Q&A WITH DONALD TUZIN,
UCSD ACADEMIC SENATE CHAIR

The University of California is ruled by “shared governance” of three branches: the Board of Regents, the Administration, and the Academic Senate. In this interview, Donald Tuzin, a professor of anthropology in the Division of Social Sciences and the 2004-2005 Chair of the Senate’s UCSD Division, discusses his year at the helm of the UCSD Senate, looks ahead to future front-burner University issues, and offers a scholarly opinion about the unique nature of the academic species.

••• Q. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced as Senate Chair this past year?

Tuzin: During 2003-04, the big issue was the budget, and it absorbed an enormous amount of time. This past year, thanks to the Governor’s budget compact with the University, this has been much less of a preoccupation. Our budget problems are by no means solved, but the compact, insofar as it’s honored, and it seems that it is, takes a lot of the fiscal pressure off. I don’t think anyone is happy with the current level of funding, but at least the situation is stable.

One of the big challenges I faced last fall was working with a new Senate Director, who is the chief of staff and really drives the engine of all Senate operations. The previous director, Judy Morales, was very respected, and I was worried about the chair and the director both being new on the job; would we be the blind leading the blind? Fortunately, Diane Hamann took the job and has been extremely effective. Throughout the Senate’s history, we have had really top-notch people running the place. So Diane and I may have helped each other to see better.

A challenging system-wide issue was the so-called “strings” issue. A year ago, the Academic Council endorsed a resolution by the system-wide Committee on Research to uphold the principle of academic freedom against efforts by certain external funding agencies to set conditions on research funding. This crystallized around tobacco industry funding of University research that has resulted in certain anomalies. Let’s say you apply for a research grant from the anti-tobacco Legacy Foundation, and the foundation says that, in order to accept its grant, no other researcher at your institution can accept a grant from the tobacco industry. Because this clearly would infringe on the academic freedom of others, the University has not allowed academic units to prohibit its faculty from accepting tobacco industry money. That refusal has agitated certain medical researchers at UCSD and UCSF. The Academic Council has spent quite a lot of time trying to get this right. Ultimately, the Regents own the University, and they alone have the right to refuse grants and to say that academic freedom is not applicable in certain cases. Before the Regents weigh such decisions, the Senate has the responsibility to provide them with the best deliberative process that we can.

Finally, there was the issue of University House, which was a public relations challenge and a fiscal challenge. And it was a personal challenge for me because I have great support for our new chancellor. As an unfunded mandate, the University requires the campus to provide the chancellor with an official residence, and she is required to live there. Asking her to perform important community relations services without an official residence is unfair to her.

••• Q. Do you take special pride in any specific achievement under your leadership, and were there any goals you set that you didn’t reach?

Tuzin: I will take pride in having helped introduce the new chancellor to the tradition of shared governance, which was a very important goal for me. She had never been part of such a system. The University of California invented shared governance in the 1920s. I felt it was important to demonstrate to her that the synergism of this relationship can be exciting and can enable us to do great things. Shared governance is not adversarial. It is a strong and precious tradition of mutual helpfulness and collaboration. Thanks to her patience and graciousness and willingness to come more than halfway, the transition has worked quite well. She is very consultative and has been available to me at all times.

Also this year, the Academic Council has responded well to my call that the University examine its relationship with our main accrediting agency, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. In 2004, UCSD entered into a new accreditation cycle, which may not be concluded until 2009. The process is extremely costly, and it is not entirely clear what the University gains from it; our sister campuses are in the same situation. The Council’s work on this topic developed in interesting and rather surprising ways. We found that this is part of a much larger issue of academic accountability in the United States. We have a potential new and powerful alliance with accrediting agencies vis a vis other challenges to higher education in America. For example, for-profit institutions are able to make sizable political donations and are enjoying unprecedented influence in Congressional committees.

The University of California should be paying attention to this trend, for it will affect our future and that of higher education as we know it.

I have also initiated a Senate study of campus citizenship among faculty. We have traditionally had three criteria for evaluating and rewarding faculty performance: research, teaching, and service. It’s become increasingly clear that faculty participation in service is in need of rejuvenation. Unlike criteria for research and teaching, criteria for service have never been comprehensively reviewed. What counts as service? How do we track it? A work group will soon be looking into the culture of faculty service at the University, and the future of shared governance is at stake. We take a perverse pride in shielding junior faculty from service responsibilities, and I think that’s a disservice both to them and to the University. While many service activities take place within departments or within professions, the Senate uniquely encourages faculty to establish campus relationships outside their departments. Such rootedness could perhaps help us to retain these colleagues when, in later years, their careers begin to take off.

