Faculty Defense Fund
Donation protected
Your gift supports the legal battle to RESTORE INCOME to our six families as we (the six faculty pictured above) seek rightful REINSTATEMENT and to SET LEGAL PRECEDENTS FOR THE DEFENSE OF FACULTY employment rights, that were callously violated by wrongful termination in 2020 by The University of Akron. Your support will mean we can fight this injustice using all legal means available, and not suffer defeat by simply being out-spent by the university. Any gift amount helps!
Who we are: Lingyun Liu, Ph.D.; Del Rey Loven, M.F.A.; Ernian Pan, Ph.D.; David Tokar, Ph.D.; Douglas Woods, M.Acc.,CPA; Zhijun Yin, Ph.D. (details in section below) ATTORNEY: S. David Worhatch
Facts in our case:
On July 15, 2020 with no due process, no advance notice, and in violation of our legal employment rights and property rights, both contractual and Constitutional, the University of Akron began the wrongful and arbitrary termination of 97 full-time faculty. Targeted for termination was a disproportionate percentage of highly-experienced women, minorities, internationals, seniors, and even faculty with disabilities.(1) These discarded women and men, 80% with earned tenure, had faithfully served the university for a combined total of 1,600 years. This disgrace was led by an obscenely high-paid, first-time president, barely six months into his job. We, the six faculty represented here, are fighting back.
Forbes Magazine called this appalling mass faculty purge the “budget bloodbath” at Akron.(2) 1/5 of the full-time faculty were suddenly stripped of income, health insurance, tuition benefits for dependents, tenure, rank and seniority employment rights. We were abruptly ordered to clear out offices and turn in our computers, as our email accounts were shut down, cutting off communications with student advisees, professional contacts and research grants. Akron has set the new LOW STANDARD AND PRECEDENT for abuse of faculty rights. Our case has potential to set new precedents to protect faculty employment rights, faculty First Amendment rights, and academic freedom. This GoFundMe page is set up by the six faculty who are resolved to fight this injustice. All contributions are under the dual management of this GoFundMe page manager and Douglas B. Woods, CPA, and overseen by all six co-plaintiffs. Donations apply to attorney fees, court costs, and fees for expert testimony as needed.
Last October the New York Times reported that ONLY The University of Akron had gone to the unprecedented extreme of "superseding tenure" among universities trimming budgets in America.(3) Beyond this, Akron went on to devise a complete tenure-busting strategy which has been called “The Akron Model”. It employs a combination of brutal contract violations and public misinformation, built on a core of deception and abuse of power. Shared governance is not in its vocabulary.
In late spring of 2020 University of Akron's new president proclaimed a financial emergency so dire, that they must immediately eliminate 1/5 of the full-time faculty. This impending catastrophe was so enormous, he warned, that not just tenure needed to be set aside, but also the retrenchment process that the administration had agreed to in our contract. Even though faculty ranks had already been reduced by almost 200 positions through attrition and recent buyouts, a MASS PURGE OF FACULTY MUST HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY, THE NEW PRESIDENT INSISTED. Faculty must not be given the 12-18 months advance notice guaranteed by contract, their insurance must be cancelled NOW, and nobody must get severance pay. Also, he insisted, if any faculty wants their state-guaranteed pay for unused sick-leave (well over $10K for most of us), they will forced to first sign away their rights to sue the university.
Quickly UA administrators went to work, targeting with prejudice the most experienced, higher paid faculty, regardless of the professor's superior performance, tenure, rank, seniority or good enrollments. They created a vast hit list that included Distinguished Professors and professors who had been voted top researcher and top teacher in their departments. 80% on the hit list had earned tenure, and ALL would have been protected had retrenchment been followed. Summer 2020 became open season on faculty at The University of Akron, and tenured faculty were the prize trophies, as administrators were told they could purge ANY faculty member, but urged to target faculty with the highest salaries. Lest any professor might catch wind that their job was at risk, Deans and Chairs, and the AAUP Negotiating Team were forced to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, forced to shroud the hit list in secrecy, or face their own termination. No faculty member should be allowed know in advance that their name would be read among those whose sentences would be pronounced, at the July 15 meeting of the Board of Trustees.
