"...moving this discussion from the venue of personal email message to one of wide open public discussion..."
Next email »From Mary Layoun
Date 5/11/2006 10:29:55 PM
To Gary Sandefur
Subject: Re: Comparative Literature
Dear Gary,
Thank you for your email of May 8, 2006. I respectfully decline to voluntarily close down the Department of Comparative Literature. As I mentioned in an earlier email (5/5/06), I have a counter proposal, outlined below.
In addition, as specified below, I request that you provide an account of the Academic Planning Council's procedures for judging the Department of Comparative Literature to be a low priority for the College. My request is based on our firm commitment to the principles of due process, shared governance, and fairness in the apportionment of resources in the College.
For the full record, I will soon submit documentation concerning the College's handling of this as concerns the Department of Comparative Literature. At present I draw your attention to the May 7, 2003 Ad-Hoc Review Committee's Report on the Department of Comparative Literature. That Report includes the following recommendations:
L&S administration should authorize the hiring of 1 senior faculty member of outstanding quality, capable and willing of assuming the position of department chair, effective no later than fall 2005. . . . When budget permits, CL should be allowed to hire 1 junior faculty (p. 8, emphasis in the original). There is no record to indicate that Dean Certain ever submitted the Ad-Hoc Review Committee's Report to the APC for due deliberation. Further, at no time were we in the Department of Comparative Literature consulted or invited to discuss with the APC the momentous judgement which you now state they made. Indeed, the APC minutes for the year, filed with the L&S Faculty Senate, note nothing about the Department of Comparative Literature. Are we to surmise that you have a document – minutes, a statement, a memorandum – which has not been disclosed? I request your written response to the following: (1) What was the specific occasion of the 2003-04 APC's judgement and advice? (2) What was the basis for the current (2005-06) APC's advice to you? I request complete documentation of the APC procedures.
I believe you are aware that Professor Hans Adler served on the Ad-Hoc Review Committee as a representative of the Graduate Faculty Executive Committee. Yet he was never asked to present the findings and recommendations of the Ad-Hoc Review Committee to the body of which he was a representative. Do you have knowledge of whether the Report was discussed by the Graduate Faculty Executive Committee? If so, do you have knowledge of who presented the findings and recommendations?
I submit here comparative data, drawn from recent campus "Department Planning Profiles" circulated by the Office of the Provost. I have noted several indicators of academic performance on campus, averaged the data for small humanities departments in L&S and compared those figures with the figures for the Department of Comparative Literature. I believe the data deserves careful consideration as concerns the foregoing and my counter proposal below. (Indeed, at this point, an internal audit might be of benefit to all concerned when important decisions are made.)
In all honesty, I find it difficult to accept as fact the assertion that the College lacks the truly modest resources to – in your parlance – rebuild the Department; it seems more likely that it lacks the resolve. Another way of putting this is to say that the will to dissolve the department seems to have nothing to do with the stated assertions provided thus far.
We, on the other hand, have the will to continue to improve the department and to serve our students and the broader campus, the community, and the state, despite recent setbacks such as the Keith Cohen episode. We request the College's good will and support to do so.
Finally, we think the department will only benefit toward realization of our goal by moving this discussion from the venue of personal email message to one of wide open public discussion.
A Counter Proposal for the Department of Comparative Literature
A Three Year Plan
Presented in person to the L&S Administration, the Chancellor, the Provost and the Dean of the Graduate School
May - June, 2006; notations added August, 2006
Year I:
For AY of 2006-07, we propose two replacement searches at the Assistant
Professor rank in the following areas of critical departmental need:
- a comparatist working on contemporary world literatures and problems of globalization, with a preference for expertise in Asian languages and literatures;
- a comparatist working on race and ethnicity from the ancient world to the mid-medieval periods, languages open.
For AY 2006 - 07, because of the termination (April, 2006) of a former C.L. faculty member, a faculty salary of $72,856 would be at the disposal of the College.
We will offer participation in Executive Governance to our two on-campus affiliates and to our international affiliate. [They have all three accepted as of June, 2006.] And, given some demonstration of good will and support on the part of the College, augmentation of our Affiliate Faculty from a community of interested scholars on campus will be enhanced. We will vigorously pursue that goal of an augmented Affiliate Faculty.
Year II:
In AY 2007 - 08, assuming two Assistant Professors are hired at $50,000 per position, the College
nets a profit of $24,217 in the second academic year of this plan. ($72,856 + $51,361 = $124,217.)
The first two years of this plan for sustaining the Department of Comparative Literature, costs the College no new funding. It is a re-investment of FTE lines that are already in the Department.
In either Year II or Year III, we request permission to search for a third Assistant Professor.
Year III:
For AY 2008 - 2009, the investment by the College in the Department of Comparative Literature would
be for a third Assistant Professor position that we have been requesting for the past seven years.
(Please see our past requests to search; we also reference the recommendations of the 2003 Review
Committee for support for the Department.)
In Year III, the College invests only $27,000 worth of new funding in the Department of Comparative Literature for a third Assistant Professor position.
Thus over a three year period, the College is asked to invest the modest sum of $27,000 in new funding in the sustaining and improving of the Department of Comparative Literature.
Mary N. Layoun,
Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature
938 Van Hise Hall 1220 Linden Dr.
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Madison WI 53706 - 1525
Phone: 608-262-9767
Fax: 608-262-9723