George Wolfe is Emeritus Professor of Music at Ball State University and the former director of the Ball State University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies.
Several weeks ago I was walking through the student center on the campus of DePauw University. There, displayed on a wall, were photos of the DePauw University Board of Trustees. As I perused the names and titles, I noticed the vast majority were lawyers, bankers, or CEOs of prominent businesses. The list included only two seasoned academics, one of whom was a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and the other being Ball State Professor Emeritus Tom Sargent, who serves as a life, but non-voting member.
The trend to exclude experienced faculty from the leadership of educational institutions has infected Anderson University, the president of which is a former Deputy Director of the FBI and former head of the Transportation Security Administration. Purdue University’s current president is former governor Mitch Daniels, who while governor, notoriously stated that historian Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States should not be used in history classes.
This is the corporate model applied to higher education run amuck. It’s time we stop appointing politicians, lawyers and CEO’s who see money as the bottom line, and start empowering bold leaders like Paul Ferguson who value academic integrity and have experience in the academy, both as faculty members and as administrators.
I applaud Professor Bruce Frankel’s effort to submit a proposed non-binding Faculty Senate resolution to reconstitute the Ball State Board Trustees to better represent community taxpayer and faculty stakeholders. Given the dismissive response to his proposal by the current administration however, it appears there is a need for more assertive direct action to get the message across.
A good start would be for faculty and graduating students to refuse to attend the spring commencement ceremony held on the lawn in front of the Fine Arts Building. This boycott, along with picketing the event, would be an effective high profile protest that would attract media attention and publically demonstrate the resolve of the faculty and students to see the changes proposed in the senate resolution come to fruition.
But the long-term solution is to replace Mike Pence in the governor’s office with a leader who has teaching and administrative and experience in the field of education.
It should not be difficult to mount a campaign against Governor Pence given the policy blunders he has made during his three and a half years in office. I’m speaking of his support for the amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage, his support for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which brought terrible publicity to our state, his refusal to allow Syrian Refuges to reside in Indiana despite the opposition of Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Tobin, his attempt to bypass State Superintendent of Instruction Glenda Ritz by establishing his own educational advisory board, and most recently, Pence’s refusal to comply to the federal rule known as the Clean Energy Plan, even if the rule is upheld by the Supreme Court.
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