Faculty Senate – June 17, 2020
Date and Time: Wednesday, June 17, 3:30-5:00pm
Announcements [5 min, slides]
Presentations [15 min, slides]
Resolution in Support of Continued Employment for Cornell Staff during the Covid-19 Crisis
Sense of the Senate Presentation and Voting [70 min, slides]
Meeting Recording (audio)
Meeting Chat
Meeting Slide Deck
Meeting minutes
On Using the Endowment
Whereas the Cornell faculty has been required to take on immense burdens during the spring semester of 2020 as well as during the summer semester, for which they are unpaid;
Whereas the plan proposed by the Administration for addressing the projected deficit during AY 2020-2021 relies upon significant reductions in faculty income and retirement contributions as one of its primary modes of addressing these deficits under each of its modeled responses, which vary according to whether the university reopens fully, partially, or not at all, and not to draw upon the university endowment except as a last measure;
Whereas this allocation of loss has negatively affected faculty morale and gives a public perception that the burden would fall upon faculty and staff rather than upon the institution’s own substantial resources;
Whereas the faculty is unclear about how the comparative financial burden on various groups of the faculty will be calculated equitably but supports the underlying concept of distributing the projected losses progressively;
Be it resolved that the University should consider drawing upon its endowment and borrowing against the endowment in all variants of its plan to address the projected deficit, in order to better equalize the economic burden on all parties, past, present, and future.
Comments
On Transparency
Whereas the university is asking the faculty to continue to reallocate their time, adjust instructional modes and intensify their teaching efforts in AY2020-21 in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, and
Whereas the university is asking the faculty to make considerable personal financial sacrifices to address expected budgetary deficits;
Whereas transparent communication and providing adequate information are essential for establishing a sense of common purpose and trust between the administration and the faculty, and
Whereas the quality of communication and adequacy of information from the administration have profound effects on faculty morale;
Be it resolved that the administration makes available the unredacted final reports of the Reopening Committees as soon as they are communicated to the President to ensure that faculty, whose futures are critically affected by the reports’ recommendations, are adequately informed of the deliberations that inform the administration’s decision-making process.
Be it further resolved that the administration work more closely with the Financial Policies Committee of the Faculty Senate during the pandemic and its aftermath to ensure that the faculty is adequately informed, prior to decisions being made, about the economic realities facing the university and about the tradeoffs associated with forthcoming decisions.
Comments
Comment by Risa Lieberwitz, ILR, Faculty Senator
I support this Resolution for increased transparency. Access to relevant information is essential to meaningful shared governance by the Faculty Senate, the Financial Policies Committee, and all other faculty governance bodies. It is also essential that faculty governance committees can share this information and their analysis of the information with the rest of the faculty — including the Faculty Senate.
Ditto. This situation requires transparency and should indeed be an opportunity to re-establish transparency on the Cornell campus.
On Combatting Racism (original)
Whereas, on May 29, 2020, President Martha Pollack issued a statement to the Cornell community expressing her sorrow about the deaths of “George Floyd, and before him, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and others whose deaths are less well publicized.”
Whereas, the president’s recent statements, including the action items listed in her statement on June 3, are consistent with Cornell’s core values of being a “welcoming, caring and equitable community” built on mutual respect and empowerment; therefore,
Be it Resolved, that the Faculty Senate endorses President Pollack’s statements on May 29, June 3, 2020, and
Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, our Black community members, and those who are protesting racist injustice.
Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate charges all members of the Cornell community to consider how best to heal the harms committed by racial injustice and accord all members of our community equal dignity and respect.
Comments
Proposed amendment:
“Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate supports mandatory training in diversity and inclusion for all Cornell faculty and staff.”
Chris Schaffer
on behalf of Biomedical Engineering Dept.Studies show that mandatory training does not increase diversity, and may have the opposite of the intended effect.
https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
Be it further resolved that the Cornell Police Department be defunded and those monies be redirected toward the educational mission of the institution.
I’m with you all the way up to “solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.” Their platform is full of completely unacceptable ideas well beyond the question of how to protect black lives.
Written this way what we have is just a stealth effort to get the faculty to go along with a radical program covering a broad range of political propaganda only some of which is reasonable.
