Dear President Keenan:
The American Historical Association strongly discourages you from proceeding with the reportedly proposed termination of four tenured members in the Salem State University history department, whether now or in the foreseeable future. This drastic reduction in faculty would severely diminish the department’s ability to maintain the impressive pedagogical and research standards that the department sets for itself and apparently maintains, along with its striking level of engagement with local communities.
The AHA recognizes the logical inclination to roll eyes when a scholarly association questions plans to terminate faculty in its own discipline. But we are not a labor union. Our interest lies in the promotion of historical work, historical thinking, and the influence of history in public culture. In this case we are concerned about the quality of undergraduate education and the role of Salem State historians in the community. Both stand to suffer from this
Richard Levy, Brad Hubeny and Dan Mulcare Dec 14, 2020
Dec 14, 2020
Furloughs for faculty, librarians and support staff are incredibly harmful to students in so many ways. As such, they are bad policy per se.
However that, there is a particularly insidious angle to what has happened at Salem State University. Because he arbitrarily and unilaterally decreed all faculty and librarians members take a furlough outside the legal contract process, President Keenan is breaking the law. Instead of uniting the campus during this uniquely stressful year, President Keenan instead chose to violate Mass General Law 150E, undermining an already overworked faculty and librariansâ ability to adapt to pandemic teaching and leading to an unfair labor practice complaint with the Department of Labor.