FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  FROM: Paul Lauter and "Academic Freedom"
  <academic_freedom@yahoo.com>
  TO: WORKPLACE
  SENT: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 10:17 AM
  SUBJECT: HELP - Blacklisting at NYU

  Dear  Friends,

  Please sign this petition by emailing your name,
  position, and institution to academic_freedom@yahoo.com.
  Please also forward this message on to anyone you know.

  The petition  is about Joel Westheimer, an outstanding
  professor at NYU who was just fired after testifying
  in support of graduate students' right to unionize (an
  article about the case, from the Chronicle of Higher
  Education, is attached).  Legal charges will be filed
  before the Labor Board, but it's important that NYU
  hear from others around the country.  The petition
  will be publicized and presented to the NYU
  administration sometime this fall.

   Thanks for all your support,

  Gordon Lafer
  Labor Education and Research Center, University of
  Oregon  Member, National Coordinating Committee, Scholars,
  Artists and Writers for Social Justice

  PETITION

  We the undersigned are deeply troubled by the recent
  denial of tenure to Joel Westheimer, a faculty member
  at New York University's School of Education.  We are
  especially concerned that this decision appears to
  have been a result of Professor Westheimer's vocal
  support for the right of NYU graduate assistants to
  unionize.  Joel Westheimer was the only non-tenured
  faculty member at NYU who testified in support of
  graduate-assistant unionization at the National Labor
  Relations Board hearings on this matter.

  The principle rationale that has been given by NYU for
  denying Joel Westheimer tenure--namely inadequate
  scholarship--clearly has no basis.  Westheimer has a
  substantial body of publications, including  a very
  well received book published by the prestigious
  Teachers College Press.  None of the annual reviews of
  his work by his department ever raised this issue.  To
  the contrary, these reviews regularly commended
  Professor Westheimer for both the quantity and quality
  of his scholarship, as well as for his outstanding
  teaching, research, grant-writing, and departmental
  service.  NYU gave Westheimer annual ratings of
  "exceptional merit" in every review until he disagreed
  with the administration's anti-union position.
  Westheimer has received numerous awards including
  NYU's own internal award for the best research in the
  School of Education.  Not surprisingly, his external
  eferees -- all leading education scholars --
  unanimously and enthusiastically supported
  Westheimer's application for tenure, as did his
  department's tenure and promotion committee.  His
  denial of tenure  has been questioned in a statement
  to NYU administrators from distinguished education
  scholars around the country, including five past
  presidents of the American Educational Research
  Association.

  We are therefore concerned that the denial of tenure
  n Joel Westheimer's case represents retribution for
  his support of the principle of graduate-assistant
  unionization, a principle that was strongly opposed by
  the deans and top administrators at NYU, including
  those at the School of Education.  The Dean of the
  School of Education, in fact, personally testified
  against unionization at the Labor Board hearings.

  Denying tenure for a professor's political views and
  activism represents a gross violation of the
  principles of academic freedom and free speech.  We
  therefore demand that the NYU administration appoint
  an impartial and independent committee of
  distinguished education faculty from both inside and
  outside NYU to review Joel Westheimer's case.  We also
  call upon the NYU administration to take all necessary
  measures in order to guarantee that in the future the
  promotion and tenure process will be insulated from
  political biases and pressures.
 

  > THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
  > August 10, 2001
  >
  >   A Promising Professor Backs a T.A. Union Drive
  >   and Is Rejected for Tenure
  >
  >   Joel Westheimer published and won the support
  >   of his department and outside reviewers. Why did
  >   NYU turn him down?
  >
  >   By PIPER FOGG
  >
  > Joel Westheimer has run through the chain of events in
  > his head a million times. First, he won a departmental
  > award for research at New York University's Steinhardt
  > School of Education, where he teaches. After that, he
  > published a critically acclaimed book. Later, his
  > tenure bid received unanimous backing from his
  > department. In September 1999, he became the only
  > professor without tenure to testify at National Labor
  > Relations Board hearings on behalf of N.Y.U.'s
  > graduate students, who were seeking the right to
  > unionize. In June, he was denied tenure.
  >
  >      * PHOTO *
  >
  >      CAUSE AND EFFECT?
  >      Joel Westheimer was a rising star at New
  >      York University. But after he backed graduate
  >      Students in a union drive, he was denied tenure.
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer thinks this chronology leaves room for
  > only one interpretation, and so he has begun to
  > prepare for legal proceedings against N.Y.U., accusing
  > the institution of retaliating against him for his
  > testimony before the N.L.R.B. While last March N.Y.U.
  > became the first private university to officially
  > recognize a graduate-employee union, the
  > administration spent years and a significant amount of
  > money opposing the drive. Mr. Westheimer claims the
  > university's desire for retribution motivated the
  > decision to deny him tenure. N.Y.U. calls his
  > allegations a "stretch," but many of his peers in
  > academe agree with him.
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer's case comes soon after an incident of
  > retaliation at the State University of New York at
  > Buffalo, where a dean removed a tenured professor as
  > head of the English department for refusing to
  > discipline teaching assistants suspected of
  > withholding undergraduates' grades as a protest
  > against the size of their stipends.
  >
  > Union supporters see the two cases as reflective of
  > the price that faculty members may pay for backing
  > graduate students in contentious conflicts with
  > university administrations. Even if Mr. Westheimer can
  > never prove his case, the perception that he was
  > punished may intimidate other faculty members.
  >
  > "You're always going to have a rather large silent
  > majority of faculty. They really don't want to get
  > involved in anything," says Andrew Ross, an American
  > studies professor at N.Y.U. Gordon Lafer, a professor
  > of labor, education, and research at the University of
  > Oregon and a member of the national coordinating
  > committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social
  > Justice, considers administrative retaliation against
  > pro-union professors a "big issue, and it's a kind of
  > hidden issue." He says that SAWSJ is helping to plan a
  > Workers' Rights Board hearing in October to address
  > academic labor issues, including retaliation. Workers'
  > Rights Boards enlist prominent citizens in public
  > investigations of worker abuse. "There's a particular
  > problem in academia because it's easy to be retaliated
  > against but very hard to police," he says. "Tenure is
  > famously secretive."
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer, who will remain an assistant professor
  > at N.Y.U. until the end of this academic year, stakes
  > his claim of retaliation on his conviction that his
  > résumé -- which, by most standards, is impressive
  > enough -- warrants tenure. Since he first arrived at
  > N.Y.U. in 1996, Mr. Westheimer had consistently
  > received high evaluations from the department of
  > teaching and learning. Many junior faculty members
  > consider Mr. Westheimer a role model. He is a
  > nationally recognized scholar on the role of teacher
  > communities in education.
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer has written 10 journal articles, one
  > book chapter, and three essay reviews. His 1998 book,
  > Among Schoolteachers: Community, Autonomy, and
  > Ideology in Teachers' Work (Teachers College Press),
  > has been widely cited and was greeted with rave
  > reviews. "His book on communities is a classic in the
  > field," says Ann Lieberman, a visiting professor of
  > education at Stanford University. He has received
  > N.Y.U.'s own Griffiths Award for Excellence in
  > Educational Research.
  >
  > For his first three years at the institution, the
  > administration looked favorably on Mr. Westheimer's
  > accomplishments. In July 1998, the dean of N.Y.U.'s
  > education school, Ann L. Marcus, wrote to Mr.
  > Westheimer, "I hope you have realized how important
  > your work is to your department and our school. It is
  > wonderful to have you with us." His department
  > chairman, Mark M. Alter, wrote in May 1999 that he was
  > making "excellent progress" toward tenure.
  >
  > Such strong departmental support continued, Mr.
  > Westheimer says -- until he testified before the
  > N.L.R.B. on September 28, 1999. In the next evaluation
  > after his testimony, his rating went down a notch,
  > from "exceptional merit," the highest, to mere
  > "merit."
  >
  > "I was shocked when I saw the merit rating, because I
  > had had a good year," says Westheimer. "I didn't think
  > of it as them trying to build a record for denial of
  > my tenure. I just let it go."
  >
  > N.Y.U.'s spokesman, John Beckman, says the school does
  > not discuss employee evaluations but adds, "If there
  > was any change in his evaluations, it has absolutely
  > no connection to whether or not he testified."
  >
  > Soon, though, Mr. Westheimer began to get suspicious.
  > He says, "There started to be little things that crept
  > into letters from either the dean or my department
  > chair. One said, there are 'some concerns about your
  > ability or willingness to commit fully to the needs of
  > our programs.'" Mr. Westheimer considered this
  > admonishment from his dean -- which came with his 2000
  > annual review -- a slap on the wrist for his N.L.R.B.
  > testimony.
  >
  > Ms. Marcus officially denied Mr. Westheimer tenure in
  > a letter dated June 26, 2001, but he first learned of
  > the impending news by telephone on March 21. "In that
  > conversation, the associate dean, Gabriel Carras, read
  > me excerpts of the letter from the Tenure and
