Alumni, supporters call on Antioch College to engage fired faculty in curriculum building and faculty hiring

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ed M. Koziarski

As Antioch College prepares for its historic reopening this fall, many alumni and supporters who have worked to rescue the college are calling into question its policies toward faculty hiring and curriculum building.

Advocates for the tenured faculty of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, who were fired when Antioch University closed the college in 2008, are calling on the college to engage with those faculty in the process of building the college’s curriculum, and to offer those faculty first consideration for positions for which they are qualified in the reopened school.  14 tenured faculty from the closed college living in the Miami Valley are interested in teaching at the reopened college.  Educators nationwide are watching Antioch College as a test case in the ongoing struggle to maintain the tenure system and the tradition of academic freedom it protects.  See http://facultyjustice.org

Advocates hope to present their case at a meeting of the college’s governing Board Pro Tempore with new college president Mark Roosevelt, beginning this Friday, January 21 in Yellow Springs.

Antioch College has announced national searches for six initial core faculty positions, in a process that advocates argue unfairly excludes faculty who held tenure at the college before it closed.  Advocates for the faculty maintain that experience in teaching in Antioch College’s distinctly interactive, experiential, collaborative educational style is a skill that makes the college’s past faculty uniquely qualified to teach at the reopened college.  It is this teaching style that has produced the graduates who are innovators and humanitarians for which the college is known.  Advocates cry foul over the way the college markets itself on the strength of this teaching style, while shutting out those who have practiced it.

A report from the American Association of University Professors concluded that the college is professionally and ethically obligated to recognize the tenure of fired faculty.  The report states, in part: “The investigating committee trusts that the Antioch College Continuation Corporation will appreciate the fundamental importance of the tenure system and will offer reinstatement to those whose appointments terminated with the closing, restoring their tenure rights. Moreover, the committee trusts that the corporation will approve a system of shared governance when the college reopens, ensuring primary faculty responsibility for academic matters as called for in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.”  See http://tiny.cc/aaupreport

In a letter to the college, the AAUP states “the AAUP would follow its standard procedures [for possible censure] in handling any complaints received from tenured Antioch faculty who subsequently asserted they were denied appointment to suitable positions at the college after it was reopened.”
See http://tiny.cc/aaupletter

868 alumni and supporters have signed a petition “to make all decisions about faculty hiring in consultation with the tenured faculty of the college who were improperly fired by Antioch University, and with representatives of the American Association of University Professors, and to offer tenured Antioch College faculty right of first refusal for positions for which they are qualified, according to AAUP guidelines.”  Petition signers include 391 alumni representing seven decades as well as 334 academic professionals from 158 educational institutions.  See http://petition.saveantioch.org

19 current and former elected members of the Antioch College Alumni Association Board of Directors signed an open letter to Roosevelt and the Board Pro Tempore in support of faculty.  The letter states: “Hiring former faculty for faculty roles in which they are qualified gives Antioch College the best chance for survival with an academic program that will be recognized as an Antioch College education… The college’s choice to pursue national searches does not recognize the unique experience and role of the former faculty.  It should be reversed immediately, before irreparable harm is done to our alumni community.”  See http://tiny.cc/alumniboard