Thanks to The Post for your Jan. 30 article on the status of professor Bob Lipset's David and Goliath five-year struggle for justice in his promotion and tenure battle with Ohio University. I also thank the Ohio Civil Rights Commission for their Jan. 12 FINAL ORDER asking for Lipset's full reinstatement as a tenured faculty member in the department with all back pay, etc. This ORDER is a public document obtainable from the OCRC in Columbus (complaint No. 9516).
On Jan. 23, 2001, Lipset was denied tenure and promotion in Ohio University's Russ College of Engineering, Industrial Manufacturing Systems Engineering department.
In cases like this, it is the university and not the individual faculty member who holds most of the power cards in this oftentimes political poker game called tenure and promotion. Chief among these cards is that of stonewalling, outlasting and wearing down (emotionally, physically and financially) the individual who chooses to fight.
I am an IMSE department emeritus professor and Lipset's colleague. I know him to be a principled person who was liked by his students, and a good researcher based on practical industrial as well as theoretical experience and creative insight. Lipset received the Russ College of Engineering's annual Outstanding Research Paper Award shortly before he was denied tenure and a promotion.
As a founding member of our IMSE department, and having taught here for 18 years before taking early retirement in 1985, I know a little about departmental, college and university history - and something about age discrimination here. In 1992, after seven years of OU and the then-Faculty Senate's stonewalling, I filed a charge of age discrimination with the OCRC. My complaint arose out of a departmental-college tenure conflict over another IMSE faculty person. This conflict ultimately entangled the entire class of older recently early-retired faculty.
After losing in the first go-around with the OCRC, as did Lipset in his case, I did a benefit/cost calculation and concluded that I did not have the time, the psyche, physical energy and financial resources to spend another several years seeking to win this battle. I folded my cards and gave up.
The IMSE department has had a history of tenure and promotion turmoil. For example, in 1997 the IMSE department denied tenure and promotion to a young man who was also highly respected and liked by his students, and who was engaged in research focused on local industry and local needs as then President Glidden prominently asked of faculty in his vision for OU.
This colleague also did a benefit/cost calculation and decided that he could not afford to fight. He chose to find a way to feed his wife and children, and left. Last year another younger IMSE faculty member bounced around yo-yo-like between yes
you have tenure and no you do not. I am not sure which bounce he is presently on.
The IMSE department has periodically experienced spasms of being disintegrative and dysfunctional in which long-time chairpersons of the department either resign, or are removed. Toward the end of my early-1990s age discrimination struggle, our then long-time chairperson resigned. The person chosen to replace him over the years became another long-time chairperson who was very recently removed; I am told, at the request of his departmental faculty. In my opinion, the early 1990s resignation of our chairperson had at least some small connection with the incidents that produced my OCRC age discrimination charge.
The recent IMSE chairperson removal, as reported in the Sept. 29 Athens News and I think also in the Athens Messenger and The Post - was in some way related to a financial mess under investigation by OU. How sad, but such is the milieu in which tenure and promotion decisions have been made in the IMSE department. There is hope that they may be getting on top of this problem.
Permit me some caveats. Please do not read the comments in this letter as cynicism for the great ideal of academic freedom and the tenure that goes with it. I have great respect for both of these ideals in a democratic society - even though the process by which they are achieved is sometimes messy and imperfect. Also, do not read this letter as a put-down for OU or my department. I came to OU in 1967 from Ohio State because I liked what I saw happening here compared to my experience at OSU, where I had landed in 1965 with a fresh, new University of Wisconsin-Madison Ph.D.
As a faculty member in the IMSE department I have had many opportunities to grow as a person and a professional during my years here, even though there have been some rough spots along the way. I am most grateful for these opportunities. Our three daughters all received great educations at OU - graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors, before the days of grade-inflation. They went on and now excel in law and medicine. My wife and I make small, but significant financial contribution as well as other kinds of contributions to OU.
Thus, my wish is for OU to continue being an institution of which I can remain proud. I see the OCRC order in Lipset's favor as one clear attempt to help OU be a university that actually lives and breathes the ideals that its public relations words claim for it.
This whole Lipset/OCRC matter is so interestingly and fortuitously timed. We have just had a major PR campaign on President McDavis' and Provost Krendl's Vision OHIO. One significant dimension of Vision OHIO is the idea of diversity - an idea that surely encompasses the older among us. Please, President McDavis and Provost Krendl, give us a concrete healthy and hopeful demonstration of diversity in action at OU by complying with the OCRC's Jan. 12 FINAL ORDER.
-Chuck Overby, Ph.D., P.E.; Emeritus Professor in the IMSE department.
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