  > Promotion Committee," says Mr. Westheimer. Mr. Carras
  > told Mr. Westheimer that he would be denied primarily
  > because of insufficient scholarship.
  >
  > Robert Cohen, a tenured education professor at N.Y.U.,
  > says Mr. Westheimer is not only "on par with, or ahead
  > of everyone who went up for tenure this year" in the
  > education school, but he "definitely is ahead of most
  > people who get tenure." Mr. Westheimer will not
  > compare himself to his peers. Instead, he points to a
  > statement, signed by five past presidents of the
  > American Educational Research Association, that
  > praises his scholarship and raises concerns about the
  > possible retaliation by N.Y.U.
  >
  > N.Y.U. administrators will not discuss the details of
  > Mr. Westheimer's tenure case. Mr. Westheimer's
  > allegation about the administration's motivations,
  > though, strikes Ms. Marcus as unlikely. She says,
  > "Clearly, he's trying everything he can to win his
  > case and get publicity for it." She adds that N.Y.U.
  > has a very rigorous tenure-review process. "It's sad
  > that people are disappointed. But, it happens. I
  > believe our committees acted in good faith."
  >
  > But Mr. Westheimer is convinced that the motivation
  > behind the university's rejection of his tenure, which
  > overturned both the unanimous recommendation of his
  > department and of eight outside reviewers, was purely
  > political. The recommending examiners included
  > Stanford's Ms. Lieberman and William Ayers, a
  > professor of education at the University of Illinois
  > at Chicago. Mr. Westheimer admits, "I knew there was
  > some risk to testifying, but I didn't think it would
  > result in denial of tenure."
  >
  > The majority of his untenured peers in his department
  > at N.Y.U. decline to go on the record about whether
  > retribution might have played a part in the tenure
  > process, but they will say he got a bum deal. "It was
  > very surprising that he didn't get tenure. The facts
  > seem a little suspicious, but I still think the school
  > has to be above that kind of politics," says Kendall
  > King, an assistant professor of teaching and learning.
  >
  > Brian Murfin, a former assistant professor in the
  > science-education program, left N.Y.U. last semester
  > to manage the office of educational programs at the
  > Brookhaven National Laboratory. He thinks retribution
  > "is probably a major reason" for Mr. Westheimer's
  > rejection. "Joel definitely has everything it takes to
  > be tenured at N.Y.U. His involvement in the graduate-
  > student issue was directly opposite the
  > administration. Junior faculty are under a lot of
  > pressure to conform to, I don't want to say 'the party
  > line,' but to the way things are done traditionally.
  > Tenure is a very political decision."
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer says he had no previous history of
  > activism and no union ties. But, he says, "N.Y.U. is a
  > precedent-setting case, and I felt a real
  > responsibility to my students." He adds that "I felt a
  > particular responsibility to speak out -- as an
  > education professor and a specialist in the subject of
  > teacher community -- because the administration's
  > objection had a lot to do with the nature of the
  > educational relationship between students and
  > professors."
  >
  > The administration's position throughout the labor
  > talks had been that a union would damage that
  > relationship, and Mr. Westheimer felt his experience
  > and his research suggested otherwise. "I probably
  > would do it again," he says, adding, "I did not
  > foresee these extreme actions taking place."
  >
  > Now, he's working with a lawyer, paid for by the
  > United Auto Workers, the national union that organized
  > the N.Y.U. graduate students, and is preparing to file
  > charges against the university with the N.L.R.B.
  >
  > According to union representatives, even though the
  > campus labor movement has picked up momentum among
  > both graduate students and professors, faculty fears
  > are still a main obstacle to organizing, especially
  > for professors who lack job security. "Untenured
  > faculty, generally, I find to be very supportive of
  > union attempts, but that is limited by their concerns
  > about getting tenure," says Richard Moser, a national
  > field representative for the American Association of
  > University Professors. Mr. Moser and the A.A.U.P. take
  > these fears seriously. At Emerson College, for
  > example, they encouraged nontenured faculty members to
  > limit their open support for union organizing of
  > adjunct faculty because of the threat of a
  > "vindictive" administration. David Rosen, an Emerson
  > spokesman, while acknowledging the college's
  > opposition to unionization, says he is unaware of any
  > incidents of retaliation.
  >
  > As far as how such fears apply to Mr. Westheimer's
  > situation, Ms. Marcus is not convinced. "That seems to
  > me a pretty big stretch," she says. "When people don't
  > get tenure, it's obviously very upsetting." Ms. Marcus
  > says people will simply latch on to what they can to
  > explain it. "I guess this line of reasoning strikes a
  > nerve with people."
  >
  > Sheldon E. Steinbach thinks Mr. Westheimer's
  > allegations are beyond far-fetched. "Sounds like an
  > early-20th-century excuse for denial of tenure," he
  > says. Mr. Steinbach is general counsel at the American
  > Council on Education, which filed an amicus brief on
  > behalf of N.Y.U. during the N.L.R.B. case. "Institutes
  > of the sophistication and legitimacy of an N.Y.U. do
  > not go around denying tenure to people on the grounds
  > that they participated in a union-organizing campaign.
  > N.Y.U. is not a robber baron."
  >
  > In the wake of the N.Y.U. and Buffalo incidents, some
  > faculty members sympathetic to the unionizing movement
  > may continue to stay silent for fear of administrative
  > reprisal. But some faculty leaders think that, despite
  > the fears that Mr. Westheimer's case might raise for a
  > nontenured scholar, more professors are going to speak
  > out. Things are not bleak, N.Y.U.'s Mr. Ross
  > maintains. It is a nationwide sentiment, he says, that
  > "faculty are waking up. The number is growing."
  >
  > Mr. Moser of the A.A.U.P. agrees. "The
  > graduate-student unionization is changing the
  > atmosphere. It's altering the environment from the
  > bottom up." As a result, "tenured faculty members
  > speaking out and being vocal is likely to become more
  > of a part of academic culture," he says.
  >
  > "There's safety in numbers."


