Monday, May 23, 2011

“How Does It Feel To Be Famous?”

If the question “what was the most infamous incident in the early years of the College?” is asked to older faculty they will, without much hesitation, respond with two names: (1) the Candace Falk trial and (2) the Barense nude teaching class. The former seemed important then – Falk had asked Army recruiters to leave the campus; it was a very mild act of civil disobedience. They complied and Falk was later charged and brought before the Campus Hearing Board where she was acquitted. It was an early rejection of the Viet Nam war and became a legend almost immediately.

The Barense case was, and is, far more serious and no less legendary. The popular myth has been that Barense held a session of a class he was teaching at his home in the nude. Though student disrobing was voluntary as was that particular class and it was held at Barense’s home, he was not, subsequently, retained. It would seem to be a classic violation of his academic freedom and that is the way it has been perceived for 40 years.

Recently, I was asked to write a short statement about academic freedom at Stockton and in thinking about the issue, I began to gather facts about Barense and the case. It is time, I submit, that those facts be reviewed and made public. There is no hidden scandal or villain in this case – exactly – but there are issues that in a different time would be critical to understand.

The Environment

It is necessary to examine the environment of the early College. When the College opened in 1971 there were no casinos and Atlantic City – once THE playground of the eastern part of the US – had fallen on very bad times. The largest employer was the FAA Tech Center (NAFEC). The urban blight of Atlantic City had spread throughout the eastern part of the county. Everything about the area was unattractive and unproductive.

There was also considerable distrust of the College. The public seemed torn between pleasure at having a major institution of higher education dropped in its lap and genuine distrust about what its intentions were. Carl McIntyre’s protest of the College claiming that it supported and taught revolutionary communism was real though slightly ridiculous. While his congregation was tiny, his views were certainly shared by many in the area.

Once the College had moved to the present campus in 1972, there seemed to be constant offenses to the popular culture. There was bra burning at the quintessential American event – the Miss America Pageant. There were class trips to cut sugar cane in Communist Nicaragua and to DC to protest the Viet Nam war. There were two incidents that must have also concerned the local community: a photographer took pictures of nude sunbathing at Lake Pam and there were pictures taken of the “clothing optional” sauna below the I-Wing gym.

South Jersey was conservative, religious, insulated, rural and undeveloped. It was into this environment that Jack Barense stepped when he took a teaching job here in 1972.

Why Barense Was Hired In the Management Sciences Division

Wes Tilley – the first VP of Academic Affairs – did not like business schools and the courses they offered. In Tilley’s view, they were anti-liberal arts and anti-humanities and that was sufficient for him to distrust them.

This is one of the reasons why the Management Sciences dean was not hired when the other deans were (summer 1970); indeed, that dean was hired in January of 1971 -- well after the work, the collaboration and a resultant community was well founded by the other four deans.

Further, Tilley specifically looked for candidates who had a strong background in the humanities and strong intentions to mold business majors into broadly educated graduates.

One decision – and this is the very root of this whole issue – was to insist on hiring a philosopher to teach in the management programs. Tilley’s argument was that such a teacher could teach ethics, logic, decision-making and leadership but from a philosophical perspective. As it happened, Barense was that philosopher.

In hindsight, it would have been incredibly better to have hired Barense in the Philosophy Program and then to have asked him to teach courses for management and business.

But that wasn’t what was done. The fact that there was a philosopher in the Management Sciences division becomes part of the argument which was used against Barense a year or so after his arrival. More on this later.

The Basic Facts

It is important, at this point, to understand the fundamental facts of what happened. In the spring of 1974, Jack Barense taught two sections of a General Studies course – GS3240 Workshop in Sexism. This course was, essentially, a re-designed course he had previously taught – GS 3321 Sexism as a Social Problem. It is unclear whether his wife, Diane, co-taught the course, participated in the design of the course, was paid for her efforts or what, exactly, her role was.

Barense described the focus of both courses in a statement to Robert Helsabeck dated July 26, 1974. Sexism As a Social Problem “was traditionally academic in that the focus was on various sociological, political, psychological, and anthropological studies of sexism.” The subsequent course – Workshop In Sexism – “was designed to focus on those elements of Sexism As a Social Problem which seemed to most strongly motivate most of the participants to think critically about sexism; namely, personal examinations of sexism in their own lives.”

These classes had recommended readings though “academic materials were only used for background reference, seldom as the focus of discussion. It was clear that much reading was done by some participants, little by others.” Nowhere that I could find in the documents is there any mention of tests or papers.

