[Pols-l] letter to Provost

Tue Jun 23 12:03:56 CDT 2020

Colleagues, fyi, below is a letter that a majority of Chairs and Directors in CLAS sent to the Provost yesterday afternoon.
DHM

Dear Provost Bichelmeyer --

On Father’s Day a group of faculty members representing multiple departments and programs throughout KU met to discuss correspondence presented to us last week from you and the Chancellor. Due to social distancing concerns and family commitments, many who have been involved in the effort could not join us in person but participated remotely.

In advance of the 6/24 deadline for the Provost’s Office classroom spreadsheet, several chairs agreed to share the following major points that reflect on the problematic and highly tentative nature of what we have been asked to carry out by the Provost’s Office.

  1.  The plan to use the ADA as the mechanism whereby instructors (faculty, adjuncts and GTAs) receive permission to be exempted from in-person teaching is impossibly unwieldy, discriminatory and perhaps illegal. The process raises weighty confidentiality concerns, and we believe that many urgent questions remain to be answered about the interface of ADA with EEOC and with occupational health and safety protections. The plan asks instructors to divulge personal health (including mental health) information that is not in fact counted as a disability by law in order to learn that our request may have been denied.  In addition, many of the concerns our colleagues have that teaching in person may not be safe are not necessarily related to personal health but are rather family or household- based concerns that this approach simply fails to acknowledge as legitimate. The necessity for deliberation on, for example, the accommodations available to instructors with eldercare responsibilities or with children with special needs is completely left out of the ADA model.

  1.  We assert chairs should submit the spreadsheet taking into account individual faculty preferences to teach online, without waiting for or requiring ADA approval. Such approval (1) is unlikely or not possible in many cases by the June 24 deadline, (2) may not be likely for many issues that may impact workplace safety, such as age or family responsibility concerns, and (3) not something that chairs can ask of faculty without violating privacy rules. Everyone in attendance at the meeting felt that our proposals for our fall curricula as academic officers of our units should be accepted without further investigation or vetting by ADA and HR officers.

  1.  Because plans for socially distancing protocols and their enforcement are  undeveloped and we are not being seen as central to the process whereby our classes can be safely and effectively organized we believe that a statement from an instructor indicating that they do not trust that they are returning to a safe workplace be accepted as sufficient reason for not returning to in person teaching.

Respectfully,

Dave Roediger (outgoing, American Studies)

Ani Kokobobo (Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literatures)

Nick Syrett (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

Robert Warrior (incoming, American Studies)

Dave Mechem (Geography and Atmospheric Science)

Michael Vitevitch (Psychology)

Florence D. DiGennaro Reed (Applied Behavioral Science)

Maria E. Orive (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)

Henry Bial (Theater and Dance)

David Cateforis (History of Art)

Eve Levin (outgoing, History)

Luis Corteguera (incoming, History)

Alesha Doan (Spanish and Portuguese)

Don Haider-Markel (Political Science)

Milena Stanislavova (Economics)

David Slusky (Associate Chair, Economics)

Tarun Sabarwal (Associate Chair, Economics)

Tara Welch (Classics)

Tanya Hartman (Visual Art)

Elizabeth MacGonagle (Kansas African Studies Center)

Kathryn Conrad (English)

Bruce Hayes (French, Francophone & Italian)

Joan Sereno (Linguistics)

Jie Zhang (Interim, Linguistics)

Kelly Chong (Sociology)

Vitaly Chernetsky (outgoing, Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies)

Marta Caminero-Santangelo (Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies)

Renee Perelmutter (Jewish Studies)

Cecile Accilien (outgoing, African and African American Studies)

Ric Steele (Clinical Child Psychology)

Mary Banwart (Leadership Studies)

Stacey Swearingen White (School of Public Affairs and Administration)

Faye Xiao (East Asian Languages and Cultures)

Nina Vyatkina (German Studies)

Margot Versteeg (Humanities)

Marc Greenberg (outgoing, School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures)

Shannon O’Lear (incoming, Environmental Studies)

Luciano Tosta (incoming, Center for Global and International Studies)

We anticipate additional chairs and directors to add their names to what has been a growing list all day long.

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