 
 

 

  FROM: Paul Lauter and "Academic Freedom"
 

 <academic_freedom@yahoo.com>
 

  TO: WORKPLACE
  SENT: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 10:17 AM
  SUBJECT: HELP - Blacklisting at NYU

  Dear  Friends,

  Please sign this petition by emailing your name,
  position, and institution to academic_freedom@yahoo.com.
  Please also forward this message on to anyone you know.

  The petition  is about Joel Westheimer, an outstanding
  professor at NYU who was just fired after testifying
  in support of graduate students' right to unionize (an
  article about the case, from the Chronicle of Higher
  Education, is attached).  Legal charges will be filed
  before the Labor Board, but it's important that NYU
  hear from others around the country.  The petition
  will be publicized and presented to the NYU
  administration sometime this fall.

   Thanks for all your support,

  Gordon Lafer
  Labor Education and Research Center, University of
  Oregon  Member, National Coordinating Committee, Scholars,
  Artists and Writers for Social Justice

  PETITION

  We the undersigned are deeply troubled by the recent
  denial of tenure to Joel Westheimer, a faculty member
  at New York University's School of Education.  We are
  especially concerned that this decision appears to
  have been a result of Professor Westheimer's vocal
  support for the right of NYU graduate assistants to
  unionize.  Joel Westheimer was the only non-tenured
  faculty member at NYU who testified in support of
  graduate-assistant unionization at the National Labor
  Relations Board hearings on this matter.

  The principle rationale that has been given by NYU for
  denying Joel Westheimer tenure--namely inadequate
  scholarship--clearly has no basis.  Westheimer has a
  substantial body of publications, including  a very
  well received book published by the prestigious
  Teachers College Press.  None of the annual reviews of
  his work by his department ever raised this issue.  To
  the contrary, these reviews regularly commended
  Professor Westheimer for both the quantity and quality
  of his scholarship, as well as for his outstanding
  teaching, research, grant-writing, and departmental
  service.  NYU gave Westheimer annual ratings of
  "exceptional merit" in every review until he disagreed
  with the administration's anti-union position.
  Westheimer has received numerous awards including
  NYU's own internal award for the best research in the
  School of Education.  Not surprisingly, his external
  eferees -- all leading education scholars --
  unanimously and enthusiastically supported
  Westheimer's application for tenure, as did his
  department's tenure and promotion committee.  His
  denial of tenure  has been questioned in a statement
  to NYU administrators from distinguished education
  scholars around the country, including five past
  presidents of the American Educational Research
  Association.