Sequence of Courses

Spring – 1973         GS3321 - Sexism As A Social Problem
Fall – 1973             GS3321 - Sexism As A Social Problem
Spring – 1974        GS3240 - Workshop On Sexism
Fall – 1974            GS3240 - Workshop On Sexism

Nudity

It needs to be clear that Barense had had nude sessions in each of these courses. He mentions in a memo to John Rickert – Dean of Management Sciences (10-31-1974) that his class had visited a local nudist camp with the class in the Spring of 1973. Fourteen members of that class disrobed. He does not mention whether or not nude sessions were held in the Fall 1973 class; given his commitment to the technique one can easily assume there were.

There were two sections of the class in the Spring of 1974 and in both nudity was employed. Indeed, in one section, a student’s mother participated but the daughter didn’t. This group did not again disrobe because “the good feelings of the nude participants were, they reported, spoiled by the non-participants.” The other section was so pleased by the experience that they met a number of times in the nude.

As I have mentioned, there were two contemporary incidents of nudity at Stockton; they were photos taken at Lake Pam (Lake Pam is a small pond on campus with a “nude” beach) and in the sauna under the gym.

While certainly not a national movement, there were frequent episodes of public nudity in the late 1960s to early 1970s. There were streakers at major athletic or musical events; there was considerable nudity at Woodstock in 1969 and there was some nudity in college drama.


The Unofficial Story

Barense maintained, after the start of the grievance process, that there were two versions of the administration’s narrative: the official version and the unofficial version.

Barense, in a memo to the College Review Board dated December 1, 1974, writes that the incident began on October 31, 1974 when he was pulled from his class to meet with John Rickert. At that meeting, Rickert reported that  “Vice President Thrombley was furious over reports that I had used nude exercises…” and that “he was taking a lot of heat on this one.” Barense’s response was that he would write an explanation for Rickert but the dean responded by predicting “that it would not mollify Woody.”

There is an interesting time shift in all of this. First the class with the nude session that had triggered the administrative response was held in the Spring of 1974 – some six months before the talk with Rickert in October. Also, Robert Helsabeck’s request for information about the course came in late July of 1974 – some three months before the talk with Rickert. It is difficult not to conclude that the administration knew about the nude sessions but had done nothing about them until October. It’s possible that Thrombley had not been pressured by someone off campus until October when he “took a lot of heat”. I believe that it is outside pressure that began the process of rejecting Barense. Had only a few on campus known about the nudity – as it seems they did all through the Spring and Summer of 1974 – not much would have happened. But pressure from the outside couldn’t be ignored so Thrombley moved aggressively to demand it stop.

Once Thrombley had ordered Rickert to direct Barense to cease the nude sessions and to move the class back on campus – Barense ultimately agreed to this demand – in a memo from Rickert to Barense dated November 1, 1974 it seemed that the issue was settled.

Barense signaled his compliance to Thrombley’s demands in a letter dated November 15, 1974 and, there, he also announced his intention to begin grievance procedures.

The Official Story

With the filing of the grievance the problem becomes one for the administration. Barense claimed that in a meeting with Thrombley on November 7, 1974, the latter admitted that a small, intimate class might be better in a home and that Thrombley was willing to allow meetings there but that Barense could not use nude exercises. But in a memo from Thrombley dated November 11, 1974 Thrombley ordered Barense to conduct the class on campus and not to use nude exercises.

At this point the evaluation process had begun and on November 6, 1974, the Faculty Review Committee voted 8 to 1 to recommend reappointment. On November 13, 1974 John Rickert’s recommendations were sent to Thrombley but they were returned to Rickert a couple of days later “for corrections”. Rickert’s first evaluation was positive recommending Barense for reappointment. By November 20, 1974, Rickert recommended that Barense NOT be reappointed.

Thrombley submitted his recommendations to President Bjork on the November 20, 1974 as well including recommending that Barense not be reappointed.

