Dear President Zimmer and Provost Lee,
At a time of extraordinary public health and economic crisis, we appreciate the commitments made and actions undertaken by the University to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the University of Chicago and South Side communities. These have demonstrated a belief that these times demand that we provide strong institutional support to all who study and work at this university, and to our surrounding community.
In addition to responding to the dislocations of the coronavirus, the University also finds itself reckoning with a financial crisis that is expected to be greater than the fallout of the 2008-09 Great Recession. President Zimmer’s email from April 7 lays out the multiple challenges and offers underlying principles that will guide the University’s approach to financial adjustments. These include honoring and increasing financial aid commitments and maintaining our research and educational mission while meeting the challenge of the new financial constraints. Faculty and students will be asked to make sacrifices; we hope both the administration and Board of Trustees will join us, reducing expenditures and shepherding our resources with a new sense of caution in these uncertain times.
We write as concerned faculty and members of the AAUP to contribute to the conversation about guiding principles. In particular, we urge the university to abide by the following principles:
(1) Democratic decision-making and transparency:
Over the next weeks, months and years, the University will have to make important decisions about its academic and research priorities. This is an opportunity to foster genuine faculty governance, by expanding the opportunities for collective decision-making with the faculty through the council of the faculty senate, divisions and departments. It is especially important that the University administration make these decisions together with elected representative bodies, rather than relying mainly on appointed committees and informal faculty groups.
(2) Distribute Burdens Fairly:
The April 7 email notes that the current emphasis will be on “non-personnel expenditure reductions.” As we learn more about the depth of the economic crisis, we urge that the university proceed from a principled commitment to avoid layoffs and protect all workers on campus. Academic and administrative units can design budget adjustments and necessary cuts in a graduated fashion such that the heaviest burdens fall on the most economically secure members of the university community and we shield those most vulnerable.
(3) Equity for academic staff and graduate students:
The University joined over 200 institutions in extending tenure clocks for junior faculty. This is an unprecedented and welcome step. But it leaves unaddressed some of the most precarious academic workers and graduate students whose contracts will expire this year. We urge the university to retain these members of our community such as second year Teaching Fellows and part-time lecturers.
(4) Protect the most vulnerable
The University has expressed a commitment to the needs of its most vulnerable undergraduate students. We urge the University to extend its concern to vulnerable graduate students and post-graduate students as well. We call on the University to establish an emergency fund for graduate students, Teaching Fellows and part-time lecturers, some of whom face an unprecedented job market and the prospect of lost medical insurance during a time of pandemic. Members of the community could also contribute to these funds.
We would also ask that the University provide continued health insurance for next academic year to any academic staff and graduate students that it does not retain, and who cannot obtain such insurance from another source.
uchicagoaaup.org 