Battle Erupts at UCSD Over Gulf War Memo : Education: Some professors say letter from campus administration appeared to usurp their academic freedom.

When war broke out in the Persian Gulf, Edward N. Lee, a UC San Diego philosophy professor, felt he couldn’t ignore the conflict in his classroom. All that week, Lee encouraged his students to talk about the Middle East as they tackled the assigned topic--appropriately enough, the Peloponnesian War.

“I was very upset myself about the break out of the war, and I talked about it in class,” he recalled. “It was relevant. It never would have occurred to me to refrain from doing so because it was a political hot potato.”

So Lee was among several faculty members who were alarmed by a memo, sent in late January to the university’s 36 departmental chairmen, in which the UCSD administration bluntly--and, Lee felt, inaccurately--defined the limits of professors’ academic freedom.

The one-page memo read, in part, “The circumstances of war in the Middle East, while deeply disturbing, do not give individual faculty or teaching assistants authority to cancel classes or to change the subject matter of courses at will. That authority rests with the chancellor.”

Three months later, the Gulf War is over. But at UCSD last week, the administration’s January memo--and the issues, both glaring and subtle, that it raised--continued to fuel a fight.

Some professors worry that the controversial memo was intended to stifle anti-war sentiment. And when it was disclosed that the memo had been sent five days after Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson received a critical query from a state assemblyman, some faculty wondered: Had UCSD officials antagonized their staff in the hopes of appeasing their political critics?

At an emotional meeting of the Academic Senate on Tuesday, faculty members presented a 100-signature petition that condemned the memo, calling it an “intimidating” attempt to mute important dialogue about the war and to usurp faculty control over what they teach.

“The tone of the memo was needlessly confrontational and aggressive. (It) held out the threat of punishing those who deviated,” said history Prof. Michael Parrish, who noted that the state Board of Regents has ruled that authority over curriculum rests with the Academic Senate, not the chancellor.

Atkinson and other administrators said the memo was prompted by the discovery that some UCSD professors had cancelled classes in response to the Gulf War. Because the majority of the faculty has been hired since the Vietnam War, Atkinson reasoned, there was a need to clarify university policy in times of crisis.

“It was a desire to be forthright with the faculty,” he said in an interview, adding that the memo was intended “to communicate to the younger faculty there were certain things that they couldn’t do. You can’t just dismiss your class in protest of the war.”

But Atkinson and his administrative colleagues acknowledged that the memo could have been more carefully worded.

“English has never been my strong subject. I’m a scientist and I do the best that I can,” said biology Prof. Douglas W. Smith, the chair of the Academic Senate, who co-authored the memo with Vice Chancellor Marjorie C. Caserio.

Smith said the Jan. 28 memo, which was composed while Atkinson was out of town, never sought to silence or intimidate professors. But he and Atkinson both lamented what Smith called some faculty members’ “almost willful misreading” of the document.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the chancellor told the faculty he believed the furor surrounding the memo was an unwarranted personal attack.

“I think a few people had a desire to use anything to suggest that there was a threat,” he said later. “I’ve spent my life defending academic freedom. I was on the front lines during the McCarthy era. For anyone to charge me out of the wild blue, I found really quite surprising. . . . I consider that an incredibly serious charge.”

Still, several professors said this week that while they don’t suspect the administration consciously plotted to impede basic academic rights, the “hasty” way the administration responded to the war tapped into existing concerns about the way UCSD is being run.

“The memo reflected a primarily managerial conception of the university--that the administration is there to manage the faculty’s employment of time on a corporate level,” said Lee, the philosophy professor. “That was an excessively narrow conception of academic life and responsibilities. All that was given voice was: ‘Don’t forget to punch your time clock.’ ”

Another professor, a voting member of the Academic Senate, requested anonymity for fear the administration would single him out for speaking to the press.

“I don’t believe a witch hunt is under way. But it’s a question of management style,” the professor said. “I would have urged that the chancellor issue a memo to say, ‘These are extraordinary times and universities should be places of reasoned, open-handed, not to mention generous debate.’ . . . (Instead, the memo) has the quality of reading the riot act.”

That feeling was underscored by war-related memos sent out at other UC campuses. Memos from UCLA, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz encouraged faculty to engage their students in discussions about the conflict, and to show flexibility dealing with student absences.

A heartfelt letter from UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Barbara S. Uehling to her campus community a day after the war began said:

“We are united today in sorrow. We need one another. We cannot bear the burdens of anxiety and grief alone. . . . I hope that faculty members in all disciplines will encourage discussion and reflection about the war, its causes and consequences.”

To compare such an open letter to the UCSD administrative memo, Smith said, is unfair. He said that because UCSD administrators issued no other formal comment on the war, the faculty memo “stood out that much more.” But he defended the administration’s right to choose the wording and the tone of its communiques.

“The degree to which there is ‘poetry’ included or not largely is a personal thing. The chancellor at UCSD has his way of doing things,” Smith said. “My own personal viewpoint is there are lots of problems in this world, problems I get more worked up about than this particular foreign-policy incident.”

Atkinson, meanwhile, said it did not occur to him to send a campuswide letter regarding the war. He said there were more effective methods of fostering debate.

“I don’t think that (an open letter) was a great facilitation of discussion,” he said.

Last month, when UCSD’s Committee on Academic Freedom met to consider whether to recommend censuring Smith and Caserio for their memo, the administration’s actions were upheld unanimously.

“The problem was one of wording . . .” the report on the March 20 committee meeting concluded. “(T)he memo was not an attempt to infringe upon anyone’s academic freedom or to alter administrative control of class content. . . . (N)o effort was made subsequent to the memo to infringe upon anyone’s academic freedom.”

