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| MEMO FROM: M. Millman TO: Math Faculty DATE: 9/11/00 RE: Academia at its Worst (cont'd.) My memo of 5/17/00 (Academia at its Worst - the Laguardia Community College Mathematics Department), which was cc'd to ex-President Matthews, the College P&B and the CUNY Board of Trustees, has apparently generated no interest whatsoever on the part of either the invisible LaGuardia Administration or the Neanderthal CUNY bureaucracy. Our nonsensical remedial courses remain hopelessly confused nonsense. Thus, our students continue to fail the CUNY remedial exam at the same alarming rate. Our horrible precalculus and calculus courses remain embarrasingly horrible and our fraudulent statistics course remains literally illegal - all to the detriment of our unfortunate students. Departmental corruption, incompetence, violations of academic freedom and faculty harassment, as well, continue unabated. My next step to seek relief from this hoax that passes for education is to bring it to the attention of the Mayor and the media. The PSC [Faculty union] attorney has advised me that the union contract and the Board by-laws do not recognize the problem of departmental administrators who dictate mandatory textbooks. Whether or not these involve conflict-of-interest is similarly ignored. Nor do these by-laws address the problem of cronyism on the departmental level. Clearly, such by-laws need to be updated and brought into line with the practices of civilized colleges and universities. The Board and the PSC, for example, ought to consider the simple expedient of rotating department chairmanships among volunteer senior faculty, as many colleges do. This would prevent the existence of decade-long dynasties with their potential for racial-bloc voting, cronyism and dictatorial violations of academic freedom. Finally, I wish to re-express my outrage at the Pinochet-style liquidation of Dr. Evan Siegel this year. Dr. Siegel is an extremely well-educated Ph.D. mathematician who is completely devoted to his students. He is also a man of great professional integrity for whom most of us have warm feelings and the utmost respect. One would think the department would welcome him with open arms and consider itself lucky to have him. His firing, despite the fact that there are several Full Profs. of considerably less competence currently working in the department, is yet another obscenity we are forced to bear. The lack of protest on his behalf is indicative of the atmosphere of intimidation we labor under. We are all aware of the real reason for this firing. The alleged reasons supplied to Dr. Siegel are transparently phony, as any first-year law student could easily demonstrate. I sincerely hope that Dr. Siegel pursues the route of litigation to again become our colleague, although I can certainly empathize with what must be his ambivalence at rejoining an insane institution. cc: President G. Mellow LaGuardia P&B Committee H. Badillo, Board of Trustees, CUNY |
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