On February 15, 2023, the Cornell Faculty Senate met in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall to discuss a packed agenda. Under the hybrid nature of the meeting, there will be a two-week period for the Faculty Senate to cast electronic votes.
Historically, all faculty members would meet as a group in Bailey Hall to debate and decide important policies. As Cornell’s faculty grew, that became unwieldy; in the 1970’s, Cornell formed a Faculty Council of Representatives to meet in place of the full University Faculty. Cornell eventually replaced the Faculty Council with today’s Faculty Senate. The Faculty Senate, which is composed of 130 members, only considers issues which affect more than one college; the remainder are voted on by each college’s faculty alone.
Johnson Tenure Clock
The first resolution was the question of how long a “tenure clock” should apply to faculty in the Johnson College of Business. In most colleges, a newly-hired professor has six years to demonstrate that his teaching and research is sufficiently valuable to warrant granting tenure. Nationwide, there is an “up or out” rule, where professors that do not make tenure must leave.
In highly competitive fields, such as business, new faculty are looking for a longer time period to prove their academic merit, and some business schools are offering up to nine years to earn tenure. In 2011, the Johnson Graduate School set an eight year tenure clock, while the rest of the colleges at Cornell remained at six.
Now that the Johnson Graduate School, the Nolan Hotel School, and the Dyson School are combined into a new College of Business, the Faculty Senate is considering a resolution to extend the other two schools to eight years.
Gynecologist
The second resolution seeks to upgrade the gynecological care offered at Cornell Health from a nurse practitioner to a specialized medical doctor. At present, if a student is referred to an MD specialist, the closest such doctor is in Syracuse.
Although this topic is not within the faculty’s purview, if all five shared governance bodies adopt the same position, President Pollack has promised to put it on the agenda of the Board of Trustees. The Student Assembly, University Assembly, and Graduate Student Assembly have already adopted it.
Although no one disputes the need for such specialized care, the question is whether that specialist should be a full-time Cornell Health employee or should be located at Cayuga Health. A Cayuga Health specialist could make care available to Tompkins County residents along with Cornell and Ithaca College students. To date, Cornell has not been able to work out a viable plan to bring a specialized gynecologist to Ithaca, and if the resolution passes the Faculty Senate and the Employee Assembly the Trustees would have to debate how to do it.
Academic Freedom and Free Expression
Cornell’s core values as well as other specific policies protect academic freedom and free expression in all of its programs. The Faculty Senate last night debated how this commitment applies to overseas Cornell programs.
Cornell is currently trying to consolidate its international teaching and research efforts into a series of “Global Hubs” including a hub for mainland China. However, China routinely violates the rights of students and faculty living in that country as well the rights of their nationals living in the US. Seven faculty, including Professor Bensel, one of two Senators representing the Government Department, proposed a resolution titled “Academic Freedom in the Global Hubs” to address this issue. The resolution would clarify that Cornell’s academic freedom policies will apply to all of its global hubs.
After the debate on Feb. 15, Faculty Senators have two weeks to return their ballots on these resolutions.