And at Tuesday’s meeting of the Academic Senate, several professors defended the administration. Several lauded Atkinson, particularly once they learned of his firm response to a Jan. 23 letter from Assemblyman Steve Peace in which Peace requested that the university dock the pay of professors who cancelled classes in response to the war.

In a written reply to Peace, Atkinson said such penalties were “neither necessary nor wise.” But he assured the state legislator that he discouraged such cancellations, and he enclosed a copy of the memo, which he said was intended to help faculty not “inadvertently violate” policy.

Atkinson denies that the memo from Smith and Caserio came in response to the legislator’s query.

“I have hundreds of inquiries from assembly people,” he said. “We weren’t responding to Peace. We were trying to do the right thing.”

But Parrish, the history professor, suggested that Peace’s letter, amid other complaints from parents, caused UCSD’s leadership to “simply rush to a judgement . . . responding to political pressures real or imagined. It caused them to make errors both of procedure and of substance.”

Some professors said once they heard about Peace’s letter, they could better understand why the administration acted as it did. If the faculty had only known of the political pressure being exerted at the time of the memo, some said, they would probably have reacted differently.

“(But) Peace’s letter was not explained to us,” Lee said. “If we’d known that, we might very well have felt the administration was on our side defending the integrity of the academic process. But they chose not to let this information out.”

“The chancellor had in fact defended the academic freedom of the faculty,” said Dr. Deborah Wingard, a professor of epidemiology at the UCSD School of Medicine. Although initially alarmed by the memo, she said, once she heard the administration’s explanation Tuesday she was convinced it had not been sent to antagonize the faculty.

In the hopes of clearing up the misunderstanding, Wingard introduced a gently worded resolution Tuesday to “help bridge a lot of ill will that had developed between the two sides.”

The resolution, which several professors described as “motherhood and apple pie,” read in part: “(W)e the members of the San Diego Division of the Academic Senate reaffirm our shared responsibility for preserving the academic freedom of the classroom. . . .”

But instead of approving the resolution, the Senate voted 24 to 19 to postpone the matter indefinitely.

“We’re all for academic freedom,” Smith said. “But at same time, at this particular moment any approval of this sort of resolution could be interpreted only as an indirect rebuke of the vice chancellor and myself. (The Academic Senate) didn’t want to do that either. They felt they could neither vote against it nor for it.”

Wingard agreed.

“It’s not that the faculty felt there was anything wrong with the resolution, but they were afraid at how (the timing) would be interpreted,” she said.

Parrish lamented that cautiousness, noting that some of his colleagues “didn’t show a lot of courage. . . . Any time a UC faculty won’t go on record in support of very broad and historic principles of academic freedom, it is a very sad day in the history of the university.”

And some faculty members fear that while the resolution has been tabled, some of the underlying questions remain unanswered.

“I don’t think the fire is now raging out of control. But it’s left a lot of people feeling badly that the matter was not ultimately resolved in the way we would have liked,” said a professor who asked to remain unnamed. “When management is perceived by some to be overbearing and or when those who are being managed are perceived to be recalcitrant or unreasonable, it makes for difficult relations over time.”

The professor added: “I expected (the administration) to say, ‘OK, we made an honest mistake’ and to acknowledge that when you make an error like that there’s going to be the devil to pay. But they didn’t. . . . All we’re saying is how about an apology? How about an ‘I’m sorry’? “

Academic Freedom in Wartime

After war broke out in January, administrative officials at several University of California campuses commented in writing about how their faculties and students should cope with the conflict. At UC San Diego, some professors who have compared those statements charge that their administration’s memo was uncharacteristically harsh. Here is a sampling of excerpts from the memos:

UC SAN DIEGO

Jan. 28, 1991.

To: All Department Chairs

From: Vice Chancellor Marjorie C. Caserio and Douglas W. Smith, Academic Senate chairman

It was reported that some classes were cancelled during the week of January 14 in protest of the war. . . . Because this situation may exist for some time, it is important that each of us understand our responsibilities for maintaining the integrity of our academic programs. . . . The circumstances of war in the Middle East, while deeply disturbing, do not give individual faculty or teaching assistants authority to cancel classes or to change the subject matter of courses at will. That authority rests with the Chancellor.

UC SANTA CRUZ

Jan. 15, 1991

To: Students, Faculty and Staff

From: Chancellor Robert Stevens, et al.

At such a troubled moment, the University must not only sustain its normal operations, but must extend its educational mission to enrich the campus community’s understanding of the crisis. We encourage the faculty’s participation in this broader education. . . . Faculty are at liberty to reschedule classes within their responsibilities to the University and their students. Faculty are encouraged to show flexibility in dealing with student absences.

UC SANTA BARBARA

Jan. 16, 1991

To: the Campus Community

From: Chancellor Barbara S. Uehling

We are united today in sorrow. . . . And because the structures of the university can bring us together, our campus will remain open and classes will be held as scheduled. I hope that faculty members in all disciplines will encourage discussion and reflection about the war, its causes and consequences.

UC DAVIS

Jan. 17, 1991

To: Students, Faculty and Staff

From: Chancellor Theodore L. Hullar, et al.

The campus administration will respond to this crisis with educational programming tied directly to the Persian Gulf. To that end, we have asked faculty to devote some portion of their classes to a discussion of the Gulf crisis. . . . To permit the fullest participation of students (in organized events), we encourage faculty and supervisors to provide flexibility in class and work schedules.

UCLA

Jan. 23, 1991

To: the Faculty

From: David Kaplan, Academic Senate chairman

We, in the Academic Senate, acknowledge the difficulty in maintaining our normal academic activities while a war in which America is deeply involved is being waged in the Middle East. . . . We suggest that those among the faculty who wish to do so be encouraged to devote some portion of class time to a discussion of issues related to the Gulf War or release those students who wish to attend significant campus events related to the war.