In stark contrast to the president's claim of impending doom, a July 2020 independent audit (see link below) exposed reserve assets of $158,000,000 the administration was hiding. Only after the faculty terminations, did the administration admit to sitting on this resource, equivalent to 15 times the cost of retaining he 97 terminated faculty.(4) The auditor also disproved that "the only solution" to the supposed financial crisis would be the immediate mass-purge of faculty. For example even a small reduction in the Athletics budget could have saved all 97 faculty positions. The president and his team rejected this audit, as well as EVERY cost-saving alternative proposed by the AAUP Negotiating Team, resolutely demanding there be as many faculty terminations as possible. But most incriminating is the February 2021 report unveiling a $20M BUDGET SURPLUS FOR 2020-21, twice the amount it would have cost to retain all terminated faculty.(5) The "budget crisis," it now appears, was a misinformation scheme, and a smokescreen for the intentional decimation of tenured faculty ranks.
Hence there were reasons why the university refused the AAUP and auditor's June 2020 request for the latest 2020 budget files. The actual financials would have indicated that the University of Akron Administration intended to fire 1/5 of the full-time faculty not because they had to, but because they wanted to. By so doing they would demonstrate to the world how administrative power, unhinged from morality and accountability, can override tenure, toss aside any and all contract agreements, and arbitrarily terminate masses of faculty at will, all the while ridiculing faculty union objections. Like a malignant cancer, "the Akron Model" is a strategy to devour the hard-won employment rights of tenure, rank, seniority, and academic freedom; and like a cancer its nature is to spread....
In January 2021, the Kansas Board of Regents voted to implement their own version of a tenure-busting strategy at six Kansas pubic universities.(6)
As of February 2021 the Iowa legislature was considering two outrageous bills: one that will require Iowa faculty to be identified by political party affiliation,(7) and another to eliminate tenure altogether.(8)
On February 19, 2021 the Wright State University Board of Trustees (Ohio) were persuaded that budget conditions were so severe they must vote to terminate 113 faculty positions, even though they have a budget surplus of $7M! Similar to Akron's financial duplicity, when confronted, "the trustees said that (the) budget surplus had nothing to do with the board’s decision to cut faculty positions." (9)
Call it what you will, “The Akron Model” emboldens administrators to terminate with prejudice and without cause anyone they choose to target, regardless of tenure and job performance. It even facilitates unchecked discrimination against protected classes.(10) Having gotten away with these injustices, Akron's president has negotiated into the new Collective Bargaining Agreement a policy change that now gives him the power to initiate and enforce new faculty retrenchments, a power formerly invested in the Board of Trustees. (11)
Threats to tenure and academic freedom are not new. The alarming difference today is that all it took to open campus gates to ever-widening destruction, was for a single CEO inflated with the sheer authoritarian gall to trample every faculty employment right, armed with the confidence that, surrounded by his pack of high-paid lawyers, no mere professor or their union could stand in his way.
We are resolved to fight this injustice, this evil. It is a David and Goliath battle, and we now need financial help. Resistance is futile, the Administration warned faculty, boasting they could defeat any lawsuit, fighting us in court to the very end armed with the resources they saved by not paying our salaries. But fight we have, despite lost salaries, already paying $60,000 in legal expenses from limited personal resources to cover attorney and court costs, as we have taken this battle to the Court of Common Pleas, the State Employment Review Board, and now the Supreme Court of Ohio. (12) Your contribution helps continue this battle against brutal injustice.
We fight for rightful reinstatement, and by extension, for the employment rights of faculty everywhere. Our careers have been damaged, and our families devastated. We are truly grateful for your help.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT--whether by donation, or by sharing this information with colleagues. This cause is bigger than us, but our battle starts here.
IN solidarity with faculty everywhere,
WE ARE:
Lingyun Liu, Ph.D. University of Washington. Associate Professor with Tenure, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Author of 2 patents, 40 articles, Women in Engineering Mentor, Reviewer for 40+ journals.
13 years at University of Akron.
Del Rey Loven, M.F.A. Maryland Institute College of Art. Professor with Tenure, Department of Art.
