Of course, this absolves UT and its component institutions of any blame whatsoever, doesn't it? Why, it's the fault of the citizens of Texas, according to this theory, not anything that UT's administrators have done. What a self-serving little theory.Recruiting top-notch scientists to Texas has been difficult, Shine said, because of a perception in the outside world that Texas is unreceptive toward such science-related issues as evolution and climate change.
An inconvenient truth concerning the global warming and evolution excuses, however, is that there is a little more to the story. UT has taken action against faculty that has gotten national attention. Perhaps the most visible of these actions involved the reduction in force the UT system sanctioned and the UTMB administration carried out against faculty in 2008, recently resulting in a censure from the AAUP. Utterly failing to involve faculty governance in the process except as window dressing toward the end, UTMB administration employed a stacked RIF selection committee and a stacked RIF appeals committee to carry out its agenda. On average, the selection committee, which included the Provost's neighbor and a disproportionate number of people from the Provost's former department before his promotion, had about eight minutes to consider the careers of faculty being considered for a cut. It is impossible to digest a substantial curriculum vita in only eight minutes, much less the volumes of other information that these faculty generated throughout their careers. Of course faculty names had been presented to the committee by chairs, who had largely already made the decisions.
As for the RIF appeals committee, it was uniformly staffed with management personnel who also held faculty appointments. (UTMB President David Callender holds a faculty appointment.) This committee only upheld about three appeals, and one successful appellant's contract was not renewed a month later, making the whole process meaningless for him.
Then there are the well-publicized cases in which UT has crushed dissent, such as Dr. Larry Gentilello's concerns that UT Southwestern was not in conformance with Medicare rules. He was the chair of a department until he made his concerns known to UT Southwestern management (not a third party), and suddenly found himself demoted and his pay cut. (More about UT Southwestern and its Medicare problems can be found on the blog UT Southwestern and Parkland Hospital Stories. (See additional stories concerning this in the Zemanta box below.) Dr. Gentilello's case is still under way and on appeal right now.
Click on the highlighted text to read about similar cases involving Dr. Robert Klebe of UTHSC San Antonio, and Dr. Naiel Nassar, yet another unfortunate instance occurring at UT Southwestern. Dr. Klebe's case is still ongoing with UT appealing to the Fifth Circuit in May after having lost two separate jury awards in favor of Doctor Klebe of $900,000 and $400,000, and UT has vowed to appeal Doctor Nasser's case after a jury awarded him $3.6 million dollars.
No, there's more than evolution and global warming going on here. UT needs to stop looking at Charles Darwin and Al Gore and start looking in the mirror for the root of its problems. Of course, all that hot air accompanying its excuses may well be contributing to global warming.
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