Is the Fix in at the University of Southern Mississippi?

When commenting on breaking news, it's easy to speak too soon. I certainly did yesterday afternoon, when I wrote about the hearing for Professors Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer at the University of Southern Mississippi. Glamser and Sringer were fired by President Shelby Thames on March 5, for investigating the credentials of Angelina Dvorak, the Vice President for Research.

It looked then as though the hearing officer, retired judge Reuben Anderson, had halted the proceedings after lunch on the first day of the hearing, after only Thames had testified, because Thames didn't have a case against Glamser and Stringer. Indeed, Thames seemed to be embarrassing himself and the university by making obviously false statements, delving through stacks of intercepted emails, even boasting of his authority to read students' email.

Thames' case doen't look any better today than it did on Wednesday. Indeed, his ham-handed efforts to discredit Rachel Quinlivan, an editor at USM's student newspaper, by reading from intercepted email correspondence between her and Frank Glamser, have eroded away any remaining sympathies that Mississippi newspaper editors and reporters may have harbored for him. But the settlement that Anderson negotiated, working closely with the Mississippi College Board, was a narrowly tailored compromise. It keeps Glamser and Stringer on the payroll for two more years and protects them from piling up further legal bills. But it also saves face for Shelby Thames, and does virtually nothing little to address the gross autocracy and pervasive mismanagement that have characterized his administration.

It also seemed that the decision to have the Board meet today to consider the settlement, instead of delaying until the next regularly scheduled event on May 19, would have to be a positive sign, since it meant that the Board would take up the settlement before Roy Klumb, a notorious Thames supporter, took over as Board President on May 8. In fact, Klumb skipped today's meeting entirely.

As announced this afternoon, the key provisions of the settlement are:

1. "The University will recommend to Dr. Angeline Dvorak that she not pursue litigation against the Professors."
2. "The University withdraws the termination proceedings and agrees that the Professors will be compensated at their current nine-month academic-year salaries for a period of two years beginning with academic year 2004-2005. At the end of academic year 2005-2006, any obligation of employment from the University to the Professors shall have been satisfied."
3. "The Professors agree the University will not provide any office facilities, office supplies, or otherwise facilitate their physical presence on campus or their research projects."
4. "The Professors agree to refrain from offering public criticism or commentary about the University’s internal administrative operations during the term of this agreement."

Angeline Dvorak is obviously being ordered not to sue Glamser and Stringer for defamation on account of their questioning her credentials (she was not a party to the dispute, and didn't sign the settlement, hence the word"recommend"). But no acknowledgment is being made, either that she lied on her vita, or that it was appropriate for faculty members at USM to check out the statements she made on her vita.

Glamser and Stringer are not being fired, but they are also not being fully reinstated. It appears that they are being compelled to retire in two years. Opinions among knowledgeable people at USM are mixed as to whether either of them really planned to retire that soon (each is old enough, and has enough years of service to do so, but both have been extremely active teachers and researchers). What's more, they will not be allowed to maintain offices on campus (not that they may mind this too much, since Thames would no doubt read every one of their emails if they were foolish enough to ever send another one from a campus computer) but this is also being taken to mean that they will teach no classes and have no contact with students. Pushing faculty members who challenge abuses of administrative power into sinecures or restricted roles, when they can't be safely gotten rid of, is becoming a standard tactic, and Thames will now conclude that he has the green light to isolate or marginalize other critics in this fashion.

What's more, G and S are being muzzled. And they are not just being asked to stop criticizing Dvorak (which might be defended as a quid pro quo for her not suing them, albeit under defamation laws that ought to be stricken from the books), but to refrain from criticizing anyone and everyone in the administration. That feature of the settlement must have Thames and his cronies salivating.

