Guest Column

There must be a great deal of black humor in being black within the racist environment of this institution of higher education called Northern Illinois University. Analogous judgments can be offered for the plight of women on the faculty and for the plight of Latino faculty and students. All the more so when one is both black and a woman, one’s name is Martha Palmer, and one’s condition of employment is terminal.

At this writing I do not know Martha Palmer. Neither do I know many of the central characters cast in this latest dramatic offering of our own local theater of the absurd which NIU routinely becomes when administrators do their things without major and authentic faculty involvement and with little understanding and appreciation of what it is they are administering.

This is the same university, remember, which in recent months has been called, in the distictly undistinguished rhetoric of our administrative/business/corporate complex leadership, “a world class university,” “a cutting edge university,” “a university of distinction,” “a comprehensive university,” “a modern land grant university” and “a meat and potatoes university.” There appears to be a pathetic but headlong search for the latest, faddish, buzz-word labels in the rhetoric of excellence purporting to establish—evidently through the speech act itself—NIU as a premier institution of higher learning.

There are distinguished faculty here, and there are brilliant students here. There are excellent professional support staff members and perhaps even a few fine administrators. But the university we constitute is a university which our leadership consistently fails to acknowledge or to understand and interpret to its larger constituencies. Administratively-generated grade changes some years ago and the mishandling of the fradulent registration/grade-change scandal during the past few months are immediate examples of the administration’s lack of understanding of what a genuine university is and of the place of the faculty member within such a university.

Our leadership’s history of use and abuse of the university CHANCE program is also a case in point. Within the environment of our administration’s understanding, competency and concern for the welfare of faculty and students a “Martha Palmer Affair” was bound to happen sooner or later in the CHANCE program.

I have followed the “Martha Palmer Affair” with increasing interest over the past few months. Last Thursday (Sept. 8) evening, I listened to Ms. Palmer and many students present aspects of her case against administrators in the CHANCE program who recommended that the present semester be her last period of employment in the CHANCE program. The Pow Wow room of Holmes Student Center was completely packed, with many additional students moving in and out of the room, for more than two hours.

Ms. Palmer claims that she is a victim, a victim of sexism and discrimination. She may well be a victim in these ways. During the 20 years I have served on this faculty I have observed countless ways in which persons have been victimized, and over these years little has been accomplished toward stamping out the conditions and circumstances through which persons—and especially women, blacks and hispanics—might well become victims of sexism and discrimination.

Even the possibility that any person might become the victim of sexism and discrimination within a center of free and open inquiry, of teaching, research and public service, constitutes an outrage to the idea of a university. Even the possibility is insultive in the widest and deepest sense to a decent community of dedicated teachers and scholars.

I believe that Ms. Palmer may be the double victim she claims she is. But if so, then she is a sacrificial victim as well, a scapegoat blamed and cast out, a kind of fit of atonement, in the face of the countless problems coming to light with the emerging disarray of the conception, functions and operations of the CHANCE program.

Ms. Palmer is a “whistle blower,” accused of inarticulateness (and countless other things). Perhaps the most telling indictment against her is that greatest of sins which can be committed by a “subordinate,” the sin of disloyalty against administrative self interests. Ms. Palmer has blown the whistle too often for some administrators either to understand or to accept. But, thank God, she keeps on blowing the whistle! When she does it for the greater good of the CHANCE program she also does it for all of us within the university community. But she suffers because she truly believes that promises to students within the CHANCE program should be kept.

That Thursday evening, I listened to point after point in her allegations for more than two hours. I would have listened to any other side as well, but no one stepped forth to present any other point of view. Ms. Palmer’s language is not the language of the administrative/business/corporate complex we have come to expect from our Board of Regents and its leadership and from our own Lowden Hall. But she is right about that language of administration, and she is more than right in using the language of many or our students in resisting the administrative/business/corporate complex reproductionist model of learning and teaching this ABC complex more and more commonly forces upon us all.

