Via the National Project to Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking in Academe:
Dangerous candidate for President of University of
Colorado:
Why should all faculty, students and staff be worried
about the near certainty that Bruce Benson will be
anointed the next President of the University of
Colorado? Why should all faculty, students and staff
mobilize to defeat his candidacy? Because he will
transform CU into the WalMart of higher education.
Because Bruce Benson is the wrong candidate, now, and
forever. Because CU can do much, much better.
Read the information below. Check out its accuracy if
you wish. Decide what you think. Then Please:
• Send this email to every CU faculty and staff member
or CU you know.
• Email or call the Regents.
• Email or call your state representatives.
• Email or call David Skaggs, the Colorado
Commissioner of Higher Education. David Skaggs, the
Colorado Commissioner of Higher Education.
• Email or call Governor Ritter.
ACT IMMEDIATELY.
THE REGENTS ARE SCHEDULED TO VOTE ON WEDNESDAY,
FEBRUARY 13TH, THE SAME DAY THAT BENSON WILL BE
VISITING THE CU-BOULDER CAMPUS. WE CANNOT WAIT TO
HEAR HIM AGAIN. ACTING THEN WILL BE TOO LATE.
1. BENSON HAS BEEN A MEMBER OF ACTA, AN ORGANIZATION
ON RECORD IN OPPOSITION TO SHARED GOVERNANCE AND
FACULTY RIGHTS. Bruce Benson is a member of ACTA’s
Trustee’s Council; he served as an ACTA (American
College Trustees and Alumni) Trustee at Smith College.
ACTA (Check out
http://www.goacta.org/about_acta/advisory.html) wants
to create more “flexible” and “responsive”
administrative structures by reducing the status (and
even eliminate the requirement of a PhD) of top
academic officers such as Deans, Department heads, and
even, perhaps, Provosts. This already has happened at
CU-Boulder; the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Diversity,
a post previously held by two tenured faculty members,
was filled by a non-academic without faculty rank. The
job description only required a BA degree. This
“flattened” hierarchical structure already is being
implemented Adams State and CSU, and it destroys the
link between faculty and their academic leaders. No
credible academic would take such a position without
such protection. It’s more or less how WalMart
operates. CU could be next.
2. BENSON HAS VIOLATED THE CONTRACTUAL RIGHTS OF
TENURED FACULTY. Upon his installation as President of
Metropolitan State University’s Board of Trustees, he
had the Faculty Handbook completely re-written without
discussion or consultation with the faculty. (The
person rumored to have done the job had previously
re-written the management guide for Quizno’s). In the
new Faculty Handbook, the RIF (Reduction in Force)
policy was changed so that in case of a financial
shortfall (not exigency), rank or tenure no longer
need be considered in decisions about elimination of
teaching positions. He then fired tenured faculty.
Metro faculty sued, and the case still is in the
courts. What would Benson do to further weaken
faculty rights and due process at CU?
3. BENSON COULD FURTHER DESTROY DUE PROCESS FOR
FACULTY AND STAFF: Already seriously under attack,
due process for faculty at CU has only a tenuous and
unenforceable toehold in the Faculty Handbook. That
Handbook is only “advisory” to the administration,
which does not have to abide by its policies. Benson
already has re-written at least one Faculty Handbook.
Hank Brown’s administration made major changes in it
as well—all to the detriment of faculty rights. What
steps would a President Benson take at CU?
4. BENSON HAS NO VISION. Benson’s ideas about CU’s
mission are more appropriate for a public school
system, a vocational school or a community college. It
isn’t just that Benson has only a BA degree, a lack of
qualifications entirely rare among University
Presidents. It’s that he has no intellectual or
scholarly appreciation for what scientists and
scholars do and the conditions needed for them to do
their work effectively.
5. BENSON DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CU’S
MOST IMPORTANT RESEARCH INITIATIVES. Benson is either
woefully unaware or refuses to acknowledge the impact
of the carbon cycle on Earth’s living systems. It was
embarrassing to hear Benson cite the National
Geographic and the local newspapers as authoritative
sources on climate change, and express skepticism
about the human role (now indisputable among
environmental sciences from all disciplines) in global
warming. How can he lead an institution that is
striving to be climate neutral when, at both the
student and faculty meetings, he claimed that humans
and plants emit CO2 into the atmosphere too? Does he
really think that, when it comes to carbon, humans and
plants are no different than cars and power plants?
How can he preside credibly over CU when he doesn’t
appear to believe in scientific initiatives for which
CU faculty shared a Nobel Prize this very year????
6. BENSON HAS NO APPROPRIATE EXPERIENCE. Benson knows
how to run an oil and gas exploration company. Not a
university. He understands corporate culture. He is
utterly uninformed about the culture and complexities
of how to run a Tier One University. His actions at
Metro were strictly corporate: Fire expensive
(full-time and tenured) employees with benefits and
replace them with cheap (part-time and contingent)
employees without benefits. It’s WalMart all over
again. We can expect the same kinds of “cost saving”
actions if he becomes CU President.
7. BENSON’S CLAIM THAT HE WOULD LEAVE ACADEMIC MATTERS
TO THE CAMPUS CHANCELLORS IS NOT COMFORTING. Not given
ACTA’s agenda for reorganizing universities.
Chancellors are appointed by the University President;
nothing would stop Benson from firing the current
administrators and replacing them with people
sympathetic to ACTA’s agenda.
8. BENSON’’S STATEMENTS ABOUT ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN THE
CLASSROOM AND RESEARCH ARE NOT CREDIBLE. When he
says—as he did at we need “sensible” research and
professors who teach “what they are supposed to teach”
in their classes) too closely resembles David
Horowitz’s rhetoric about “balance” in teaching. For
ACTA and Horowitz, those words are simply cover terms
for conservative hegemony.
9. BENSON HAS A RECORD OF DIVISIVE PARTISANSHIP. His
Trailhead Organization spent $200,000 on negative and
false attack campaigning against rancher Wes McKinley,
state representative from SE Colorado and leader of
opposition to the US Military takeover of the Pinon
Canyon area. Despite his promises to abandon
Republican party activity, it’s unlikely that his
modus operandi in dealing with opposition and dissent
will change.
10. BENSON’S RECORD OF SUPPORT FOR WOMEN IS POOR. He
contributed at least $1000 to the defense fund of
Senator Robert Packwood, who was accused—and
convicted—of harassing and assaulting more than 20
women while in office. At meetings on campus, his only
comment was that “everyone is entitled to a defense.”
True enough, but given CU’s egregious record for
protecting sexual harassers in the past, it doesn’t
need another President who covers up and stonewalls
for predators.
11. BENSON DOES NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT SUPPORT AMONG
FACULTY, STUDENTS, STAFF AND THE REGENTS. A firestorm
of protest already has erupted against both the
process by which Benson was chosen, and his candidacy
itself. Three current and one former (Jim Martin)
Regent have openly opposed Benson for President of CU.
The Benson Presidency is being forced upon a
University system that seems dead set against him, and
humiliated not only by the fact that the Regents
didn’t want to support anyone more qualified, but by
being ignored.
Margaret LeCompte, PhD
Professor of Education
Member, Academic Freedom Group
President, CU-Boulder AAUP Chapter
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