I think this resolution would be improved with some action steps rather than just “consider” in the final statement.
Comment by Risa Lieberwitz, ILR, Faculty Senator
I suggest amending the final paragraph as follows:
Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate charges all members of the Cornell community to consider how best to dismantle systemic racism, heal the harms committed by racial injustice, and accord all members of our community equal dignity and respect.
I know that this is a difficult time, that it’s easy to get irate these days, but reading this resolution, I’m feeling irate. Why issue a resolution just to support Martha Pollack’s statement? Do any think we disagree with it? Yet now that this resolution is here, it will be stupid if it’s voted down (newspaper headline: “Cornell faculty senate votes down ending racial injustice”).
The major problem is the final clause. I see commenters have been working to try to fix it, which is understandable. But it can’t be fixed by adding or subtracting phrases, because what that clause is doing is just wrong. “We charge the community to” means “we’re telling other people to” in this case fix the problem of racism. Telling other people to fix the problem of racism is a big part of the problem of racism.
People are trying to reckon with and stop an expanding tragedy– that “peace officers” throughout the country habitually harass, terrorize, and murder black people, and have been doing so with impunity for years. This resolution, calling on people to treat each other with dignity and respect, minimizes what’s going on and exemplifies the privilege of not having to deal with the actual terror and loss.
If we can’t scrap this entire resolution, I’d suggest deleting the last clause– but I find the whole thing offensive because of its meagerness in respect to the events to which it purports to respond.
My sense as a woman is that misogynist attitudes ‘survive’ mandatory training. Thus, I suspect mandatory training is likely also not a useful path forward in this case (witness the fact that the police officer involved in the most recent death had been subject to mandatory training on excessive use of force). Instead let’s use tools to enable and celebrate success of our non-caucasian colleagues and students.
How about “we join with the community…”
I agree with Chris Shaeffer, although rather than diversity training, there should be anti-racist training. for all faculty and staff. There is already a mandatory video on diversity and there are required diversity training workshops for hiring committees. These pay insufficient attention to race. This is a good time to change that.
Let’s not go down the “mandatory training” road. It is expensive (a thing these days), somewhat time consuming, and most importantly there is little if any evidence of it being effective. If it was, policing wouldn’t have the problems it does in many places, as just one example. It will take a different kind of long term commitment to address racial injustice. Mandatory training seminars give the impression of action while not accomplishing much of anything significant.
Any reference to “Black Lives Matter” would be entirely inappropriate. BLM’s platform is incompatible with Cornell’s core beliefs, as others have pointed out.
On Combatting Racism (revised)
Whereas, the 2020 killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are among the most recent in the long history of violence against Black people in the United States, often at the hands of the police;
Whereas, such ongoing, brutal loss and injustice weigh unequally on our community;
Whereas, while diversity and inclusion are among Cornell’s core values, we recognize that structural racism prevents equal access to education, voice, health, opportunity, and hope;
Whereas, Cornell faculty are committed, through our research, teaching, and public engagement to upholding Cornell’s core values of being a “welcoming, caring and equitable community,”
Be it Resolved, that the Faculty Senate endorses President Pollack’s statements on May 29 and her proposed action items detailed on June 3, 2020;
Be it Further Resolved, that the Faculty Senate reaffirms its commitment to our belief in the freedom to assemble and engage in peaceful protest;
Be it Further Resolved, that the Faculty Senate stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, our Black community members, and those who are protesting racist injustice;
Be it Further Resolved, that the Faculty Senate commemorates Juneteenth, 2020, in part by rededicating ourselves to take action against individual and structural racial inequalities at Cornell and other institutions, toward a goal of achieving equal rights and social justice.
Comments
I support this revision; I helped to draft it. Here’s an explanation of the changes:
1) in keeping with the gravity of the events and the need for authentic recognition of the issues, the resolution presents the facts in its own words, no longer beginning as a quote from Martha Pollack’s statement. The importance of expressing oneself in one’s own words, of striving for authentic expression and not resorting to formalities, has been widely noted in regard to navigating these tragedies;
2) rather than first acknowledging Cornell as something that stands apart from or contradicts the realities unfolding in the news (i.e., by noting Cornell’s core values of being welcoming, caring and equitable), the revision first acknowledges the sorrow felt here, as well as the inequality that exists here; this way, it validates the reality of the injustice and trauma across the country and does not risk appearing to rush to say that we’re separate from or above it;
3) it asserts the faculty’s role of teaching and learning about the racial inequality, as distinct from possibly suggesting that the harms might be finite and readily healed;
4) it explicitly mentions freedom of assembly and protest;
5) it concludes with the senate’s own commitment to act, rather than with urging the community to act.