The administrative/business/corporate complex leadership is completely out of touch with the core function of this university, the function of any university at its best: faculty and students in the cooperative quest for knowledge and mastery of creative artistry, faculty and students always involved in the cooperative and open transmission of this knowledge and mastery of creative artistry as learners, teachers, researchers and creative artists to any and all persons. “Our” Board of Regents has been out of touch with us for many years. But Lowden Hall apears to be accelerating its movement away from all of us who do the authentic work of a university.

The administrative/business/corporate complex is completely out of touch with what this highly articulate black woman has done for many students both within and beyond the CHANCE program. And she has succeeded, out of the deepest care, love and sense of discipline for her students, while many persons have failed. The least-kept secret of Ms. Palmer’s success is that she truly believes in her work. She truly believes that a CHANCE can work, that it must work, since the stakes are too high for the failure of a CHANCE. Ms. Palmer speaks her mind. Her mind clearly is a very good mind thinking and speaking. No one present had the least difficulty in understanding what this role model’s language meant.

When I returned home that Thursday night I re-read relevant portions of my well-worn copy of Louis Joughin’s (ed) Academic Freedom and Tenure: A Handbook of the American Association of University Professors (1967). I concluded then—and I offer this conclusion now to the Board of Regents and to our adminstrative/business/corporate complex—that Martha Palmer has a prima facie case of the abridgment of her First Amendment right to freedom of speech as a faculty member within this environment of free and open inquiry which some of us can still remember as a university. She also has a very clear academic freedom case.

A freedom of speech and academic freedom case somewhat analogous to the “Martha Palmer Affair” occured at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) in 1961, a much quieter and simpler time than Chicago conditions and circumstances, and Illinois politics, in 1988. That case also revolved around the treatment of students and as untenured faculty member who was punished by the administration for speaking his mind on matters relating to students. In that case, the faculty member was reinstated, tenured and promoted within eight months after investigations by the national office of the AAUP and by committees of the Ohio State Legislature. Moreover, the Board of Trustees was reconstituted, the president resigned, a vice-president and several deans were replaced, and a genuine faculty senate was created, among many additional changes. In short, a very different university came into being within a year’s time.

The “Martha Palmer Affair” presents a clear and chilling message to all CHANCE students, faculty and professional staff. And since it is a message to them it necessarily becomes a message to the several thousand of us who believe that we are not directly involved in the CHANCE program: NIU brings CHANCE students, faculty, and professional support staff into a racist environment, with full knowledge of the very high probability that most of the students will not graduate (as things now stand in the program) and then fires precisely those persons who become out-spoken and extraordinarily successful role models and who are most dedicated to the personal and academic well-being of these very students and to making their CHANCE work.

I ask all of the faculty members on tenure this question: if we do not band together to defend the rights of all of our untenured colleagues to freedom of speech and to academic freedom what is the quality or reality of these rights in this university? The answer, I think, is clear.

The only reasonable administrative actions in the “Martha Palmer Affair” are equally clear: Either produce the “smoking gun” and fully and completely justify teminating Ms. Palmer’s employment at this university for cause, or (1) withdraw her notice of termination and offer her a new, fair and decent contract commensurate with her dedicated and successful service to hundreds of students within and beyond the CHANCE program and (2) initiate a much-needed study of the concept, function and operation—including administrative operation—of the CHANCE program. Ms. Palmer would be an invaluable resource person in such a study. Finally, it might be worthwhile to point out that whereas NIU might not be a “world class institution” or “cutting edge” university the administrative/business/corporate complex surely has a world class and cutting-edge problem on its hands. As that great cultural philosopher, W.C. Fields, said, sometimes “it’s time to take the bull by the tail and face the situation…”

Sherman M. Stanage

Professor Philosophy

“Ms. Palmer has blown the whistle too often for some administrators either to understand or to accept. But, thank God, she keeps on blowing the whistle! When she does it for the greater good of the CHANCE program she also does it for all of us within the university community.”

Sherman M. Stanage, philosophy professor

“I ask all of the faculty members on tenure this question: if we do not band together to defend the rights of all of our untenured colleagues to freedom of speech and to academic freedom what is the quality or reality of these rights in this university?”

Sherman M. Stanage, philosophy professor