Reinstate Dr. Kshama Sawant! Defend Diversity at Seattle Central Community
College. For democratic rights and job security for part-time professors.
Sponsored by the Seattle Committee to Defend Higher Education
Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) has fired a hard-working professor who was an activist in Occupy, teaches classes that provide a critical analysis of conservative economic theory, and was among those instrumental in bringing Occupy to SCCC after police evicted it from Westlake.
Dr. Sawant has had glowing evaluations from her students, and exceptional performance reviews from her departme
nt. But she teaches from the point of view of the overall needs of society, in other words the 99% rather than the 1%. SCCC claims to be committed to diversity in ideas as well as ethnicity and gender balance. Firing Dr. Sawant violates all of these principles.
This also brings to the fore the astonishing lack of rights of part-time college professors. Students probably don’t know that part-time staff can be fired and removed for any reason or no reason, without any right to defend themselves. Since the vast majority of teachers at SCCC are now part-time, this leads teachers to tailor their lesson plans to what they perceive will be acceptable to the SCCC bureaucracy. Clearly, this reduces the diversity of ideas at SCCC and in this case represents an attack on ideas considered hostile to the 1%.
In addition to her activism in the Occupy movement, Dr. Sawant was a vocal opponent of the attacks on free speech by the SCCC administration that were challenged at several public forums at the end of the 2012 academic year. She has also been active in her union in calling for an end to higher education budget cuts and tuition increases. The underfunding of higher education has led to an increasing proportion of faculty being forced into grossly underpaid and insecure part-time positions. The SCCC administration has sought to force through their agenda of cuts by attempting to force full-time and part-time faculty to compete with each other to protect their livelihoods. We argue that we must completely reject this divide-and-rule strategy and defend the rights of all faculty, as well as students, against these brutal attacks on higher education.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dr. Sawant was fired in retaliation for her activist role at SCCC or for her challenge to right-wing economic views in the classroom. Discrimination on the basis of political views is illegal in the city of Seattle as well as ethically indefensible. The SCCC bureaucracy seeks to protect itself by denying the political basis of the firing, while providing no alternate, plausible explanation why Dr. Sawant was not retained in her position, given her exceptional student evaluations and performance.
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Sawant was upbraided by the college administration for not using a textbook that was favored by the head of her department. This text was written by N. Gregory Mankiw, a controversial ultra-conservative economist who served as the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and is now a member of Mitt Romney's 2012 election campaign. On November 2, 2011, about 70 students walked out of Mankiw's Economics 10 class at Harvard. They handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part that it “espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today ... it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand”.
Forcing a professor to use a particular textbook is a blatant violation of any reasonable idea of academic freedom in higher education. Dr. Sawant was trying to defend her students from this defective, narrow-minded perspective. Conservative economics professors hold that their pro-corporate viewpoint is the only way an economics class can be legitimately taught, while in reality their approach serves as an uncritical defense of the disastrous economic policies that helped create the current economic crisis and that perpetuate inequality and poverty.
Instead of valuing academic diversity, the administration fired Dr. Sawant, and the students she should have been teaching this fall will now be exposed only to this "one heavily skewed perspective".
Occupy has demonstrated the growing anger at the top-down economic model taught by those who support Mankiw's textbook. The non-renewal of a part-time professor who had the courage to help bring Occupy to campus is a chilling precedent which threatens all academic freedom – the freedom to think for oneself – and cannot be allowed to stand. It is a threat to the diversity that students and the community expect at our community colleges.
This action by the administration is one of the latest in a series of attacks on the campus community, such as the ending of the drama, journalism, interpreter training, and film and video programs, the closure of the daycare center, the shutting down of the City Collegian newspaper, and the elimination of elections for student government.
DEMANDS
Immediate reinstatement of Dr. Sawant in the Winter 2013 quarter, including back pay for loss of earnings in Fall 2012 quarter.
Retain the two new part-time professors hired this Fall to teach economics courses. Take action against excessive moonlighting, which reduces diversity and quality of education at SCCC.
