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I. Introduction: What is This Report About and Why is It Necessary?
What is
This?
This
is a report, narrowly speaking, on the abuse of graduate students at the UCLA
Slavic Department and the subsequent attempts to cover up that abuse, and in a
larger context, on the system in place that allowed such abuse to take place. Thus, the report has two different,
albeit related, aims. The first is
to highlight some of the abuses that have gone on in one specific academic
department, in this instance the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
at UCLA. For many years now, there
have been rumors and whispers throughout the Slavic academic community
concerning the state of graduate student welfare in the UCLA Slavic
Department. The most recent
Eight-Year Review of the Department, held in 2000, highlighted a great number
of irregularities and abuses and caught the faculty in lie after lie as they
tried to deny the all too obvious truth of what was really happening in their
department to the students placed in their charge. Much of what is in this report deals with this issue, as it
was the Eight-Year Review report that set in motion the entire series of events
that led to the near meltdown of the Department itself.
The
second, and probably more interesting thing that this report addresses is the
larger context in which the abuse of UCLA Slavic Department graduate students
transpired, how the system in place supposedly to root out wrongdoing on the
part of faculty actually discourages dissent, and how far that system will go
to make sure that the details of abuse at the hands of professors does not
become common knowledge. For
years, horror stories have abounded as to how bad graduate school can be,
but rarely is there anything written on just exactly why such a system can exist. There is, of course, no shortage of
articles and essays written that concentrate specifically on one or two aspects
of the system, but in order to understand why it exists as it does, one must
examine the phenomenon in a way that is both more detailed while at the same
time being more comprehensive, i.e. both more accurately and from a wider
perspective. Any such examination
must provide detailed evidence in favor of its take on what the core reasons
are that can (and often do) combine to make graduate school such a living
hell. That so many students should
suffer so grievously in graduate school should itself cause eyebrows to
raise. After all, most of those
who are in graduate school probably did well as undergraduates, so the usual
assumption would be that most of them should also do well in graduate school,
but as anyone who has ever been through the graduate school grind knows all too
well, this is not always the case.
As it turns out, the example of the UCLA Slavic Department illustrates
well just exactly why the system is so impervious to change, and indeed, how
most people, including those whose tax dollars support higher education, often
aren't even aware that there is anything wrong.
The
problem with an exposé such as this, however, is that for it to do the
job that it wants to do, it must be extremely detailed. There are a number of reasons for this,
but the main reason is directly related to one of the misconceptions about
academe that allows such abusive behavior towards graduate students to occur:
when the public at large is asked to make a judgement on the academic systems
that it supports with its tax dollars, more often than not it is the case that
very few average citizens have any real idea of just what exactly it is that a
college or university does. There
is a vague and general understanding that higher education is about teaching,
but the details are usually lost on most of those outside of academe. Because of that, whenever there is a
conflict between students and professors in which the public is asked to
believe one side or the other, the default assumption is often that the faculty
is right, or at least more right than wrong. Faculty will usually trot out one or two facts, chosen
selectively for the purpose of buttressing their argument, the students might
or might not try to trump these arguments, and then the public, still
grotesquely underinformed as to what is happening in academe anyway, is asked
to come up with some sort of opinion.
As long as the abusing faculty, or those in the academic administration
who represent their interests, can throw out just enough counter-information to
at least effect a draw in the mind of the public at large, then the system
forces the public to ask the question "Who are you going to believe? Whiney graduate students who think the
world should be served to them on a silver platter or respected academics who
appreciate the need for these students to learn the value of hard work and
inflexible standards of excellence?"
Unless one is able to trump, at every turn and in every instance, the
arguments of the faculty in favor of the existing system, one will have a
difficult time convincing the public at large as to the inadequacies of the
system. The down side, of course,
is that because the devil is indeed in the details—and the details are
many—this adds many extra pages to this report, thus making it that much
less amenable to a quick perusal, but the thinking here was better an accurate
document that will actually bring about some change than a smaller document
designed to be read by a larger audience.
