For the first time in history, the faculty at the University of Michigan have voted to censure UM’s Board of Regents, citing multiple concerns with shared governance and failures to consult with faculty.
The censure motion, which the UM Faculty Senate had approved for consideration at its November 4th meeting, was voted on by 2,171 senate members — 28.6% of eligible electors — over three days of electronic balloting. The UM Faculty Senate has almost 7,600 members, including tenured and tenure-track faculty, librarians, clinical faculty, archivists, curators, part-time lecturers, deans and executive officers from all UM campuses.
The censure motion passed by an overwhelming margin, with 1,387 members voting yes, 559 voting no, and 225 abstaining. It cited several complaints including the allegation that the “Regents have little inclination to engage in shared governance and are increasingly exhibiting authoritarian tendencies antithetical to a public university in a democratic nation.”
The motion, which had been introduced by School of Information Professor Kentaro Toyama, alleged that the regents had made significant changes to university policy, including the addition of an institutional neutrality bylaw, without consulting the faculty.
According to MLive, Toyama claimed the regents had taken a “dramatic authoritarian turn.” “This past year, the regents pretended to care about the opinion of those they oversee,” he said. “Not students, not frontline staff and not faculty…they have repeatedly rebuffed faculty requests to meet with them, and they have undertaken a series of changes to university policy that are autocratic in nature.”
The censure motion also objected to the regents’ authorization of “police violence against students; the use of chemical irritants against students, faculty, and staff at protests; hiring private security which have maintained a presence on campus since the spring; increased surveillance and intimidation of students on and off campus; enlisting Student Life staff in the policing of students; and disciplinary action, campus bans, employment bans, and formal criminal charges to repress student activism and political speech on campus.”
In addition to calling for the censure of the regents, the motion demanded, “in the name of the values on which the United States and its public universities were founded, that the Regents cease the use of surveillance, policing, physical violence, and legal power as mechanisms to silence speech.”
The motion of censure was one of four motions considered by the UM Faculty Senate. The others, all of which passed handily, included requests that:
- the university pause changes to the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities that the Board of Regents had approved in July.
- the university establish a committee of faculty representatives to review and modify the Standard Practice Guides, the policies and procedures that govern staff and faculty.
- the university take the problem of gender-based violence “far more seriously.” It also asked UM to provide more resources for prevention and to commit to “an independent audit every year, as opposed to every four years, as is currently done, according to state law.”
Faculty motions of censure, like votes of no-confidence, are symbolic measures. Although they carry no legal authority, they convey important messages about the state of university governance and the relationships between faculty, administrators and institutional governing boards. They carry even greater import when they are supported by the convincing margin that occurred at the University of Michigan.
In response to the censure vote, university spokesperson Colleen Mastony was quoted in the University Record as saying, “the regents recognize the importance of all of our faculty and remain committed to working constructively with them.” She added, “the regents will carefully consider these resolutions and will continue to welcome collaboration that strengthens our community and advances the mission of the university.”
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