14 years at University of Akron.
Ernian Pan, Ph.D. University of Colorado, Boulder. Professor with tenure, Department of Civil Engineering. Fellow of ASCE & ASME; 2019 Outstanding Teacher, 2009 Outstanding Researcher.
18 years at University of Akron.
David Tokar, Ph.D. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Professor with Tenure, Department of Psychology.
27 years at University of Akron.
Douglas B. Woods, M.Acc., CPA. Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhood School of Management. Associate Professor with Tenure, Department of Business.
22 years at University of Akron.
Zhijun Yin, Ph.D. University of Cincinnati. Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics.
4 years at University of Akron.
Attorney for the plaintiffs: S. David Worhatch. https://www.worhatchlaw.com
Endnotes:
1. Sue Ramlo, “The University of Akron Hit List: Who Are We?”, Academe (blog), July 26, 2020,
https://academeblog.org/2020/07/26/the-university-of-akron-hit-list-who-are-we/
2. David Poliakoff. "University Of Akron’s ‘Budget Bloodbath’ And What The Latest Faculty Cuts Say About Its Commitment To Education," Forbes, July 31, 2020,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpoliakoff/2020/07/31/university-of-akrons-budget-bloodbath-and-what-the-latest-faculty-cuts-say-about-its-commitment-to-education/?sh=51efe0bc3453
3. Amelia Nierenberg and Adam Pasick, "Colleges Are Slashing Budgets: The pandemic has pushed higher education institutions to the brink,” New York Times, October 26, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/colleges-budget-cuts-finance.html?smid=em-share
4. 2020 Independent Audit of University of Akron Finances reveals $158M in reserves:
Rudy Fichtenbaum, "An Updated Analysis of the Financial Statements of The University of Akron Academic Years 2002-2019," Akron American Association of University Professors, July 2020, page 63,
https://akronaaup.org/app/uploads/2020/07/Akron-update-2014-19-2020.7.24.pdf
5. Report reveals $20 million University of Akron Budget Surplus for same year Administration falsely claimed need to supersede tenure and fire 97 faculty:
Jennifer Pignolet, “University of Akron Raising Wages Back to Pre-pandemic Levels Amid Anticipated Surplus,” Akron Beacon Journal, February 10, 2021,
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/02/10/university-akron-raising-wages-back-pre-pandemic-levels-amid-anticipated-surplus-higher-education/6704856002/
6. “Regents Give University CEOs More Power to Fire Employees,” USNews, January 21, 2021,
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/kansas/articles/2021-01-21/regents-give-university-ceos-more-power-to-fire-employees
7. Jessica Wong, “Open Legislative Season on the Faculty in Iowa and elsewhere,” Godblessusadeli.com (blog), February 7, 2021,
http://godblessusadeli.com/open-legislative-season-on-the-faculty-in-iowa-and-elsewhere.html
8. Erik Kelderman, “Why Would Iowa Want to Kill Tenure,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2021,
https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-would-iowa-want-to-kill-tenure
9. Ellen McClory, “Wright State Trustees Vote to Move Forward with Faculty Cuts,” Dayton Daily News, February 19, 2021,
https://www.journal-news.com/news/breaking-wright-state-trustees-vote-to-move-forward-with-faculty-cuts/P2T7IUROVRG45CVWFFAWBICGDI/
10. For example, School of Art at the University of Akron terminated 3 out of 26 full-time faculty. This included: a) the only non-white faculty member in the department with 30 years invested, tenured and full professor rank, and b) the eldest faculty member. 2 of the 3 were women, and 2 of the 3 were internationals. No performance review was involved nor implied, according to Senior Vice President Joe Urgo, in letters* to terminated faculty. The decisions, he wrote, were based on finances. *Urgo letter to Del Rey Loven, July 17, 2020.