The
report itself is divided into eight different sections. Whether or not you as a prospective
reader would want to plough through all eight sections depends very much on
where your interests lie. If you
are interested merely in the abuses that were happening in the UCLA Slavic
Department and how the Eight-Year Review of that department brought some of
those abuses to the fore, then you could skip directly to either the Eight-Year
Review report itself (reproduced in its entirety as Section IV-A except for one page that was not
released to students), or you could go to Section IV-B, an annotated version of that same
report that was offered to the Graduate Council of the UCLA Academic Senate in
response to a request by the Graduate Council that UCLA Slavic Department
graduate students comment on the report.
If you are interested in the larger question of how a department with
such an alarming degree of graduate student abuse can exist within a university
system, then it might be advisable to at least start with Section II, which provides
background both for academe in general and for the nature of the relationship
between the university administration and the tenured professoriate, and also
provides a detailed account of what happened during the Eight-Year Review of
the UCLA Slavic Department.
An
in-depth reading of all the sections is not necessary to get an idea of what is
going on at UCLA and probably at other UC campuses and other similar
institutions as well. And indeed,
some of the sections are placed here only for reference. For example, Section IV-H is simply the Graduate Student Handbook,
thirty plus pages prepared by the faculty of the UCLA Slavic Department in an
attempt to show the Academic Senate and the Dean of Humanities that this
department is indeed capable of managing its own affairs and need not be placed
into receivership. The whole point
of this particular section being included in the report was to show how vapid
and meaningless this handbook really was, so there is no real need to read
through it in detail unless one wanted to be absolutely sure of the assertion
made in this report that it contained nothing that would support the UCLA Slavic
Department's claim that this handbook was an integral part of their strategy to
reform themselves. Similarly, if
you are interested more in how the system itself broke down—or, as the
report suggests, worked very well while only appearing to break down—then
you might want to concentrate your attention on Section VI
If, however, you as a reader of this document are looking for more than simply an idea of what was happening in the UCLA Slavic Department and why what did happen was allowed to happen, then you might want to go through the chapters in order. The report itself was written to be seen as an organic whole and works best that way. Some issues, once explicated, are often referred to once again later in the report along with a shorter explanation because of the interrelated nature of the various academic processes that came into play in the Eight-Year Review of the UCLA Slavic Department. Thus, the report does have what is hoped to be a comfortable (as opposed to numbing) degree of redundancy to it. Still, if you are thinking of coming to UCLA (or any of the UC campuses, for that matter) for graduate school, if you are in a position where you offer advice regarding graduate school choices, or if you are considering making a financial donation to UCLA and have concerns regarding the extent to which you can trust the academic institution that would be the recipient of your donation, then you might want to consider reading through the entire report.
Contents
of the Report
The
eight sections of this report begin with what you are reading now, the
Introduction, which also contains an explanation as to why it was necessary to
go public in this manner. The rest
of the report breaks down as follows:
• Section II begins by
providing some initial context and insight into the academic world in terms of
the relationship between tenured faculty and the academic administration that
purportedly oversees their work, as well as into concepts such as professional
courtesy between tenured academics and the nature of their relationships with
each other, especially when it comes to matters of investigation and
discipline. It then goes on to
examine, step by step, the case of the 2000 Eight-Year Review of the UCLA Slavic
Department, from the beginning of the process (actually, even before the
beginning, as it also provides some background on the history of this
department) up to the present.
This section of the report is very detailed and devotes a considerable
amount of attention to the mechanics of the review process, and thus might not
be seen as "gripping" reading.
This fact notwithstanding, such attention to detail was seen as
necessary in order to establish the facts of the Eight-Year Review and how this
review played out in the case of the UCLA Slavic Department.