Joanie Mackowski
Associate Professor
English / Creative Writing
I fully support this.
NURTURE YOUR EMPLOYEES LIKE YOU NURTURE YOUR ENDOWMENT. I am grateful to the President, Provost, and members of the Financial Policies Committee members for their presentations on Cornell’s current plans to meet the financial crisis caused by COVID-19. I especially appreciate the clarity and thoughtfulness of the FPC’s report and Ravi Kanpur’s articulation of a few essential ways that the administration might better handle the shortfalls. The President and Provost argue that they will not draw on the endowment except in the final and most devastating financial scenario because they feel it incumbent upon them to protect the future of Cornell for its (future) students. They can show that drawing down $30M from the endowment in one year will lead to a reduction of $1.5M in every future year. In other words, tapping the endowment has a clear, calculable cost and a downstream impact on future cohorts of Cornellians. However, spreadsheets are seductive. Even when they are based on fiscal conjecture, they “demonstrate” a monetary loss. What they cannot show with a simple reckoning is the impact of drawing down on employee salaries and retirement benefits. The assumption in this scenario is that “tapping” employee salaries and retirement funds (our future, by the way), does not have cost. However it will have an impact. It may not be as tangible as numbers in an excel spreadsheet, but it does not mean it does not exist. Nor is it defensible as in the best interests of the future of the university and its students. Tapping the financial resources of Cornell’s employees will have an even greater “reduction” in terms of morale, loyalty, productivity, and therefore finances. Our faculty are even more apt to be plucked by other universities and not just because they’ll earn more, but because they will have learned that Cornell’s value system ranks faculty, which is Cornell’s key asset, lower than an uptick in endowment payouts. Nuture your faculty like you nurture the endowment. At minimum, the administration should tap Cornell’s endowment to pay for half of the $60M they propose to take from employees AND they should repay the $30M taken from employees just as they will pay back the endowment.”
Thank you – My thoughts exactly. “Nurture your employees like you nurture the endowment” – at minimum use endowment to pay for half the proposed cut from salaries and what is taken should be a loan. I couldn’t agree more.
A concern I would raise stems from our knowledge that the endowment is Cornell’s primary resource for funding diversity initiatives. Looking at BLM and other societal priorities, I’m troubled to be asked to support a resolution that basically says “faculty salaries take priority over everything.” In fact Cornell is cutting extensively in many areas, but by reducing our endowment, we would essentially be undercutting the other priorities that President Pollack and Provost Kotlikoff mentioned — which include using the endowment to invest in building a more diverse faculty, and ensuring equal access to Cornell for students who may be from families of very modest means.
No one has said that diverse faculty will be exempted from the salary freezes/cuts, so the “promotion of diversity faculty” argument to protect the endowment falls on its face. In fact, this fast move to use faculty as first line of defense will not only scare people away from Cornell in the future, but cause even more diversity faculty to leave, when they can. What needs to happen for the endowment to be used for the benefit of Cornell?
Comment by Risa Lieberwitz, ILR, Faculty Senator
I agree that the university should draw upon its endowment in all variants of its plan to address the projected deficit. I also think that the University should include the option of the use of debt in all variants of its plan to address the projected deficit. Drawing upon the endowment and the use of debt should be viewed as viable options to avoid taking actions that have a negative impact on salaries and employment of the staff and the faculty.
The problem with this resolution is that the central administration has not been fully forthcoming with respect to either the University’s financial situation or their plans regarding the endowment. For example, we have, as I understand it, no information with respect to Cornell Tech which must be experiencing a significant deficit. I think faculty would be very interested in knowing whether or not their money is going toward financing that deficit and/or whether the University is dipping into the endowment in order to bail out the New York City operations.
Richard Bensel rfb2