary of a complex case. I would like to make one important correction and one other brief clarification. The statement that a faculty committee "voted to fire" me is not true. My dismissal was in all essential ways an administrative action--and the faculty committe, which played a limited advisory role during the early stages of the proceedings, was not involved in this decision nor did it recommend any such result.

Central is an institution in which the faculty is effectively deprived of genuine decision-making power, under a Faculty Code which it had refused to accept. When this Code was about to be put into effect in the mid-70s, it was viewed as so objectionable that all major faculty organizations on the campus joined in an unsuccessful lawsuit aimed at preventing its being implemented, making particular objection to the reduction of the faculty role to a purely advisory one. But judges, especially in the lower courts, seem reluctant to interfere with the plenary authority of university administrators.

So it was in that lawsuit five years ago and it was the same in the opinion issued on my case a month ago. The difference lies in the consideration that I intend to appeal this lower court decision, if necessary, to the highest level--inasmuch as I view this as a matter that extends far beyond any personal interests, in affecting the very nature of a university and touching on vital issues of academic freedom, due process and equal protection of the laws.

In specific terms, my case has become the initial test of the wide grounds stipulated in the Code for the dismissal of a tenured professor, the first of eleven grounds being "insubordination"--an undefined concept and wholly unrelated to professional performance as it is listed in this Code. There can be little doubt that the central administrative role in activating these pernicious Code provisions was played by President Donald Garrity himself. Garrity, who came to CWU in 1978 after a dozen turbulent years as Vice President of San Francisco State, did not hesitate when the issue over my professional trip to Israel came up. He stood flatly on a claim amounting to full administrative authority over faculty, which was to provide him with an example that could serve to keep the faculty in line.

Then, as the clash unfolded following my return from Israel in January, 1979, Garrity sought to characterize my quite conventional views on faculty autonomy as somehow amounting to academic "anarchy" (his own word). Thus, putting this together with his strong opposition to faculty unionism (especially if it supports a meaningful share of faculty governance in universities), one can readily see that President Garrity is not likely to cede to a faculty body the authority to decide whether or not to dismiss a professor for such offenses as "insubordination."

One final clarification: The Crimson correctly reported that the American Political Science Association (APSA) has called my dismissal "a threat to the tenure system." In the interest of accuracy I will add that APSA conducted an investigation and that then the chair of the National Committee for the Defense of Academic Rights (NCDAR), Stanley Rothman, wrote his letter to APSA's journal, "PS." This followed President Garrity's notification by APSA concerning its conclusions, whereas the Crimson story can be misleading in suggesting that Rothman precipitated the APSA's statement.

More pertinently, NCDAR's spokesman wrote to "PS" in order to elicit moral and financial support and to alert the profession concerning the disturbing implications of a case, that should it be lost, would have a decidedly "chilling effect" on academic freedom in universities throughout the country. Charles Stastny   Research Associate