I do not blame Glamser and Stringer for accepting the deal. They have undergone tremendous stress, been prevented from continuing their research, and are faced with $40,000 in legal bills (only $30,000 of them paid off so far from donations to their legal defense fund), while Thames and his cronies can piss away Mississippi taxpayers' money to defend their reckless administration against lawsuits (it is currently embroiled in 6 of them). In the past I have advised colleagues who were beaten up on by out-of-control administrators to take sweetened retirement details rather than stick around for further punishment. But... the abuses are never going to stop if the best that a principled opponent on the faculty can hope for is a sweetened retirement deal.

Adding gross insult is State Attorney General Jim Hood's decision, announced early this evening, to help Thames out by retroactively correcting one of his false statements. In his testimony, Thames kept ignoring the university's chief legal counsel and referring to his"Director of Risk Management" Jack Hanbury was the University Attorney. So Hood has helpfully redefined Hanbury's position so that he reports directly to the AG's office, which is what university lawyers do in the Missisippi State system. Not only does this get Thames off one of his hooks, also means that if Thames retires or resigns, his successor cannot fire Thames' Chief Hatchet Man or abolish his position; only the Attorney General will be able to do that. Talk about an action that fails the smell test...

Now, Thames and his sponsor Klumb do appear displeased by the results. Thames, after all, has been served notice that he cannot just hale tenured professors into his office and fire them. But Thames should have been hit a lot harder than he was. His ability to throw his weight around has been reduced a little (a loss much magnified for Thames, because he is loath to recognize any limits on his power); his testimony embarrassed him in front of the faculty, the students, the media, and portions of the general public; but an academic administrator who behaves as he has done deserves to face much more serious consequences. He remains in office, his henchmen and hatchetwomen also remain in place, and the pervasive troubles that his administration has brought on USM are just as severe as they were before the hearing.

Even for a political body, the Mississippi College Board is operating with incredibly narrow time horizons. To take the most pressing issue, the stand-off between Vice President Dvorak and the USM faculty continues. What kinds of measures will Thames now take against the 31 Faculty Senators who voted for the resolution stating that she has never been tenured at a four-year institution? Against all 14 members of the Graduate Council, who declared that under the USM Faculty Handbook she is not qualified to evaluate any faculty member for tenure or promotion? And needless to say, the events of the last three days are not going to convince the Faculty Senate or the General Faculty of USM to rescind their votes of no confidence against him (40-0 in the Faculty Senate; 430-32 out of approximately 540 real faculty). Interestingly, now that Glamser and Stringer have been semi-reinstated, newspaper stories are finally appearing on Thames' plan, not yet implemented, to dissolve the Faculty Senate, with which he has essentially not communicated since its vote of no confidence.

There is very little that the professors and students at USM can do, except leave as soon as they are able, or carry on the fight aginst the Thames autocracy. The only alternative, under a continued Thames administration, will be to accept life in a hellhole. Since the impasse over Dvorak's misrepresentations has not been resolved, it is heartening to see that Anne Wallace, an English professor, has reviewed Dvorak's extremely meager publications, and pointed out that they would never be enough for Dvorak to earn tenure as an English professor at USM.

Another creative suggestion, put forward by angry students at USM who learned that Thames considers himself entitled to read any email they send or receive on a university computer, is for everyone who has to use a USM computer for email to abandon any pretense that the communication is private, and cc: it to President Thames. I actually think it would be appropriate to also copy Angeline Dvorak, Jack Hanbury, and several other prominent hatchetpeople in the Thames administration on every email sent from or to a campus computer--and continue to do so until the present computer use policy at USM is revoked, and replaced with rules that a civilized community could live by.

I need more time to collect my thoughts about the implications for tenure and for communciations privacy, until the dust settles a little from today's events. But on the whole they do not appear to be good. Meanwhile, anyone who thought that what goes on at USM needn't concern academics at other institutions had better think again.

As always, for the latest information consult the message board at the Fire Shelby Web site. And if you are so inclined, lend some encouragement to the regular contributors at FS. They might need it just now.