  We are therefore concerned that the denial of tenure
  n Joel Westheimer's case represents retribution for
  his support of the principle of graduate-assistant
  unionization, a principle that was strongly opposed by
  the deans and top administrators at NYU, including
  those at the School of Education.  The Dean of the
  School of Education, in fact, personally testified
  against unionization at the Labor Board hearings.

  Denying tenure for a professor's political views and
  activism represents a gross violation of the
  principles of academic freedom and free speech.  We
  therefore demand that the NYU administration appoint
  an impartial and independent committee of
  distinguished education faculty from both inside and
  outside NYU to review Joel Westheimer's case.  We also
  call upon the NYU administration to take all necessary
  measures in order to guarantee that in the future the
  promotion and tenure process will be insulated from
  political biases and pressures.
 

  > THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
  > August 10, 2001
  >
  >   A Promising Professor Backs a T.A. Union Drive
  >   and Is Rejected for Tenure
  >
  >   Joel Westheimer published and won the support
  >   of his department and outside reviewers. Why did
  >   NYU turn him down?
  >
  >   By PIPER FOGG
  >
  > Joel Westheimer has run through the chain of events in
  > his head a million times. First, he won a departmental
  > award for research at New York University's Steinhardt
  > School of Education, where he teaches. After that, he
  > published a critically acclaimed book. Later, his
  > tenure bid received unanimous backing from his
  > department. In September 1999, he became the only
  > professor without tenure to testify at National Labor
  > Relations Board hearings on behalf of N.Y.U.'s
  > graduate students, who were seeking the right to
  > unionize. In June, he was denied tenure.
  >
  >      * PHOTO *
  >
  >      CAUSE AND EFFECT?
  >      Joel Westheimer was a rising star at New
  >      York University. But after he backed graduate
  >      Students in a union drive, he was denied tenure.
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer thinks this chronology leaves room for
  > only one interpretation, and so he has begun to
  > prepare for legal proceedings against N.Y.U., accusing
  > the institution of retaliating against him for his
  > testimony before the N.L.R.B. While last March N.Y.U.
  > became the first private university to officially
  > recognize a graduate-employee union, the
  > administration spent years and a significant amount of
  > money opposing the drive. Mr. Westheimer claims the
  > university's desire for retribution motivated the
  > decision to deny him tenure. N.Y.U. calls his
  > allegations a "stretch," but many of his peers in
  > academe agree with him.
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer's case comes soon after an incident of
  > retaliation at the State University of New York at
  > Buffalo, where a dean removed a tenured professor as
  > head of the English department for refusing to
  > discipline teaching assistants suspected of
  > withholding undergraduates' grades as a protest
  > against the size of their stipends.
  >
  > Union supporters see the two cases as reflective of
  > the price that faculty members may pay for backing
  > graduate students in contentious conflicts with
  > university administrations. Even if Mr. Westheimer can
  > never prove his case, the perception that he was
  > punished may intimidate other faculty members.
  >
  > "You're always going to have a rather large silent
  > majority of faculty. They really don't want to get
  > involved in anything," says Andrew Ross, an American
  > studies professor at N.Y.U. Gordon Lafer, a professor
  > of labor, education, and research at the University of
  > Oregon and a member of the national coordinating
  > committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social
  > Justice, considers administrative retaliation against
  > pro-union professors a "big issue, and it's a kind of
  > hidden issue." He says that SAWSJ is helping to plan a
  > Workers' Rights Board hearing in October to address
  > academic labor issues, including retaliation. Workers'
  > Rights Boards enlist prominent citizens in public
  > investigations of worker abuse. "There's a particular
  > problem in academia because it's easy to be retaliated
  > against but very hard to police," he says. "Tenure is
  > famously secretive."
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer, who will remain an assistant professor
  > at N.Y.U. until the end of this academic year, stakes
  > his claim of retaliation on his conviction that his
