Summary: MLA Statement on Administrative Overreach, Shared Governance, and Faculty Rights in the Time of COVID-19
March 2021
- Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant financial crisis across higher education, college and university administrations have resorted to unilateral decisions, often made quickly, in the name of institutional stability. Some of these actions are justified, such as a shift to remote teaching on the grounds of public health.
- Other similarly made decisions, such as the suspension and elimination of departments, programs, majors, and minors—as well as the termination of faculty members across all types and ranks—are clearly cases of administrative overreach.
- The MLA urges all institutions of higher education to adhere to norms of shared governance and to resume traditional and vital mechanisms of faculty participation in a broad array of decisions and actions, including those affecting
- the further or permanent shift to remote and hybrid instruction
- the further or permanent shift to increased instruction by per-course faculty members
- increased teaching loads, course enrollments, and advising responsibilities
- The MLA also strongly encourages institutions to recommit to supporting faculty rights and responsibilities that have become obscured during the pandemic, such as
- intellectual property rights for online courses and materials
- the right to make decisions addressing the pressing needs of their students that have been exacerbated by the pandemic
- primary responsibility for evaluating programs and procedures introduced for hybrid and remote learning
- primary responsibility for proposed systems for evaluating faculty members in relation to hybrid and online education, particularly regarding reappointment, promotion, and tenure
- At a time when an informed and critical citizenry is especially important, preliminary indications are that humanities departments, programs, and faculty members have been especially targeted for cost cutting.
- We must acknowledge the importance of the university in protecting the long-term best interests of higher education, especially of the humanities as a core component of an engaged and thoughtful public.
- Every institution should review the decisions and changes that were made during the COVID-19 pandemic and the systems that will be in place as we go forward.