A Response to Newsday Article: A Crisis at LI Campus

On Friday, April 25, 2008, in a continued attack on the president of Stony Brook University, Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny, Newsday of Long Island, via Karla Schuster, wrote a biting article erroneously titled, “A Crisis at LI campus.” My first question to Newsday would be, “To what crisis are you referring?” Do you even understand the meaning of the word, crisis? One of its many meanings, which come closest to perhaps what Ms. Schuster had in mind, is “An unstable condition.” One has only to take up a Princeton Review, or a US News and Weekly Report to see how far from “unstable” Stony brook University is. In fact, SBU only gets better each year.

Now, what sparked this article is a recent petition by 101 disgruntled professors at SBU. According to the petition, the undersigned faculty members are “dismay[ed] and outrage[ed] over the chronic and damaging under-funding of the academic sector of the College of Arts and Sciences of the Stony Brook University. The recent forced closure of a quarter of the College’s fall 2008 courses, though rescinded, marks an ominous turn in what has been a long-term pattern of negligence… There has been… a loss of faculty morale and a disturbing flight of top faculty to well-run universities … Among the consequences of these conditions … professors are unable to accord students the kind of attention and directed feedback that characterizes best teaching practices…For all these reasons, we demand an accounting of the priorities and decisions that have starved the College of Arts and Sciences of essential resources. We also wish to register our loss of confidence in the academic leadership of President Shirley Strum Kenny, whom we hold responsible for this egregious mismanagement. Sincerely, The Undersigned.”

What I find egregious is the “bogus” petition and “bogus” signatures on this petition. Let’s take a closer look. There are presently 1902 faculty members at Stony Brook University. Less than 5% of them “signed” that they had lost confidence in the president. Of the so-called “101 signatures” there were 22 “untenured” faculty members. Do you even know what a signature is? Maybe why you’re untenured. Not putting at least the department to which you belong suggests more than anonymity. Which is why I out rightly call this a ”bogus” petition with “bogus” signatures. Anyone can write, type or draw “untenured”. You don’t count. So, for the 4% who are disgruntled, 16 are from the History Department, 9 from Sociology, 8 from Psychology, 6 each from the English, Hispanic Languages, Physics, and Philosophy departments, and 3 from Music, Art and Ecology and Evolution. Interestingly there was only one professor from Materials Science, and one each from Biochemistry and European Languages.

Another question is, which top faculties have flown the coop? Our Nobel Prize professors? Our co-discoverer of Lyme disease? I think not. My other question is, why weren’t professors such as William Chittick, Richard Clark, George Hart, Don Ihde, Michael Kimmel, and Harold Metcalf, on the list? I’ll tell you why: Because they were busy writing books, doing researches that would benefit the human race. Basically doing what a tenured professor is supposed to be doing. They are too busy trying to save the world, to waste their time with petty petitions by a couple of lazy, fatuitous wanna-bes.

Do you think I am being harsh? Visit some of these sites that rate professors and see whose names are on the list. Some of these same humanities professors. Names like Richard Gerrig, Diana Padilla, Robert Goldenberg are repeat offenders. You will find their names on every website rating professors negatively. I wonder why?

FYI: Under Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny’s leadership (1994 – present), Stony Brook University has experienced unusually high growth for a public university. To give you a “taste” of some of her accomplishments:

Presently: 22,527 students more than ½ of whom are undergrads

Presently: 1902 faculty (79 disgruntled ones)

New Undergraduate Apartments

New Journalism School

New Business School

New Marine Science School

New stadium (Kenneth P. Lavalle)

New campuses: Manhattan and Southampton

But these, according to the petition, are apparently bad things.

The Student Activities Center, which older alums can tell you left a lot to be desired, saw a pleasantly, pleasing-to-the-eye renovation. So too did the Humanities Building, and all the residential quads.

Because of her leadership, philanthropists have been quick to hand over their hard earned money: Fifty Million Dollars from NY Islanders owner, Charles Wang, to build the Charles B. Wang Center – a place where on any given day you can see over 500 students enjoying themselves. More recently, retired math professor, Dr. James Simon, who obviously didn’t have a problem with the president, handed over a check for Sixty Million Dollars. Now, that is a vote of confidence if ever there was one.

In 1998, SBU was one of ten national universities awarded a National Science Foundation recognition award for integrating research and education. In Sports, SBU joined NCAA Division I in 1999. In 2001 SBU became a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an invitation-only organization of the top 62 research universities in the U.S. SBU co-manages Brookhaven National Laboratory, joining elite schools like Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, University of Chicago, and Cornell to run federal labs. 2005-2006 joined the National Collegiate Roller Hockey Association (NCRHA). 2006-2007 won its first regional and national championship in the NCRHA in Division II.

In 2006 Stony Brook University was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame

2007 - Won a grant from the Depertment of Defense to devise ways to prevent terrorists from corrupting computers and another from Department of Homeland Security to design a system to detect radiation without triggering false alarms.

Don’t get me started: Academic rankings includes Nine (9) times as being among the best in the nation in US News & World Report’s 2007 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.” The departments with the highest rankings were Physics (22), Mathematics (26) and Geosciences (28).

In 2006, the London-based Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Stony Brook as the 136th best university in the world. The world. Out of over 8300 colleges worldwide!

I could go on and on, but you got the point. All these accomplishments are credited to the leadership and vision of Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny. So, let me use a quote from your article as a summary of my point: "'Yeah, maybe Stony Brook has some problems with its budget, but [that] should be placed at the foot of Albany,' [Anthropology professor Pat] Wright said." Speaking of Albany, what do you think is the point of Stony Brook Day in Albany? And whose idea was that?