University Times

This week, the University Senate office notified Keith McDuffie of the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures that he has been elected Senate president for the 1995-96 academic year.

Two weeks ago, McDuffie joined the United Faculty, the organization that has been trying since the early 1980s to unionize Pitt faculty.

While many people at the University see collective bargaining and the Senate system as enjoying the same affinity as cobras and mongooses, McDuffie does not share that view.

"I don't feel they [the Senate and a faculty union] would need to oppose each other in any way," he said. "Although I have some reservations about a third party negotiating contracts between the University administration and the faculty, my hope is that that third party would be controlled by the people it would represent: the faculty. The Senate might even play a role in seeing to that." Some Senate leaders, including outgoing president James Holland, have expressed mixed feelings, at best, about faculty unionization — preferring the Senate's "shared governance" system with all its imperfections (above all, the fact that Senate resolutions are not binding on the administration) to a union system they view as being inflexible, uncollegial and out of place in academia.

"For many years, I felt that way myself," McDuffie said. "I believed unionization might standardize everything and reduce teaching and research to the lowest common denominator. I understand the feeling that faculty are not laborers in the field and have no business forming a union. But, in fact, we are laborers in the field and we ought not to kid ourselves about it." According to McDuffie, the admin-istration's recent decision to eliminate Health-America and make Blue Cross the sole provider of Pitt employee medical insurance should have killed any illusions faculty had about their clout within the University.

"Despite what the chancellor has said, I think it's pretty obvious that the decision to go with a Blue Cross monopoly was made to benefit UPMC (the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) and that the decision had been made well before faculty and staff were given the opportunity to express their opinions," McDuffie said.

"This wasn't the first time faculty were dealt with as if we aren't capable of making intelligent, adult decisions, having been given all the options and information available. I think we are capable [of making such decisions]. I think we have to be dealt with that way." McDuffie said that one of his chief goals as Senate president will be to push for closer cooperation among faculty and Pitt's administration and trustees. On the Senate's part, that may mean faculty will have to resist indulging in the colorful, anti-administration rhetoric that has enlivened meetings of Faculty Assembly and Senate Council — as well as the front pages of Pittsburgh newspapers — in recent years, he said. As for administrators and trustees, both groups will have to accept that faculty "must have a real say in how the University is operated. Faculty and staff are Pitt's most valuable resources, and we have to be treated that way," McDuffie said.

"I don't think we can have top-down, executive-type decisions being made here and be a major research university. Maybe that's how decisions have to be made at the medical center, and if that's the case, maybe UPMC will have to become more separate from the rest of the University. That remains to be seen." But if the University community does not pull together and minimize the internal conflicts and bad press that have plagued Pitt during the 1990s, the enemies of higher education will continue to chip away at the University, according to McDuffie.

"We have a lot of enemies out there," McDuffie continued, "people who don't understand or value the mission of a research university like Pitt, people like [state Rep. John] Lawless, who wants to cut [faculty and staff] benefits and dictate how many hours faculty should spend in the classroom. He can build on a lot of sentiment against Pitt that's built up among the general public in recent years." See state budget story beginning on page 1.

"Faculty can help to improve the University's image," said McDuffie. "If we don't do it, no one outside the University will. I think the media tend to look for the worst things to report about us." McDuffie's previous experience as a Senate officer was a term as vice president during the 1985-86 academic year. In subsequent years, some of his colleagues urged him to run for president. But one thing after another conspired against his seeking an office that previous Senate presidents have described as a fulltime job in itself.

There was McDuffie's stint as administrative dean of Semester at Sea, followed by a sabbatical. There were his ongoing duties as a full professor and chairperson of the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and as editor of Revista Iberoamericana, an international journal published at Pitt.

Finally, this spring, his schedule cleared to the point that he could nominate himself for the Senate presidency. He won in a race against two incumbent officers. See election story on page 1.

"Now that I'm not chairing the department anymore, and now with the turnover in the chancellor's office and with a new chairman of the Board of Trustees taking office this week, it seemed like it might be a good time for me to do it" (run for Senate president), McDuffie said. A newly recruited professor in McDuffie's department will replace him as editor of the quarterly Revista Ibero-americana, maybe as early as this summer, McDuffie added.

"I don't have any detailed agenda at this point," McDuffie said, but he said he plans to spend a lot of time consulting with Senate committee chairpersons and the Senate's last two presidents, James Holland and Richard Tobias, among others in the University community.

— Bruce Steele