Despite having a "feminist philosopher," Ann Cudd, at the helm, philosophers and other humanities scholars at Portland State University are not faring well. An academic there writes:
Three long-term NTTF [non-tenure-track faculty] philosophers at Portland State University were notified on Friday that their contracts would not be renewed at the end of the current academic year. These are 20% of the 15 NTTF cuts in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, in addition to the previous dismissal of 70 adjuncts throughout the University, including several very-long term adjuncts in the Philosophy Department.
These faculty teach many popular and current courses, such as Chinese, Indigenous, and other world philosophy, philosophy of sport and of gaming; philosophy of sex, eco-ethics, AI ethics, and other fields. The fired faculty include the Department's only phenomenologist, only pragmatist, and only Marxist. And yet Philosophy has been forced to cut staff each of the last several years.
This leaves Philosophy, History, and other departments barely able to serve majors and in a poor position to attract students.
Plus program eliminations are upcoming, including some of PSU's best-known programs. A concerted effort is under way to dismantle the award-winning general education program, in which humanities and social science departments heavily participate.
The rationale for these cuts remains unclear to most faculty here, despite the "Strategic Plan" on which they are supposed to be based. The courses these philosophy faculty taught are central to current student interests. It is hard to see how the University can thrive if its curricula are so badly attenuated. There has been a lot of pressure to turn the University's programs toward "career readiness."
Not a single administrator has lost a dollar in pay.
That the University has an $18,000,000 deficit is not in dispute. However, a national expert of university finances has presented a report showing that PSU has $200,000,000 in unrestricted reserves, with a $20-30,000,000 annual surplus. Some of this is used to fund athletics. But the University has seen deep cuts to faculty and curriculum year after year after year.
President Cudd, a "feminist capitalist philosopher," argues that large classes taught by overburdened senior faculty without TAs are somehow better than smaller classes taught by specialists because there's less pressure on students to do the work or even to come to class. Meantime, she is pushing the construction of a $600,000,000 entertainment complex, that duplicates nearby facilities and that will leave PSU $300,000,000 in debt in bonds.
The result of all this is that several unions have filed Unfair Labor Practice complaints and grievances that have had to go to arbitration. Contract negotiations with the AAUP collapsed and are now in mediation. The AAUP contract is expired, so a strike looks increasingly possible. Faculty have been and are leaving. So also are students because they cannot take courses required for their majors. The majority of the Board of Trustees seems disinterested in liberal education or even in anything recognizable as higher education.
Efforts to make negotiations less oppositional have failed. Morale is at rock bottom.
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