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The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to discuss a proposal to recommend the creation of a task force to respond to harassment against faculty from people outside the University of Michigan and say farewell to members whose terms end on April 30.
Julie Boland, president of the University’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, spoke to SACUA about the proposal to create a task force on external harassment. Boland said the task force would work to support faculty experiencing harassment from non-U-M community members, including online harassment.
“Often (the external harassment is) online harassment, but not exclusively,” Boland said. “So (for example), people getting trolled because of what they’re teaching or because of some service, maybe (a) DEI service that they’re involved with. Maybe some clinical practice that they’re doing, but (it’s) their work for the University and they’re getting harassed.”
Boland said this committee would aim to place less of a burden on targeted faculty members, and more on the offender. She referenced a conversation with Tabbye Chavous, chief diversity officer at the University and director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity.
“The proposals that we looked at (from other universities) still largely put the onus on the targeted faculty member,” Boland said. “That’s something that came up in my conversation with Tabbye Chavous. We want to take the burden off the targeted faculty member, and she’s interested in partnering with us on this.”
The proposed committee would be composed of AAUP and SACUA members, as well as other U-M faculty. Luke McCarthy, director of the Faculty Senate Office, suggested expanding the size of the committee beyond four members to reflect the variety of jobs and disciplines which may put faculty at an increased risk of external harassment.
“Does (the committee) need to be larger to make sure that particular disciplines that tend to be targeted are included in the conversation?” McCarthy said. “There are going to be different issues for clinical abortion-related things versus what would come up in Stamps, for instance, and the arts.”
SACUA voted unanimously to approve the proposal and plans to work with AAUP to send a letter to University Provost Laurie McCauley outlining the task force.
At the conclusion of the meeting, outgoing members shared advice and said their goodbyes. Outgoing SACUA member Kentaro Toyama, professor of information, said he thought it was important for SACUA to strike a balance between criticizing the University and supporting it.
“We should be super conscious of the relationship that we have with various members of the administration,” Toyama said. “We don’t want to be in a situation where we’re constantly worried about whether they’ll think badly of us and therefore don’t push back hard enough, nor do we want to be in a situation where all we do is criticize and ask for things that are very difficult … I do think that we need to find this balance.”
Summer News Editor Abigail VanderMolen can be reached at vabigail@umich.edu.