Iowa
Academe
Spring 2000
St. Ambrose AAUP to host spring meeting of the Iowa Conference
PROGRAM, Spring Meeting of the Iowa Conference AAUP, April 15, 2000
From the President, Warren Zemke
Scholar freed by Chinese government
St. Ambrose AAUP to host spring meeting of the Iowa Conference
Davenport will be the site of the spring conference meeting on Saturday, April 15, thanks to the efforts of the St. Ambrose University chapter of the AAUP.
The keynote address will be delivered by longtime Iowa AAUP activist Edward Kottick. Kottick will talk about ways that faculty can most effectively promote professional standards while avoiding crippling conflict with administrations.
Kottick’s address will be followed by a panel discussion featuring faculty leaders from local colleges and universities.
Kottick, a professor emeritus of music at the University of Iowa, has had a distinguished career of service to the profession and to higher education in Iowa.
Kottick, who retired from the university in 1992, served for many years on both the University of Iowa Committee A and the Iowa Conference Committee A, and chaired both committees. Committee A members assist faculty whose basic academic rights have been violated, typically in the tenure and promotion process.
Kottick was also President of the University of Iowa chapter of the AAUP and a member of its executive committee. Over the years, he has been a staunch advocate for a strong Iowa Conference.
In 1992, the conference named him the first recipient of the Edward S. Allen Award for Service to Iowa Higher Education.
In 1998, the University of Iowa awarded Kottick its prestigious Michael J. Brody Award for Faculty Excellence in Service.
Spring Meeting of the Iowa Conference AAUP
April 15, 2000
St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa
9:00 Registration (free of charge) in McMullen Hall ( coffee and
pastries)
9:30 Keynote Address: "Ways or Means to Avoid Conflict between Administration and Faculty"
Edward Kottick, Professor Emeritus, University of Iowa
10:30 Panel Discussion
John Bryne (St Ambrose)
Phil Johnson (Blackhawk College)
Janet Luton (Marycrest)
Art Pitts (Blackhawk College)
Keetjie Ramo (St. Ambrose)
Vicki Sommer (Augustana)
John Strazewski (Palmer College)
12:00 Lunch available in Cosgrove Hall
1:00 Business Meeting
•President's Report
•Treasurer's Report
•Elections
Faculty at private schools may obtain summaries of their institution’s IRS 990 forms from an organization called Guidestar, which has created a database of all registered not-for-profit organizations on the Web (http://www.guidestar.org).
For many of these organizations, information from the two most recent IRS 990 forms filed by the institution is posted. However, it is only the summary information of assets and liabilities. In some cases, the reports omit important categories of one or both (for example, quasi-endowment funds).
Not included are important and useful details such as the five highest salaries paid to employees of the institution, compensation of officers, and names and addresses of governing board members.
Changes over the two years are easily calculated from the data by simple subtraction. The data can be copied into a spreadsheet, such as Excel, and percentage changes, etc., calculated (with some moving around of data).
So for available data, one can do a “quick and dirty” financial analysis for chapters, with the expectation that the chapter will follow up and obtain the complete 990’s from its institution.
Federal law requires those institutions filing IRS 990 forms (which is all private and some public sector colleges and universities) to make copies of those forms for the most recent three years of filing available for inspection and copying at a reasonable fee during normal business hours. They are usually available from the office of the vice president for finance or business or some similar office.
However, if chapter officers would rather not approach the institution directly, you can obtain the 990 information by filling out form 4506a, which is available at <http://ftp.fedworld.gov/pub/irspdf/f4506.pdf>. You will need Adobe Reader to access the form, which you can download for free.
It will help in filling out the form if you have the institution’s taxpayer ID number, which can be found as item 3 on a W2 wage and tax statement, or can be obtained at the Guidestar site.
Users may also find the information filed by ancillary organizations, such as university and college foundations and alumni funds, useful and interesting.
If you desire further information about the IRS 990 form, including how to interpret and use the data, please contact Steve Finner in the AAUP’s national office: 1-800-424-2973, extention 3008 or <finner@aaup.org>.
From the President, Warren Zemke
Welcome to the new millennium! Looking about the state of Iowa, Y2K turned out to be neither apocalyptic nor disastrous. Things seem to be muddling along in much the same as usual, although too often on a bumpy road.
At the University of Dubuque, the May 13, 2000, termination-of- appointment date for some faculty continues to close inexorably. Two faculty colleagues are involved in legal proceedings about actions taken against them, but things are moving slowly. In early February, the debate between Iowa State faculty and their president made the Des Moines Register. In late February, the president of the Iowa Board of Regents received a petition expressing concern about the ISU president’s administration. Issues of concern were the importance of undergraduate education (i.e., teaching versus research) and the quality of administrative communication with the faculty. (For more details, see the Iowa Conference Web page: <http://www.public.iastate.edu/ ~aaup>.)
At Palmer, the AAUP chapter was reconstituted after some administrative misbehavior. This pattern seems to be occurring repeatedly around the state.
In January at Wartburg, there was some talk about the imposition of a student speech code (the AAUP has taken a stand against such codes). But then in February, AAUP associate counsel Donna Euben presented a workshop on legal issues for department chairs, at the initiative of our new dean of faculty.
Perhaps, as the old saying goes, “all politics is local.” But sometimes it is important to alert our colleagues around the state about what is taking place elsewhere. That is much of the purpose of this newsletter.
Moving from chapter to conference news, I am happy to announce that the Iowa Conference received a per capita grant of $780 from the Assembly of State Conferences for the year 2000. We must be doing something right, and we are grateful to the ASC for its support.
At the national level, by the time this newsletter reaches you the AAUP elections will be history. However, it is time to begin to plan for the national meeting, June 8-11, in Washington, D. C. Anyone interested in attending should make his/her intention known. At the spring Iowa Conference meeting we will be selecting conference delegates to the national meeting. In the past, the Conference provided $500 to each delegate, up to a maximum of two delegates. With the per capita grant, I think it very likely that comparable support will be available this year.
The national meeting will be a “joint” conference, co-sponsored by the AAUP and The Newspaper Guild/CWA. Its theme is “Intellectual Workers and Essential Freedoms: Journalists and Acade-mics in the Twenty-first Century.” Keynote speakers include Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard paleontologist and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Nadine Strossen, New York Law School professor and president of the ACLU. See the January-February 2000 issue of Academe, pages 39-42, for more information.
Finally, please take note of the forthcoming Iowa Conference spring meeting at St. Ambrose University on April 15. The St. Ambrose chapter has grown significantly in the last two years and shows increasing strength. They last hosted in the spring of 1998, and we are pleased that they have agreed to host again this year. I hope many of you will take advantage of this opportunity to recharge your AAUP batteries.
Scholar freed by Chinese government
The Chinese government released Dickinson College librarian Yongyi Song on January 28 after five months of detention. Chinese authorities had arrested Song in August and later charged him with “the purchase and illegal provision of intelligence to foreign people” for collecting published documents relating to China’s Cultural Revolution.
Because of the academic freedom implications of Song’s case, in September the AAUP joined Dickinson officials and others in working to obtain Song’s release through both formal and informal diplomatic channels. AAUP staff wrote and called U.S. and Chinese officials, members of Congress, and representatives of various international organizations.
Finally, the AAUP turned to its members for help, asking them to write the Chinese government and its ambassadors and directing them to the on-line petition at the Dickinson College Web site.