11. Last working draft of new University of Akron Collective Bargaining Agreement, now ratified for 2021-27.
See Article 15, Section 2, (pdf page 48) for strike-through changes to retrenchment process.
https://akronaaup.org/app/uploads/2021/02/All-Tentative-Agreements-Without-Big-and-Little-A-or-MOUs.pdf
12. Case number and title, filed with Supreme Court of Ohio, Case Number 2020:1430, State ex rel. David M. Tokar, Ph.D., et al. v. State Employment Relations Board, et al. Original Action in Mandamus
Who we are: Lingyun Liu, Ph.D.; Del Rey Loven, M.F.A.; Ernian Pan, Ph.D.; David Tokar, Ph.D.; Douglas Woods, M.Acc.,CPA; Zhijun Yin, Ph.D. (details in section below) ATTORNEY: S. David Worhatch
Facts in our case:
On July 15, 2020 with no due process, no advance notice, and in violation of our legal employment rights and property rights, both contractual and Constitutional, the University of Akron began the wrongful and arbitrary termination of 97 full-time faculty. Targeted for termination was a disproportionate percentage of highly-experienced women, minorities, internationals, seniors, and even faculty with disabilities.(1) These discarded women and men, 80% with earned tenure, had faithfully served the university for a combined total of 1,600 years. This disgrace was led by an obscenely high-paid, first-time president, barely six months into his job. We, the six faculty represented here, are fighting back.
Forbes Magazine called this appalling mass faculty purge the “budget bloodbath” at Akron.(2) 1/5 of the full-time faculty were suddenly stripped of income, health insurance, tuition benefits for dependents, tenure, rank and seniority employment rights. We were abruptly ordered to clear out offices and turn in our computers, as our email accounts were shut down, cutting off communications with student advisees, professional contacts and research grants. Akron has set the new LOW STANDARD AND PRECEDENT for abuse of faculty rights. Our case has potential to set new precedents to protect faculty employment rights, faculty First Amendment rights, and academic freedom. This GoFundMe page is set up by the six faculty who are resolved to fight this injustice. All contributions are under the dual management of this GoFundMe page manager and Douglas B. Woods, CPA, and overseen by all six co-plaintiffs. Donations apply to attorney fees, court costs, and fees for expert testimony as needed.
Last October the New York Times reported that ONLY The University of Akron had gone to the unprecedented extreme of "superseding tenure" among universities trimming budgets in America.(3) Beyond this, Akron went on to devise a complete tenure-busting strategy which has been called “The Akron Model”. It employs a combination of brutal contract violations and public misinformation, built on a core of deception and abuse of power. Shared governance is not in its vocabulary.
In late spring of 2020 University of Akron's new president proclaimed a financial emergency so dire, that they must immediately eliminate 1/5 of the full-time faculty. This impending catastrophe was so enormous, he warned, that not just tenure needed to be set aside, but also the retrenchment process that the administration had agreed to in our contract. Even though faculty ranks had already been reduced by almost 200 positions through attrition and recent buyouts, a MASS PURGE OF FACULTY MUST HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY, THE NEW PRESIDENT INSISTED. Faculty must not be given the 12-18 months advance notice guaranteed by contract, their insurance must be cancelled NOW, and nobody must get severance pay. Also, he insisted, if any faculty wants their state-guaranteed pay for unused sick-leave (well over $10K for most of us), they will forced to first sign away their rights to sue the university.
Quickly UA administrators went to work, targeting with prejudice the most experienced, higher paid faculty, regardless of the professor's superior performance, tenure, rank, seniority or good enrollments. They created a vast hit list that included Distinguished Professors and professors who had been voted top researcher and top teacher in their departments. 80% on the hit list had earned tenure, and ALL would have been protected had retrenchment been followed. Summer 2020 became open season on faculty at The University of Akron, and tenured faculty were the prize trophies, as administrators were told they could purge ANY faculty member, but urged to target faculty with the highest salaries. Lest any professor might catch wind that their job was at risk, Deans and Chairs, and the AAUP Negotiating Team were forced to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, forced to shroud the hit list in secrecy, or face their own termination. No faculty member should be allowed know in advance that their name would be read among those whose sentences would be pronounced, at the July 15 meeting of the Board of Trustees.
