The public sees the University of Washington as the home for an elite faculty. They, the public, expect us to hold forth in our areas of expertise. In effect we are paid to use the UW brand to promote our ideas. The tricky questions is how doe s0one define expertise?
That question has came up in another state, North Carolina, where a UNC Professor lost his rights to use the UNC network, including his own email, to promote his ideas about government and about animal rights.
When does the concept of “Professor” get out of bounds? Am I out of bounds when I speak at a townhall or when I identify myself as a UW Prof when I run this website? How about Cliff Mass? Cliff is a Professor of Climatology. Cliff has strong opinions about how we educate kids in K-12 and has expressed these on KUOW where he has been a popular character (one might even say a “teacher”). Should Cliff’s identity as a UW Prof. be hidden when he criticizes the Seattle Schools? Should the UW have supported Cliff when KUOW dropped him for commenting outside his official area of expertise? Should the uW have protected Professor Mass’s right to muse a campus resource? Another bad example may be Amy Hagopian. Professor Hagopian has used both her title and UW facilities to promote issues as divers as ending the war in Iraq and housing the homeless in a tent city on campus.
Our Faculty Code clearly describes the obligations of UW Professors as being much more than teaching UW students. Look at last years’ contretemps about Provost Wise’s membership on the Nike board! She justified this because, according to Dr. Wise, her expertise as a University Professor and as a Provost c9ould help NIKE make decisions in the public good. If this was (and is) part of HER job, then doesn’t the same obligation to exercise frees peech apply to all faculty?
The issue at UNC went several steps further. Elliot Cramer, an emeritus professor of psychology, lost all access to UNC electronic resources Karen Moon, a spokeswoman for the university, says “We acknowledge that employees may have some limited personal use of the network,. But Dr. Cramer had been retired for 15 years, and his use of the network was exclusively personal.… We chose to revoke that privilege because Dr. Cramer was drawing multiple university employees into his personal dispute.” read more at Inside Higher Education:
I thought the role of a UW professor was to educate. That is what you do best. You have been trained, coddled, and worked educating. To stop educating is a non-sequitor. If you stop eating you die same for educating.
As for the Provost if being on the NIKE board is her JOB, representing UW interests, then she shouldn’t be getting paid by NIKE. Furthermore, NIKE pays UW to advertise on UW atheletes. Thus if the Provost is being paid by NIKE it is a clear conflict of interest. Saying this beaurocracies tend to be moved when it suits the organization and power structure.
Thus Dr. Mass tipped the apple cart which inevitable indicated the hipocracy of UW and their policies.
North Carolina is N. Carolina perhaps this email incident is a window to UNC working environment. I worked for City of Seattle when I retired they cut off my email. That’s policy. I don’t know UW email policy but UNC allowed him to enjoy his email account for 15 years, maybe they were slow to enforce policy.