• Section III and
Section IV have to do with some of the documentation associated with the 2000
Eight-Year Review of the UCLA Slavic Department and the events connected to
it. Section III is merely an
explanation of the documents and communications listed in Section IV. Section IV breaks down as follows:
• Section IV-A is a copy of the Eight-Year Review
report as issued to the students of the UCLA Slavic Department. Also included is an email sent to these
same students by the Chair of the Department, Michael Heim, in which he
attempts to counter some of the charges contained in the report, as well as a "revisionist"
letter from two members of the external review team (i.e. those members of the
review team who are not UCLA faculty members but rather faculty members from
other universities brought in specifically to provide "objectivity"
to the process, or so the thinking went.). In this letter the two external reviewers, at the request of
the Chair of the UCLA Slavic Department, attempt to counter some of the more
serious charges made by the internal review team (i.e. those members of the
review team who are UCLA faculty members).
• Section IV-B is more or less an annotated copy of
the Eight-Year Review report that was produced by some linguistic students of
the UCLA Slavic Department in response to requests by the Graduate Council of
the Academic Senate for input from Slavic Department graduate students. Graduate student commentary is
interspersed throughout the report itself, much in the same way that one would
reply to different parts of an email by inserting individual responses directly
after the relevant original text.
The responses here are given in blue font to make it easier to
distinguish between them and the original text. This section also includes an introductory note to the
Academic Senate and a concluding list of suggestions.
• Section IV-C is a copy of a letter from the head
of the internal review team to the graduate students of the UCLA Slavic
Department in which he urges them to cooperate with the Chair of the UCLA
Slavic Department in discussing the results of the Eight-Year Review. This
letter was sent in spite of repeated requests from Slavic Department graduate
students themselves and from their representatives not to be put in a position
where they would have to either agree to speak with UCLA Slavic Department
faculty members about the report or else openly refuse to do so, thereby
putting them under a cloud of suspicion as having "cooperated" with
the reviewers who brought about such a damning picture of the UCLA Slavic
Department.
• Section IV-D is a communication to the head of
the internal review committee from the sole member of internal committee who
was not a UCLA faculty member but a UCLA graduate student (a doctoral student
in English Literature). Following
the communication itself, he passes on his initial report on the conditions he
found within the UCLA Slavic Department to the head of the internal review
committee.
• Section IV-E is a series of emails from this same
graduate student representative on the internal review committee to various
officials within UCLA frantically asking them to back off their call to UCLA
Slavic Department graduate students to speak with the UCLA Slavic Department
faculty about the results of the Eight-Year Review. Especially noteworthy is the increasingly frantic and
frustrated tone of each successive email, so much so that by the last one, this
graduate student representative is questioning his own judgment in having
encouraged UCLA Slavic Department graduate students to cooperate in the review.
• Section IV-F is a communication from this same
graduate student representative on the internal review committee to an
administrative official in the Academic Senate office asking that copies of the
Eight-Year Review report be made available to graduate students in the UCLA
Slavic Department.
• Section IV-G is a response produced by the UCLA
Slavic Department in October of 2000 after it had a summer to get over the
shock that the Department had been exposed so thoroughly in the Eight-Year
Review report.
• Section IV-H is a handbook produced by the UCLA
Slavic Department for incoming students, a handbook produced in response to the
results of the Eight-Year Review and which, according to the UCLA Slavic
Department, would go a long way toward solving the problems that had been
plaguing the Department and its graduate students.
• Section IV-I is an Internal Report produced by
the UCLA Slavic Department in 2001 designed to show further reform and progress
on its part in righting the ship that was rocked so badly by the Eight-Year
Review report.
• Section IV-J is a copy of the resolution passed
by the UCLA Graduate Student Council as a result of what happened during the
Eight-Year Review of the UCLA Slavic Department.
• Section V describes
the fallout from the decision by the Chair of the UCLA Slavic Department,
Michael Heim, to fight the order from the Dean of the Humanities that
prohibited Slavic Department faculty from speaking with graduate students of
the UCLA Slavic Department concerning the review itself. Michael did indeed win this battle
against the UCLA Academic Administration, this in
spite of repeated promises of protection given to these same students by the
UCLA Academic Administration, promises that were also explicitly written into
the Eight-Year Review report itself.
This was the single most important moment in the review process, for
once these promises of protection turned out to be a house of cards, the tide
started to turn against graduate students. Because of its importance, it
is given its own section in this report.