In stark contrast to the president's claim of impending doom, a July 2020 independent audit (see link below) exposed reserve assets of $158,000,000 the administration was hiding. Only after the faculty terminations, did the administration admit to sitting on this resource, equivalent to 15 times the cost of retaining he 97 terminated faculty.(4) The auditor also disproved that "the only solution" to the supposed financial crisis would be the immediate mass-purge of faculty. For example even a small reduction in the Athletics budget could have saved all 97 faculty positions. The president and his team rejected this audit, as well as EVERY cost-saving alternative proposed by the AAUP Negotiating Team, resolutely demanding there be as many faculty terminations as possible. But most incriminating is the February 2021 report unveiling a $20M BUDGET SURPLUS FOR 2020-21, twice the amount it would have cost to retain all terminated faculty.(5) The "budget crisis," it now appears, was a misinformation scheme, and a smokescreen for the intentional decimation of tenured faculty ranks.
Hence there were reasons why the university refused the AAUP and auditor's June 2020 request for the latest 2020 budget files. The actual financials would have indicated that the University of Akron Administration intended to fire 1/5 of the full-time faculty not because they had to, but because they wanted to. By so doing they would demonstrate to the world how administrative power, unhinged from morality and accountability, can override tenure, toss aside any and all contract agreements, and arbitrarily terminate masses of faculty at will, all the while ridiculing faculty union objections. Like a malignant cancer, "the Akron Model" is a strategy to devour the hard-won employment rights of tenure, rank, seniority, and academic freedom; and like a cancer its nature is to spread....
In January 2021, the Kansas Board of Regents voted to implement their own version of a tenure-busting strategy at six Kansas pubic universities.(6)
As of February 2021 the Iowa legislature was considering two outrageous bills: one that will require Iowa faculty to be identified by political party affiliation,(7) and another to eliminate tenure altogether.(8)
On February 19, 2021 the Wright State University Board of Trustees (Ohio) were persuaded that budget conditions were so severe they must vote to terminate 113 faculty positions, even though they have a budget surplus of $7M! Similar to Akron's financial duplicity, when confronted, "the trustees said that (the) budget surplus had nothing to do with the board’s decision to cut faculty positions." (9)
Call it what you will, “The Akron Model” emboldens administrators to terminate with prejudice and without cause anyone they choose to target, regardless of tenure and job performance. It even facilitates unchecked discrimination against protected classes.(10) Having gotten away with these injustices, Akron's president has negotiated into the new Collective Bargaining Agreement a policy change that now gives him the power to initiate and enforce new faculty retrenchments, a power formerly invested in the Board of Trustees. (11)
Threats to tenure and academic freedom are not new. The alarming difference today is that all it took to open campus gates to ever-widening destruction, was for a single CEO inflated with the sheer authoritarian gall to trample every faculty employment right, armed with the confidence that, surrounded by his pack of high-paid lawyers, no mere professor or their union could stand in his way.
We are resolved to fight this injustice, this evil. It is a David and Goliath battle, and we now need financial help. Resistance is futile, the Administration warned faculty, boasting they could defeat any lawsuit, fighting us in court to the very end armed with the resources they saved by not paying our salaries. But fight we have, despite lost salaries, already paying $60,000 in legal expenses from limited personal resources to cover attorney and court costs, as we have taken this battle to the Court of Common Pleas, the State Employment Review Board, and now the Supreme Court of Ohio. (12) Your contribution helps continue this battle against brutal injustice.
We fight for rightful reinstatement, and by extension, for the employment rights of faculty everywhere. Our careers have been damaged, and our families devastated. We are truly grateful for your help.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT--whether by donation, or by sharing this information with colleagues. This cause is bigger than us, but our battle starts here.
IN solidarity with faculty everywhere,
WE ARE:
Lingyun Liu, Ph.D. University of Washington. Associate Professor with Tenure, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Author of 2 patents, 40 articles, Women in Engineering Mentor, Reviewer for 40+ journals.
13 years at University of Akron.
Del Rey Loven, M.F.A. Maryland Institute College of Art. Professor with Tenure, Department of Art.
14 years at University of Akron.
Ernian Pan, Ph.D. University of Colorado, Boulder. Professor with tenure, Department of Civil Engineering. Fellow of ASCE & ASME; 2019 Outstanding Teacher, 2009 Outstanding Researcher.