  > résumé -- which, by most standards, is impressive
  > enough -- warrants tenure. Since he first arrived at
  > N.Y.U. in 1996, Mr. Westheimer had consistently
  > received high evaluations from the department of
  > teaching and learning. Many junior faculty members
  > consider Mr. Westheimer a role model. He is a
  > nationally recognized scholar on the role of teacher
  > communities in education.
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer has written 10 journal articles, one
  > book chapter, and three essay reviews. His 1998 book,
  > Among Schoolteachers: Community, Autonomy, and
  > Ideology in Teachers' Work (Teachers College Press),
  > has been widely cited and was greeted with rave
  > reviews. "His book on communities is a classic in the
  > field," says Ann Lieberman, a visiting professor of
  > education at Stanford University. He has received
  > N.Y.U.'s own Griffiths Award for Excellence in
  > Educational Research.
  >
  > For his first three years at the institution, the
  > administration looked favorably on Mr. Westheimer's
  > accomplishments. In July 1998, the dean of N.Y.U.'s
  > education school, Ann L. Marcus, wrote to Mr.
  > Westheimer, "I hope you have realized how important
  > your work is to your department and our school. It is
  > wonderful to have you with us." His department
  > chairman, Mark M. Alter, wrote in May 1999 that he was
  > making "excellent progress" toward tenure.
  >
  > Such strong departmental support continued, Mr.
  > Westheimer says -- until he testified before the
  > N.L.R.B. on September 28, 1999. In the next evaluation
  > after his testimony, his rating went down a notch,
  > from "exceptional merit," the highest, to mere
  > "merit."
  >
  > "I was shocked when I saw the merit rating, because I
  > had had a good year," says Westheimer. "I didn't think
  > of it as them trying to build a record for denial of
  > my tenure. I just let it go."
  >
  > N.Y.U.'s spokesman, John Beckman, says the school does
  > not discuss employee evaluations but adds, "If there
  > was any change in his evaluations, it has absolutely
  > no connection to whether or not he testified."
  >
  > Soon, though, Mr. Westheimer began to get suspicious.
  > He says, "There started to be little things that crept
  > into letters from either the dean or my department
  > chair. One said, there are 'some concerns about your
  > ability or willingness to commit fully to the needs of
  > our programs.'" Mr. Westheimer considered this
  > admonishment from his dean -- which came with his 2000
  > annual review -- a slap on the wrist for his N.L.R.B.
  > testimony.
  >
  > Ms. Marcus officially denied Mr. Westheimer tenure in
  > a letter dated June 26, 2001, but he first learned of
  > the impending news by telephone on March 21. "In that
  > conversation, the associate dean, Gabriel Carras, read
  > me excerpts of the letter from the Tenure and
  > Promotion Committee," says Mr. Westheimer. Mr. Carras
  > told Mr. Westheimer that he would be denied primarily
  > because of insufficient scholarship.
  >
  > Robert Cohen, a tenured education professor at N.Y.U.,
  > says Mr. Westheimer is not only "on par with, or ahead
  > of everyone who went up for tenure this year" in the
  > education school, but he "definitely is ahead of most
  > people who get tenure." Mr. Westheimer will not
  > compare himself to his peers. Instead, he points to a
  > statement, signed by five past presidents of the
  > American Educational Research Association, that
  > praises his scholarship and raises concerns about the
  > possible retaliation by N.Y.U.
  >
  > N.Y.U. administrators will not discuss the details of
  > Mr. Westheimer's tenure case. Mr. Westheimer's
  > allegation about the administration's motivations,
  > though, strikes Ms. Marcus as unlikely. She says,
  > "Clearly, he's trying everything he can to win his
  > case and get publicity for it." She adds that N.Y.U.
  > has a very rigorous tenure-review process. "It's sad
  > that people are disappointed. But, it happens. I
  > believe our committees acted in good faith."
  >
  > But Mr. Westheimer is convinced that the motivation
  > behind the university's rejection of his tenure, which
  > overturned both the unanimous recommendation of his
  > department and of eight outside reviewers, was purely
  > political. The recommending examiners included
  > Stanford's Ms. Lieberman and William Ayers, a
  > professor of education at the University of Illinois
  > at Chicago. Mr. Westheimer admits, "I knew there was
  > some risk to testifying, but I didn't think it would
  > result in denial of tenure."
  >
  > The majority of his untenured peers in his department
  > at N.Y.U. decline to go on the record about whether