• Section VI addresses
the question of why a review system that was, in theory anyway, designed to
protect graduate students and highlight abuses within departments wound up
failing these graduate students so badly, time and time again, at every level. It explains the role played by some of
the main characters and entities involved in this review process and it
provides a listing of how various processes in the system "broke
down" and failed these students.
It concludes by offering a new perspective as to what these processes
were in fact really designed to do.
• Section VII
takes the facts and documents presented in the previous six sections and uses
them to draw some conclusions about the system of higher education as it exists
at UCLA and in academe in general.
Specifically, it speaks to the opacity of the system and its desire to
keep its inner workings from being known by the public who support it. It also speaks to the question of how
to quantify success in academe and to the impact of the Eight-Year Review of
the UCLA Slavic Department on former and present graduate students in that
department. How the University
views concepts such as honor and integrity, as well as the two-track system in
place in academe in this regard (one for tenured academics and one for everyone
else) are also addressed here. How
this system, as flawed as it appears, is nonetheless able to perpetuate itself,
is also discussed, with specific attention given to the decentralized nature of
the typical university, the practice of buying the silence of those who have
been aggrieved, the reality of an individual trying to stand up to an
institution, the question of how one quantifies prestige, and to what is termed
here the Moosa-ization
of the university, i.e. the inability/unwillingness of a typical University
administration to try to enforce discipline on its own tenured faculty.
• Section VIII
attempts to do two things. The
first is to predict some of the possible reactions to this report might elicit
from various people and entities associated with the UCLA Slavic Department and
with the events connected to the Eight-Year Review report listed here. The second is a list of recommendations
as to how things can and should be changed in order to preclude this sort of
abusive behavior and institutional cover-up in the future, with specific
recommendations for various entities, e.g. the University of California
Regents, the California State Legislature, law enforcement, unions, taxpayers,
and so on. It concludes with an
appeal to graduate students, past and present, to use their considerable power
and knowledge to bring pressure to bear on the system in order to initiate
change.
Why Was It
Necessary To Go Public In This Way?
The
immediate question that comes to mind when a report such as this is made public
is why such public exposure is necessary.
Why, if students had grievances against either their department or the
University itself, could they not have availed themselves of the channels of
communication and avenues of redress already in place? This is, after all, one of the stated
purposes of any administrative superstructure, be it inside academia or in
government or in business. This
question takes on even greater significance when the issue involves graduate
students training for jobs in academia itself. As is clear to anyone who has ever worked in academia, in
most fields (and without question in the field of Slavic) jobs are hard to come
by. In such a competitive
environment, where literally hundreds of students apply for a single position,
the slightest taint to a given applicant's profile can lead to his/her
application being consigned to the reject pile. Equally clear to anyone who has ever been associated with
academia is the fact that academia loathes open conflict and does not look at
all kindly upon those seen as prone to stir up trouble and controversy. The label of "rabble-rouser",
be it justified or not, is one that sticks to applicants and negatively impacts
their employment potential for years to come.
These
facts are very well known to all graduate students who have gone through or
been associated with the UCLA Slavic Department. They understand how the system works in this respect, and
because of this, they understand very well the dangers involved in going
public. Why do this, then? Why put oneself at risk in an attempt
to force change in the system through public exposure when there already exist
avenues to express grievances within the academic institution itself? The answer to this question, an answer
that one will see as one reads through this report, is that graduate students have
already availed themselves of those options. Time and again graduate students tried to exercise these
options, and explored other, less public options as well. On countless occasions graduate
students attempted to work within the existing system in an effort to be
protected and have past wrongs righted.
But as this report shows all too clearly, those attempts were all for
naught. In other words, every
option provided by the system itself for seeking redress was tried, and every
time it was tried, it was, at one level or another, thwarted. Sure, some cosmetic reform was allowed,
but no real change was instituted, no one who abused students or covered up
that abuse was ever terminated, no student who ever suffered at the hands of
this faculty was ever compensated.
In effect, students were simply given no choice: they could either
accept the results of the cover up of the abuse or they could go public.
Hence
the necessity to compile this report and post it publicly.
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