NYU Charged With Illegal Retaliation in Tenure Decision Before Labor Board

[Nathan Newman]

A little organizing work outside Sept 11. Please forward to appropriate lists .-- Nathan   News Release New York University Charged with Illegal Workplace Retaliation Before National Labor Board for Denial of Tenure Monday, October 1, 2001 From the United Auto Workers, Local 2110, the American Association of University Professors, Jobs with Justice, and Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice contact: Nathan Newman, Eisner & Hubbard, P.C.        (212) 473-8700, ext. 13 [EMAIL PROTECTED]        Press documents archived at http://www.eisner-hubbard.com/westheimer/ New York University today faced charges before the National Labor Relations Board of illegal workplace retaliation in its denial of tenure to Joel Westheimer, assistant professor of education at NYU. Dr. Westheimer filed charges that he was denied tenure by Dean of Education Ann Marcus, despite unanimous backing by his department and by outside experts, in retaliation for his testimony in fall 1999 before the National Labor Relations Board. That original case led to NYU being ordered, after years of resistance, to bargain with graduate student employees who had sought to unionize. Faculty and labor leaders, including representatives of the American Association of University Professors, the United Auto Workers, Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice, Jobs with Justice, and NYU's graduate student organizing committee (GSOC), gathered on Monday, October 1 in support of Dr. Westheimer and to denounce the chilling effect such a retaliation has on the rights of all employees. "If people cannot testify freely before the National Labor Relations Board without fear of retaliation", said Julie Kushner, Sub-regional director of UAW's Region PA, "our whole system of workers rights and the authority of the Board to enforce those rights is destroyed." Ann Lieberman, a former President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), was an outside reviewer brought in by NYU to evaluate Dr. Westheimer for the tenure process. She wrote in her review that he would be given tenure "without any doubt" at any of the top education schools, including her own top-ranked Teachers College program at Columbia University. She considered his book Among Schoolchildren "to be one of the most significant pieces of research on professional communities to be published in the last decade." Dr. Lieberman has been joined in this opinion by 27 distinguished senior scholars in the field of education, including 5 past presidents of the AERA, who have expressed similar praise of his work and alarm at the threat to academic freedom from denial of tenure based on political activities. As well, 63 NYU faculty have denounced the process that denied Dr. Westheimer tenure, emphasizing Dr. Westheimer's teaching, service to the community and research that have made him one of the outstanding scholars in his field. Notably, the university shared that opinion, as documented in the charges filed with the NLRB today, until Dr. Westheimer became the only untenured professor to testify against NYU in September 1999. Before his testimony he received four NYU awards, including the 1997 Griffiths Research Award, awarded to only one person annually for the best research in the School of Education. Additionally, in 1997, Dean Marcus herself nominated him for the national Millman Award for Education Research, awarded. annually to one recipient nationwide considered the best among new scholars. When he won the award, Dean Marcus wrote in university publications, "This award underscores the significance of his work as a scholar." After his 1998 mid-year evaluation, Dean Marcus wrote Dr. Westheimer personally that "I hope you have realized how important your work is to your department and our school." "Then," notes attorney Dean Hubbard, whose firm has been retained by the United Auto Workers to represent Dr. Westheimer in his case, "Prof. Westheimer testified on the opposite side from Dean Marcus in the NYU graduate student unionization case and the retaliation began." According to charges filed by Dr. Westheimer, this retaliation took a number of forms leading up to the denial of tenure: Dean Marcus, who in the past had been warm and friendly, thereafter became personally hostile, refused to speak to him, and for the first time began criticizing his work. The head of the department's faculty review committee told Dr. Westheimer of concerns that he was not a "team player" and that he should go along with "the direction of the Department and the School." In Dr. Westheimer's 2000 review, his department chair for the first time reduced his rating from "exceptional", which he had received in all previous years, down to mere "merit" which resulted in a significantly lower pay increase than in previous years. The Dean and department chair imposed, in addition to Dr. Westheimer's academic duties, a new administrative workload that was far larger than that put on other faculty. By the time he was denied tenure, Dr. Westheimer notes, it was clear that, in ignoring the unanimous recommendation for tenure by his department committee and by seven external referees of national repute chosen by NYU itself, the administration of the Education School was retaliating against him for his testimony. "We see this retaliation against Prof. Westheimer," argues NYU GSOC bargaining committee member David Sherman, a Ph.D. student in English, "as the same kind of retaliation and resistance to fair labor conditions that NYU has imposed on workers across the university. When people feel they cannot speak out for fear of losing their jobs, the most precious value of the university, its academic freedom, is lost."             -- end --