  > retribution might have played a part in the tenure
  > process, but they will say he got a bum deal. "It was
  > very surprising that he didn't get tenure. The facts
  > seem a little suspicious, but I still think the school
  > has to be above that kind of politics," says Kendall
  > King, an assistant professor of teaching and learning.
  >
  > Brian Murfin, a former assistant professor in the
  > science-education program, left N.Y.U. last semester
  > to manage the office of educational programs at the
  > Brookhaven National Laboratory. He thinks retribution
  > "is probably a major reason" for Mr. Westheimer's
  > rejection. "Joel definitely has everything it takes to
  > be tenured at N.Y.U. His involvement in the graduate-
  > student issue was directly opposite the
  > administration. Junior faculty are under a lot of
  > pressure to conform to, I don't want to say 'the party
  > line,' but to the way things are done traditionally.
  > Tenure is a very political decision."
  >
  > Mr. Westheimer says he had no previous history of
  > activism and no union ties. But, he says, "N.Y.U. is a
  > precedent-setting case, and I felt a real
  > responsibility to my students." He adds that "I felt a
  > particular responsibility to speak out -- as an
  > education professor and a specialist in the subject of
  > teacher community -- because the administration's
  > objection had a lot to do with the nature of the
  > educational relationship between students and
  > professors."
  >
  > The administration's position throughout the labor
  > talks had been that a union would damage that
  > relationship, and Mr. Westheimer felt his experience
  > and his research suggested otherwise. "I probably
  > would do it again," he says, adding, "I did not
  > foresee these extreme actions taking place."
  >
  > Now, he's working with a lawyer, paid for by the
  > United Auto Workers, the national union that organized
  > the N.Y.U. graduate students, and is preparing to file
  > charges against the university with the N.L.R.B.
  >
  > According to union representatives, even though the
  > campus labor movement has picked up momentum among
  > both graduate students and professors, faculty fears
  > are still a main obstacle to organizing, especially
  > for professors who lack job security. "Untenured
  > faculty, generally, I find to be very supportive of
  > union attempts, but that is limited by their concerns
  > about getting tenure," says Richard Moser, a national
  > field representative for the American Association of
  > University Professors. Mr. Moser and the A.A.U.P. take
  > these fears seriously. At Emerson College, for
  > example, they encouraged nontenured faculty members to
  > limit their open support for union organizing of
  > adjunct faculty because of the threat of a
  > "vindictive" administration. David Rosen, an Emerson
  > spokesman, while acknowledging the college's
  > opposition to unionization, says he is unaware of any
  > incidents of retaliation.
  >
  > As far as how such fears apply to Mr. Westheimer's
  > situation, Ms. Marcus is not convinced. "That seems to
  > me a pretty big stretch," she says. "When people don't
  > get tenure, it's obviously very upsetting." Ms. Marcus
  > says people will simply latch on to what they can to
  > explain it. "I guess this line of reasoning strikes a
  > nerve with people."
  >
  > Sheldon E. Steinbach thinks Mr. Westheimer's
  > allegations are beyond far-fetched. "Sounds like an
  > early-20th-century excuse for denial of tenure," he
  > says. Mr. Steinbach is general counsel at the American
  > Council on Education, which filed an amicus brief on
  > behalf of N.Y.U. during the N.L.R.B. case. "Institutes
  > of the sophistication and legitimacy of an N.Y.U. do
  > not go around denying tenure to people on the grounds
  > that they participated in a union-organizing campaign.
  > N.Y.U. is not a robber baron."
  >
  > In the wake of the N.Y.U. and Buffalo incidents, some
  > faculty members sympathetic to the unionizing movement
  > may continue to stay silent for fear of administrative
  > reprisal. But some faculty leaders think that, despite
  > the fears that Mr. Westheimer's case might raise for a
  > nontenured scholar, more professors are going to speak
  > out. Things are not bleak, N.Y.U.'s Mr. Ross
  > maintains. It is a nationwide sentiment, he says, that
  > "faculty are waking up. The number is growing."
  >
  > Mr. Moser of the A.A.U.P. agrees. "The
  > graduate-student unionization is changing the
  > atmosphere. It's altering the environment from the
  > bottom up." As a result, "tenured faculty members
  > speaking out and being vocal is likely to become more
  > of a part of academic culture," he says.
  >
  > "There's safety in numbers."