ASU plans session
on race on campus
Arkansas State University will schedule a series of virtual town-hall-style meetings to discuss race at the university.
Chancellor Kelly Damphousse announced the meetings in an email to the campus Monday. He invited "students, faculty, staff, and alumni who might be able to identify blind spots for us."
Damphousse sent his email as demonstrations took place across the country in response to the death of George Floyd. Floyd, who is black, died while a Minneapolis police officer held Floyd down with his knee on Floyd's neck. Floyd is seen in video of the encounter repeatedly saying that he couldn't breathe.
"The events remind us that our social institutions often do not grant Black people equal access to justice, health care, education, and jobs," Damphousse wrote in his message to the campus.
As for ASU, he said, "we must all look at everything that we are doing at A-State to be certain we are creating equal opportunities for all, and that starts today."
In an addendum to his email, the chancellor noted that ASU has "issues of disparity" beyond black students and said the university intends to address those, as well.
Three educators sue
over tenure policy
Three University of Arkansas System faculty members have filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court over the system's new tenure policy, shortly after a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by the same instructors.
The lawsuit, filed against the system's board of trustees, seeks class-action status to include "all individuals who held by appointment tenure-track or tenured positions" when the policy revision was approved March 29, 2018. It seeks to stop enforcement of the revision, which the suit claims violates faculty members' due-process rights.
The revision allows trustees and administrators to use annual reviews of faculty members as the basis for termination, which was not previously allowed. It further provides more "grounds" that an administrator could cite in firing someone, the lawsuit states.
Those are unilateral, "material changes" to the terms of faculty members' contracts without their permission, they argued.
Tenure is defined by the UA System as the right of continuous appointment. Professors gain tenure based on their job performances over several years but still undergo annual reviews.
Three faculty members at three UA institutions filed the lawsuit: Philip Palade, a pharmacology and toxicology professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; Gregory Borse, an associate professor of English and philosophy at the University of Arkansas at Monticello; and J. Thomas Sullivan, a distinguished professor of law at the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. dismissed a similar lawsuit in March, arguing that the change posed only a possible threat to contract terms because the provisions in it may not be used.