Writing on the Academe Blog, Hank Reichman posted the below piece on the much-litigated dismissal of Georgette Fleischer at Barnard College. After 17 years as a writing instructor at Barnard, teaching two courses each semester, Fleischer's termination was upheld by an arbitrator, in part on the basis of what Reichman describes as "two cherry-picked responses on anonymous online student evaluations."
Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
Hank Reichman / 23 hours ago January 21, 2020
BY HANK REICHMAN
Over two years ago, on November 3, 2017, I posted an item to this blog about the ordeal of Georgette Fleischer, a Barnard College adjunct writing instructor who was summarily dismissed from her position after 17 years of successful teaching. Here, from that post, is the background:
For seventeen years Georgette Fleischer taught first-year English, now first-year Writing, at Barnard College in New York. For most of those years she found Barnard a “wonderful place to work. We felt like our work was appreciated, and that meant a great deal,” she told a reporter in September. That changed, however, under the administration of former president Debora Spar when Barnard refused to reappoint her to first-year seminar for the 2014-15 academic year, citing negative evaluations by some of her students. Fleischer tried to file a grievance under the school’s faculty internal grievance policy but was told that as a part-time lecturer she wasn’t eligible to do so because she was not a member of the “faculty.”
On May 16, 2014, the AAUP wrote to Spar pointing out that by denying Fleischer the right to grieve Barnard was in violation of longstanding AAUP-approved principles of due process rights. The AAUP recommended that Fleischer “be retained for an additional academic year with opportunity to appeal the decision that was made.” But it took a law suit and the support of an attorney willing to work pro bono for her to win the right even to grieve. In April 2015 New York State Supreme Court Justice Alexander Hunter ruled that Fleischer was indeed a faculty member and entitled to file a grievance. The decision marked, as the Chronicle of Higher Education noted, “a rare effort by the courts to define adjunct instructors’ status and rights at the colleges that employ them.”
That apparent victory was, however, only the start of Fleischer’s continuing ordeal. By then she had started organizing Barnard Contingent Faculty Local 2110 of the UAW to represent the school’s non-tenure-track instructors. In October 2015 over 91% of Barnard’s contingent faculty who voted chose to unionize. Fleischer was elected to the bargaining committee, receiving more votes than any other nominee. She served in that capacity for 16 months, before resigning in February [2017] because she objected to provisions of the proposed contract, including what she saw as weak protection for academic freedom. The contract was signed two months later, but two weeks after that two faculty members on the cusp of becoming post-probationary were dismissed. In May seven long-term members of the local were terminated. Fleischer was among them.
While the other faculty members have apparently accepted severance offers, Fleischer is heroically fighting her dismissal with the support of her union, which filed a grievance under the contract charging violations of articles covering discrimination, academic freedom, and appointments. On August 28 [2017], however, Barnard Provost Linda Bell rejected the grievance and the process has moved to arbitration.
On August 19, 2019, some 27 months after Fleischer first filed her grievance, arbitrator Ralph S. Berger finally rendered his verdict, upholding Barnard’s decision to deny her reappointment. The ruling was based on the claim that Barnard acted in response to concerns about Fleischer’s teaching, in particular her ability to adapt to a new approach to writing instruction implemented by a recently named director of the writing program, whose decision it was not to renew Fleischer’s contract. These concerns were allegedly validated by student input, specifically two cherry-picked responses on anonymous online student evaluations.
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