Photo courtesy of Mizue Ezeki Professor Josh
Muldavin (left) receives an award from Chancellor
Albert Carnesale.
By Bimal Rajkomar
Daily Bruin Reporter
The recommendation to deny tenure to popular geography professor
Joshua Muldavin has led to an outpouring of student support as he
works to file an appeal.
Since the decision by the Academic Senate Council on Academic
Personnel, students have launched a massive campaign to keep him at
UCLA by passing petitions around classes and putting up flyers
around campus.
“I’m very committed to the university,”
Muldavin said. “I love UCLA, I love the students. I want to
stay, and I am working very hard to do so.”
“I’ve worked hard here on all fronts, I feel my
record deserves tenure, in terms of teaching, service and
research,” he continued.
It’s university policy not to comment on the specifics of
a tenure case.
Though Muldavin’s situation at the university is
uncertain, his teaching reputation has led many students to wonder
why such a popular professor would be denied tenure.
“When we call ourselves research universities, we forget
that the main reason that students are here is to be taught,”
said Student Regent Justin Fong. “This is an issue that is
bigger than Josh. It is about students saying “˜we want great
professors because that helps out education.’ As students, we
learn less well when we have professors who don’t teach
well.”
Muldavin is the winner of the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching
and the Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award, UCLA’s nominee
for the Carnegie National Professor of the Year, a UCLA
faculty-in-residence and chair of the International Development
Studies Program.
“I would urge students who support Josh to voice their
support for him,” said Fong, who turned down offers from
Harvard, University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology to do graduate studies with Muldavin.
TENURE PROCESS Tenure applicant (in 7th
year) Submits resumes, publications, and accomplishments
Department chair Department Ad Hoc
Committee Solicits letters from experts outside the
university Department’s tenured faculty Submits
reports Dean Makes recommendations Campus
wide Ad Hoc Committee Makes recommendation
Committee on Academic Personnel Makes
recommendation Chancellor SOURCE: Vice Chancellor
of Academic Personnel Norm Abrams Original graphic by VICTOR
CHEN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by JUSTIN HONG “I think the
university needs to know that students value teaching and
professors who value students,” he continued. “Being
denied tenure is like being fired. How can UCLA fire the professor
of the year? It must be a mistake.”
Tenure guarantees professors protection from termination, and it
was designed to preserve academic freedom.
“Superior intellectual attainment, as evidenced both in
teaching and in research or other creative achievement, is an
indispensable0 qualification for appointment or promotion to tenure
positions,” states Section 210 of the UC Academic Personnel
Manual.”
Vice Chancellor of Academic Personnel Norman Abrams notes that,
as evidenced by that statement, both “teaching and research
are given very significant weight.”
According to Abrams, applicants are protected by several checks
and balances to ensure a fair review ““ the first being the
many steps of the process.
If applicants feel there are any violations of the rules, they
can file a complaint with the Academic Senate Committee on Academic
Personnel on Privilege and Tenure.
If a negative decision is likely, then the applicant is allowed
to review the report and offer a rebuttal or additions before it
reaches the chancellor’s desk.
The tenure process, which typically begins during a faculty
member’s seventh year at the university, starts when the
applicant submits resumes, publications and accomplishments to
their department chair.
The department then appoints an ad hoc committee, composed of
members from the department, which solicits letters from experts
outside the university and then makes a recommendation to the
department.
The tenured faculty of the department vote on the candidate, and
a report of the faculty discussion and vote is then forwarded to
the dean, who may make a recommendation at this stage.
The 14-member Academic Senate committee, called the Council on
Academic Personnel, then recommends a four-person interdisciplinary
ad hoc committee, consisting of one member from the
applicant’s department.
This ad hoc committee’s recommendation, as well as all of
the earlier recommendations, are submitted to the Council on
Academic Personnel, which in turn makes its recommendation to the
Chancellor’s Office.
The final decision is made on behalf of the chancellor by the
vice chancellor of academic personnel.
The final decision takes into account the full file that has
been accumulated on the tenure candidate, including recommendations
of each of the academic units involved in the process.
As a teacher, Muldavin has a considerable reputation and
consistently scores well on teacher evaluations according to the
1999-2000 Academic Senate review of IDS, and it’s not hard to
find students to testify to the effectiveness of his teaching.
“He is there for you, he wants you to learn,” said
fourth-year IDS student Jim Vellequette.
What sets him apart from other teachers is his ability to engage
students and his unique style of lecturing, students say.
“When he lectures, you feel like he is talking to
you,” said Doug Kolozsvari, a second-year graduate student in
transportation studies. “He is the best professor I have ever
had.”
With an impressive record of teaching and service, some alluded
that his research was the reason he was denied tenure.
“He won several teaching awards but apparently
that’s not what counts here at UCLA,” Kolozsvari
said.
But because several parts of the tenure process are both
confidential and anonymous, outsiders do not know the reasons
behind the decision.
“One of the problems with the tenure process is that
it’s shrouded in confidentiality,” Fong said.
He said the tenure process may work most of the time, but this
is an instance when the process failed.
“I think it sends out the wrong message to future faculty,
that if you teach, you won’t be rewarded for it,” Fong
said. “Professor Muldavin’s case tells junior faculty
not to prioritize their teaching because they won’t be
rewarded for it.”
In Muldavin’s case, however, his research has been praised
alongside his teaching.
“I found that he was doing work that nobody else was doing
more critically and vigorously than other people,” Fong
said.
Although many professors in UCLA’s geography department
were unable to comment on Muldavin’s case because they served
on the committee, scholars from other universities regarded his
work highly.
“In terms of research, he is both visible and
active,” said Joe Nevins, a post-doctoral scholar at UC
Berkeley “Josh’s research is based on extensive
fieldwork, is time-and labor-intensive, and thus it takes longer
than other kinds of research to produce articles.”
Muldavin analyzes environmental and agrarian change in China
from a political ecology perspective.
“The fact that he is in both the flagship journal for
geography, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers
and the highly regarded journal Economic Geography, speaks to the
quality of his research,” said Professor Lucy Jaroz of the
University of Washington at Seattle.
Muldavin also wrote for a book, “Liberation
Ecologies,” touted as one of the more influential readings in
political ecology.
“I see this book as required reading in syllabi for
courses in sociology, anthropology, geography and environmental
history,” Jaroz said.
The outpouring of student support for Muldavin is reminiscent of
similar activism regarding the tenure case of Asian American
Studies Center Director Don Nakanishi, who was originally denied
tenure.
“Don’s tenure case was also about the legitimacy of
ethnic studies, and whether the administration saw it as having a
legitimate place in academia,” said Dennis Arguelles,
Assistant Director of the Asian American Studies Center.
After the initial decision was made to deny Nakanishi, some
professors who were on one of the involved committees broke their
code of confidentiality and leaked word that there were racially
biased comments made in the review.
Students in the late ’80s organized and formed broad,
multi-ethnic coalitions. They kept attention on the issue, holding
rallies, lobbying student government and getting media attention.
Over the three-year fight, concern over the issue grew, eventually
involving the community and Asian Pacific alumni. Nakanishi was
eventually granted tenure in 1990, but the fight raised several
questions about the confidentiality of the tenure process.
“I think the tenure process is still problematic and can
stand to be democratized,” Arguelles said. “Too many
departments seem to operate like fraternities.”