One unreached goal, and I think this is the dream of every incoming chair, is to have the Senate do more to initiate its own issues rather than merely responding to issues. We are too reactive; we spend too much time on routine matters and too little time developing new ideas and perspectives. I guess it’s the nature of the beast.

••• Q. What are some front-burner issues facing the Senate in the coming academic year?

Tuzin: The integrity of scholarship issue, which was addressed two years ago with a new policy on student cheating, has just been reviewed. Faculty who have been involved in dealing with dishonesty in the classroom have been unhappy with the way the policy has been implemented, and the findings and recommendations of the recent review will be a topic of discussion between the Senate and Administration during the coming year. More generally, cell phones and the Internet have made this problem very severe at this and other universities, and we will all have to come to terms with it in some fashion. This has prompted a lot of soul-searching about the culture of the Academy and of the wider society. We don’t just want to punish cheaters; we want to create an environment in which cheating eventually becomes unthinkable.

Athletic scholarships and the future of intercollegiate athletics at UCSD are currently under review by the Senate. We also are trying to restore health to the Senate’s research funding functions. Each year, the Senate gets a quantity of money from the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs to disperse among faculty as intramural research grants. That money might pay for travel to scholarly conferences, for example, or provide bridge support to faculty whose research grants have run out and who need help in gearing up for the next round of grants. Like the rest of the campus, the Senate has endured multiple years of budget cuts, and the research support program has borne the brunt of those cuts. It’s becoming painful as federal and state funding agencies are cutting back on their own expenditures. Faculty are under a lot of stress.

The problem of salary compression is a great concern both locally and at the system-wide level. As we lose experienced faculty, administrators, and staff due to natural attrition, we are replacing them at a great premium. Even entry-level people are being hired at higher salaries than faculty and staff who have been in those units for a long time. This has become a nationwide problem as universities compete with one another and with the private sector. Another front-burner issue is the march toward de facto privatization. This is happening across the entire spectrum of University operations. Only 14% of our budget is money originating from the state. How low does it have to go before we are no longer “public”? Increasingly, regular faculty positions are being funded, in part, from non-state sources, while the state legislature continues to back away from its traditional commitment to the University of California. The more we make do without state support, the more Sacramento will reduce that support. Public universities are moving toward becoming private universities, and this is happening wherever you look. It’s a trend that needs our attention.

••• Q. Is it getting harder or easier to recruit faculty for Senate service?

Tuzin: Harder, because faculty increasingly see themselves as terribly pressured and without time to accept Senate responsibilities. People have to work harder to get federal research funding or face closing down their labs and laying off experienced research staff. And teaching loads have increased as the student-faculty ratio has deteriorated in response to state budget cuts. At the same time, staff are becoming demoralized after years of frozen salaries and no cost-of-living adjustments plus having to shoulder larger workloads. Many Senate members were hired when the campus was young and in the process of creating itself. Newer faculty don’t always have that same sense of enthusiasm, and they don’t realize that Senate involvement can be an important, rewarding element in their academic career.

••• Q. As a social anthropologist, what has your experience as Senate Chair taught you about the academic species?

Tuzin: It has taught me that, even with all our follies, ideals are expressed here and live here as they do nowhere else in society, and that’s the glory of the University environment. I have decided that academics are the noblest of all species in the genus Homo. Only universities and only academics have as their mission to sustain and foster ideals concerning both the discovery and propagation of knowledge. So many other institutions in society have lost credibility: politics, law, religion, business – all have suffered in recent decades. I think universities are in many ways the last great hope of society. They are not ivory towers, but they are cultural oases of a special and important kind. I am inspired when I see my colleagues applying, expressing, and living their ideals as part of the academic routine. I happen to believe that UCSD is the greatest campus of the greatest University in the world. That may sound hyperbolic, but I think the claim is defensible. Participation in the Senate gives you a unique vantage; if you think this University is good, Senate service makes you realize that it is even better than you think. The Senate has “the authority to advise” the Administration. Think about what that means. Administrators may decide not take our advice, but they can’t dismiss it, and they have to account to us for their decisions. As both sides engage in rational discourse, faculty teach administrators to think like faculty, and administrators teach faculty to think like administrators. That’s the real genius of shared governance.