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Constructively Demoted Over A Decade Later: What Has Changed?
By Thomas D. Landefeld
There is an expression "The more things change, the more that they stay the same". Well, in looking over some articles that I wrote back in 1998 about my experiences speaking out about racism and standing up for what was right at the University of Michigan, including one entitled "Constructively demoted" (Race Traitor #5 1998) and comparing it with my experiences at California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) for doing the same thing, perhaps the saying should be "things really don't change".
Moreover, since these actions all relate to racism in our society (and academia) and the retaliation/repercussions when one confronts it, Derrick Bell's statement that "racism is permanent" leads one to believe that "a change in not going to happen". And that is really scary! So, let me make some of the scary but real comparisons between these actions back then and the ones now.
In both cases, I had been appointed (chosen!) to a position whose charge, at least theoretically, was to do what I did and in fact my selection was based on my previous successes in the area of minority affairs. Not only did I do "the job" but did it especially well.
That "job" was to promote diversity and inclusivity, which focused on the personalization and individualization of students, faculty and staff from under served and under represented groups. In my CSUDH position that meant bringing in federal funds to the University, which not only benefited the students but also gave visibility and credibility to the University. However, since being successful in the position meant fighting for equal rights and opportunities that also meant very often "going against the system", I was always subject to extra scrutiny, despite the successes.
Certainly from my experiences at Michigan, I was not naïve about that. However, when the CSUDH leadership changed to one that was not tolerant to advocating for equal opportunities, especially in the area of minorities, a person such as me, who was leading the charge, had to be removed.
In my case, this involved first putting me in a temporary position (despite the fact that I had been appointed to the position eight years previously as a result of a national search and had been successful throughout the entire time in that position). Then, when I applied for the position that was advertised nationally, I was not even granted an interview, despite my experience and successes in the previous CSUDH and Michigan positions. I was told that I was not interviewed for the position on the basis of calls to "selected individuals on campus" who as it turns out, not surprisingly, gave me bad recommendations, saying that I was "uncollegial".
Although the queries were made by a search committee, the search itself was initiated by the person in charge who had assigned me to the temporary position and was the same person who I had confronted earlier for making a racist statement about our school, i.e. referring to it as a "ghetto campus". Thus, in my mind, there was no question as to why selected persons were called, i.e. it was known that they would give this type of evaluation. Interestingly, subsequent to that, I obtained over 50 signatures that were positive towards my performance in all areas including "collegiality"! Thus, I was removed from my administrative position in what was clearly an act of retaliation, analogous to the situation at Michigan.
Despite being removed as Associate Dean, I remained as Director of the two federally funded minority student training programs which I had secured and had successfully continued for 7 years. However, shortly after my removal from the administrative position, an accusatory letter regarding my administration of those grants was written to this same person "in charge". Despite the fact that these charges were bogus and, in fact, were addressed point by point in a rebuttal to the person supposedly mediating this "case", an investigation was initiated by the CSU Chancellor's Office.
During that investigation, the rebuttal to these charges was once again shared, this time with the investigator. However, this rebuttal was never taken into account and the report from the investigation appeared on the CSU web site without any opportunity for me to address the accusations! Since CSUDH is part of the CSU, the CSUDH person "in charge" used the results from the CSU report to not only accuse me of mismanagement but also to discipline me by, among other things, removing me from any operations of the grants, which I had obtained and successfully continued since arriving at CSUDH. In fact, he also stated in the disciplinary letter that I could not be a Principal Investigator on a grant for a period of three years! Besides the fact that his authority to do so is highly questionable, he was preventing the one person on the CSUDH campus who unquestionably had the most productive career research grant success from writing grants (and this is at an Institution that has never even had an investigator with an R01grant!).
Further incidents that proved the pervasive nature of this personal and retaliatory attack included actions by still another search committee. In this case, the process involved a search for the CSUDH position of Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, a position that I was especially qualified for based on my position of Assistant Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan (again, a major research 1 university).
In this particular case, despite the fact that there were only three applicants for the position, the Committee chose to interview only two of those applicants, with me being the third. Furthermore, when I obtained the search committee's scoring of the applicants, in the first category where the only criteria were: 1) an earned PhD (I obtained mine from the University of Wisconsin) and 2) credentials appropriate to earn tenure in a department (I was tenured at both Michigan and CSUDH), I received a "0" (out of a total of 5 points) from two of the committee members!
When looking at the total points that I received from the committee members, two gave me a total of approximately 70 out of a possible total of 80 whereas the two that had given me a zero for category #1, gave me a total of only about 40, or ½ the total of the other two members. Regardless of whom the "two" were, the entire committee is to blame for an unfair, prejudicial selection committee review, based on those types of inconsistent and disparate scores. What is very scary is that a Dean and Associate Dean (from the same CSUDH school) were committee members! (With that, one has to wonder how they handle committees in their School!).
An additional concern throughout this incident involving the removal of me as Program Director despite successful renewals of the grants where no inappropriate management was indicated is not only the personal and vicious attack by academic professionals but also the willingness of the federal agency to condone such a frame up, at the expense of the mission of the school, the system and certainly the Federal agency involved. The system is the system regardless of the level! As a result, the loss for the students outweighed even those personal losses to me, just as was the case at Michigan.
More recently, on a Thursday before classes started the following week, I was assigned to teach three biology laboratories, with the first one meeting on that Tuesday! These were classes that I had not only never taught before but actually had not ever been associated with before! This of course meant preparing lectures, syllabi, and other materials in less than a week.
This is a continuum of disrespectful treatment, especially for a tenured full professor and results from the fact that by removing me as PD on the grants, I no longer had "release time" from teaching to run the grants. Interestingly, in both of these cases, i.e. Michigan and CSUDH, I was a tenured faculty member, which means that although tenure can protect against the ultimate penalty, i.e. firing, it does not protect one against other reprisals, some of which force the person to alter their career and most definitely takes them away from the things that they do most effectively and best! And for what reason? For standing up and fighting for what is right!
So what is the message? Don't stand up for what is right if it means possibly losing your job? No! However, it is clear that many people do subscribe to that philosophy and that is why changes do not occur (even in this case over a period of over a decade!) and at a time when change is most needed. At the same time, fortunately, there are others such as me that will continue to do "the right thing" regardless of the consequences. For as important as a job seems to be, we must remember Dr. King's words "The day that we see the truth and fail to speak is the day that we begin to die". In recognizing that, a job takes on much less importance than "doing the right thing".
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