Increased job security for part-time teachers. An end to arbitrary firings, and for a legitimate appeal process.
Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) has fired a hard-working professor who was an activist in Occupy, teaches classes that provide a critical analysis of conservative economic theory, and was among those instrumental in bringing Occupy to SCCC after police evicted it from Westlake.
Dr. Sawant has had glowing evaluations from her students, and exceptional performance reviews from her departme
nt. But she teaches from the point of view of the overall needs of society, in other words the 99% rather than the 1%. SCCC claims to be committed to diversity in ideas as well as ethnicity and gender balance. Firing Dr. Sawant violates all of these principles.
This also brings to the fore the astonishing lack of rights of part-time college professors. Students probably don’t know that part-time staff can be fired and removed for any reason or no reason, without any right to defend themselves. Since the vast majority of teachers at SCCC are now part-time, this leads teachers to tailor their lesson plans to what they perceive will be acceptable to the SCCC bureaucracy. Clearly, this reduces the diversity of ideas at SCCC and in this case represents an attack on ideas considered hostile to the 1%.
In addition to her activism in the Occupy movement, Dr. Sawant was a vocal opponent of the attacks on free speech by the SCCC administration that were challenged at several public forums at the end of the 2012 academic year. She has also been active in her union in calling for an end to higher education budget cuts and tuition increases. The underfunding of higher education has led to an increasing proportion of faculty being forced into grossly underpaid and insecure part-time positions. The SCCC administration has sought to force through their agenda of cuts by attempting to force full-time and part-time faculty to compete with each other to protect their livelihoods. We argue that we must completely reject this divide-and-rule strategy and defend the rights of all faculty, as well as students, against these brutal attacks on higher education.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dr. Sawant was fired in retaliation for her activist role at SCCC or for her challenge to right-wing economic views in the classroom. Discrimination on the basis of political views is illegal in the city of Seattle as well as ethically indefensible. The SCCC bureaucracy seeks to protect itself by denying the political basis of the firing, while providing no alternate, plausible explanation why Dr. Sawant was not retained in her position, given her exceptional student evaluations and performance.
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Sawant was upbraided by the college administration for not using a textbook that was favored by the head of her department. This text was written by N. Gregory Mankiw, a controversial ultra-conservative economist who served as the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and is now a member of Mitt Romney's 2012 election campaign. On November 2, 2011, about 70 students walked out of Mankiw's Economics 10 class at Harvard. They handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part that it “espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today ... it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand”.
Forcing a professor to use a particular textbook is a blatant violation of any reasonable idea of academic freedom in higher education. Dr. Sawant was trying to defend her students from this defective, narrow-minded perspective. Conservative economics professors hold that their pro-corporate viewpoint is the only way an economics class can be legitimately taught, while in reality their approach serves as an uncritical defense of the disastrous economic policies that helped create the current economic crisis and that perpetuate inequality and poverty.
Instead of valuing academic diversity, the administration fired Dr. Sawant, and the students she should have been teaching this fall will now be exposed only to this "one heavily skewed perspective".
Occupy has demonstrated the growing anger at the top-down economic model taught by those who support Mankiw's textbook. The non-renewal of a part-time professor who had the courage to help bring Occupy to campus is a chilling precedent which threatens all academic freedom – the freedom to think for oneself – and cannot be allowed to stand. It is a threat to the diversity that students and the community expect at our community colleges.
This action by the administration is one of the latest in a series of attacks on the campus community, such as the ending of the drama, journalism, interpreter training, and film and video programs, the closure of the daycare center, the shutting down of the City Collegian newspaper, and the elimination of elections for student government.
DEMANDS
Immediate reinstatement of Dr. Sawant in the Winter 2013 quarter, including back pay for loss of earnings in Fall 2012 quarter.
Retain the two new part-time professors hired this Fall to teach economics courses. Take action against excessive moonlighting, which reduces diversity and quality of education at SCCC.
Increased job security for part-time teachers. An end to arbitrary firings, and for a legitimate appeal process.