18 years at University of Akron.
David Tokar, Ph.D. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Professor with Tenure, Department of Psychology.
27 years at University of Akron.
Douglas B. Woods, M.Acc., CPA. Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhood School of Management. Associate Professor with Tenure, Department of Business.
22 years at University of Akron.
Zhijun Yin, Ph.D. University of Cincinnati. Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics.
4 years at University of Akron.
Attorney for the plaintiffs: S. David Worhatch. https://www.worhatchlaw.com
Endnotes:
1. Sue Ramlo, “The University of Akron Hit List: Who Are We?”, Academe (blog), July 26, 2020,
https://academeblog.org/2020/07/26/the-university-of-akron-hit-list-who-are-we/
2. David Poliakoff. "University Of Akron’s ‘Budget Bloodbath’ And What The Latest Faculty Cuts Say About Its Commitment To Education," Forbes, July 31, 2020,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpoliakoff/2020/07/31/university-of-akrons-budget-bloodbath-and-what-the-latest-faculty-cuts-say-about-its-commitment-to-education/?sh=51efe0bc3453
3. Amelia Nierenberg and Adam Pasick, "Colleges Are Slashing Budgets: The pandemic has pushed higher education institutions to the brink,” New York Times, October 26, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/colleges-budget-cuts-finance.html?smid=em-share
4. 2020 Independent Audit of University of Akron Finances reveals $158M in reserves:
Rudy Fichtenbaum, "An Updated Analysis of the Financial Statements of The University of Akron Academic Years 2002-2019," Akron American Association of University Professors, July 2020, page 63,
https://akronaaup.org/app/uploads/2020/07/Akron-update-2014-19-2020.7.24.pdf
5. Report reveals $20 million University of Akron Budget Surplus for same year Administration falsely claimed need to supersede tenure and fire 97 faculty:
Jennifer Pignolet, “University of Akron Raising Wages Back to Pre-pandemic Levels Amid Anticipated Surplus,” Akron Beacon Journal, February 10, 2021,
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/02/10/university-akron-raising-wages-back-pre-pandemic-levels-amid-anticipated-surplus-higher-education/6704856002/
6. “Regents Give University CEOs More Power to Fire Employees,” USNews, January 21, 2021,
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/kansas/articles/2021-01-21/regents-give-university-ceos-more-power-to-fire-employees
7. Jessica Wong, “Open Legislative Season on the Faculty in Iowa and elsewhere,” Godblessusadeli.com (blog), February 7, 2021,
http://godblessusadeli.com/open-legislative-season-on-the-faculty-in-iowa-and-elsewhere.html
8. Erik Kelderman, “Why Would Iowa Want to Kill Tenure,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2021,
https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-would-iowa-want-to-kill-tenure
9. Ellen McClory, “Wright State Trustees Vote to Move Forward with Faculty Cuts,” Dayton Daily News, February 19, 2021,
https://www.journal-news.com/news/breaking-wright-state-trustees-vote-to-move-forward-with-faculty-cuts/P2T7IUROVRG45CVWFFAWBICGDI/
10. For example, School of Art at the University of Akron terminated 3 out of 26 full-time faculty. This included: a) the only non-white faculty member in the department with 30 years invested, tenured and full professor rank, and b) the eldest faculty member. 2 of the 3 were women, and 2 of the 3 were internationals. No performance review was involved nor implied, according to Senior Vice President Joe Urgo, in letters* to terminated faculty. The decisions, he wrote, were based on finances. *Urgo letter to Del Rey Loven, July 17, 2020.
11. Last working draft of new University of Akron Collective Bargaining Agreement, now ratified for 2021-27.
See Article 15, Section 2, (pdf page 48) for strike-through changes to retrenchment process.
https://akronaaup.org/app/uploads/2021/02/All-Tentative-Agreements-Without-Big-and-Little-A-or-MOUs.pdf
12. Case number and title, filed with Supreme Court of Ohio, Case Number 2020:1430, State ex rel. David M. Tokar, Ph.D., et al. v. State Employment Relations Board, et al. Original Action in Mandamus
Organizer
Del Rey Loven
Organizer
Akron, OH
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