Back when she was the FAMU Faculty Senate president in 2004,
Diallo voted to hire an interim president who, by all measures of common sense,
was not qualified to run a public, four-year university. She threw her support
behind Castell V. Bryant, the former president of the Miami-Dade Community
College Medical Center Campus.
Diallo seemed to relish being a part of the new interim
president’s “inner circle.” But she soon learned the hard way that it was all a
sham and that Castell had little respect for her or any other member of the FAMU
faculty.
Instead of treating FAMU’s professors like they worked at a
research university, Castell treated them like community college personnel. She
immediately trampled over the principle of shared governance by denying them
input in the selection of both the new vice-president for research and provost
(another ex-community college administrator). But even those first warning
shots, Diallo continued to fend off efforts to introduce a
resolution of “no confidence” against Castell in the Faculty Senate.
Today this cycle seems to be repeating itself with Narayan
Persaud.
On Friday, Persaud voted to make Morehouse School of
Medicine President John E. Maupin, Jr. a semifinalist for the FAMU presidency. Back
when he was president of Meharry Medical College, the American Association of
University Professors accused Maupin of effectively eliminating the school’s
tenure system.
Persaud acknowledged Maupin’s past at Meharry, but tried to
dismiss it as a non-issue with a long, rambling excuse that made little sense
(like so many of Persaud’s other jumbled public statements).
Even though Persaud might believe it’s no big deal for FAMU to
have a president with an anti-tenure record, the faculty senate leadership at
the University of Florida and Florida State University knows better than to let
something like that happen to either one of their schools. That’s why they’ve fought
hard to keep pro-tenure administrators in their respective president’s chairs.
The website of the FSU provost’s office has
actually posted a statement that vigorously defends tenure despite the fact that there’s increasing
political pressure to scrap tenure in Florida’s higher education system.
“Tenure is not a guarantee of lifetime employment, and
nowhere is there any statement to that effect anywhere in academe including at
The Florida State University,” the statement reads. It goes on to say that: “On
a practical level, the major difference between the untenured individual and
the tenured one is that the latter can be removed only for ‘adequate cause.’”
Persaud might think that he’ll get more personal power by
possibly helping other trustees hand Maupin the keys to Lee Hall and then becoming part of
the new presidential “inner circle.” But a president who doesn’t value tenure
doesn’t want faculty members to have the type of due process rights or basic
respect that is standard in the top ranks of research universities.