Rickert’s Claim

In late June and early July, 1975 at an arbitration hearing, Barense, under oath, gave the following as testimony:

I was very surprised when Dean Rickert said that he had not himself recommended me for retention. He said that he had intended to do so; that he very much wanted to do so but that Vice-President Thrombley had told him that if he did this he would reverse him; that the Vice-President would reverse Dean Rickert, and in addition would put
 some dirty information into my file. Dean Rickert
 said that he himself felt that he could put a negative recommendation into my file which would give 
just institutional reasons and be able then to
 give me a very positive recommendation for a position elsewhere, and he thought he was doing me a
 favor by submitting to the pressure from the Vice
 President. He said, however, he didn't even --
well, he said that his original recommendation
 which had very little negative information into 
which it just gave institutional priorities of 
need for accountants over people with my schooling.
 He said that that memo which was sent back to him --
that original recommendation was sent back to him 
on the 15th and he said not by accident on the 15th,
 that being the day that I filed my grievance
 together with an angry memo, handwritten memo, from 
the Vice President -- 'Look, you got to get more 
negative stuff on Barense. This isn't strong 
enough and if you don't I'm still going to put 
in a negative information myself into his file.'

So, the Dean said he then wrote a second letter 
of recommendation, not making it clear whether
 he had taken the first one out or whether the Vice
President had taken the first one out, and in this 
he said, *Well, I really couldn't come up with any 
additional negative information of any substance.'...

Dean Rickert said that he probably made a mistake in 
submitting to the pressures of the Vice President;
 that I probably would have a strong case with a
 grievance filed, but that he said I was indeed a
 very clever fellow. I could probably find in the
 record enough information to undo whatever harm he
 had done me in this respect...

He did say that, of course, the whole thing was a result of having filed the grievance of the Workshop 
having used the nude exercises and of having filed
 a grievance trying to protect my right to use those
 in the future. He also did say that he would deny
 everything that he was telling me outside that room."


If true, this is an astounding report. First of all, it is a violation of the AFT Agreement where Article VI, Section I states that “no reprisal of any kind shall be taken against any participant in this grievance procedure by reason of proper participation in such procedure”. It seems clear today that, again if the Rickert remarks are true, Thrombley’s anger resulting from Barense’s grievance is being used against Barense’s reappointment. Indeed, John Searight, Chairman of the SFT Grievance Committee, says this in a letter to President Bjork dated December 16, 1974.

In addition, Searight states that in spite of the requirement that all documents put into a faculty evaluation file have to be copied to the faculty member, neither the first positive recommendation nor the second negative recommendation were sent to Barense.

Saying that not retaining Barense is really helping him sounds like something a person might concoct when caught between a rock and a hard place.

Finally, Thrombley’s insistence that Rickert must find “more negative stuff” speaks volumes about Thrombley’s anger and desire to be rid of Barense.

The Telephone Call

Rickert states in the second, negative recommendation – dated November 18, 1974 – that he had spoken with Barense’s dissertation director at the University of Wisconsin to ascertain what progress Barense was making, if any, towards completing his dissertation and earning a Ph.D. It is certainly acceptable for a Dean to put pressure on a faculty to complete a degree. The curious issue here, however, is that there is NO requirement that a faculty have a Ph.D. to be retained. A faculty only needs a higher degree to be granted tenure which, of course, Barense was not seeking.

Further, this seems like the kind of “negative stuff” that Thrombley asked Rickert to find. The “negative stuff” is – first paragraph – that “In a period of scarce resources, we cannot afford to continue to hold a position that does not maximize the needs in course work for the Management Sciences Division.” In the second paragraph, Barense is not to be retained because he hasn’t finished his degree. In the fifth paragraph, Barense is unsatisfactory because he hasn’t given promised guest lectures. Finally, in the sixth paragraph, Barense did not “follow through with these suggestions (some sort of suggestions made before a Faculty Review meeting) or even his own suggestions.”

Rickert claims in this same letter that “earlier in the month [November] he had placed a call to Barense’s dissertation director. But going through College phone records, Barense found that the call had been made on November 20, 1974, two days AFTER the recommendation not to retain had been written and placed in Barense’s file!

It seems clear, though it is impossible to prove with documents, that Rickert first wrote a positive letter. Under intense pressure from Thrombley, he was forced to secretly retract that letter and write another filled with “negative stuff”.

When asked, under oath in July of 1975, about the discrepancy between the dates of the telephone call Rickert “offered no explanation ( and no satisfactory explanation on cross examination) for the patently false statement, ‘according to a conversation…earlier this month’.”

The Missing Document

John Rickert wrote his initial, positive recommendation on November 13, 1974 but Thrombley had returned it to him “along with several other documents…being not in good form and frankly rather sloppy.” When asked by the Arbitrator in July of 1975, Rickert replied that “Those documents are still in existence for all the different people [faculty]. There were a few, you know, kept on each person.”

The importance of this November 13th recommendation cannot be overstated. Having it would show precisely what Rickert’s initial evaluation of Barense had been and compared to the later negative recommendation would have implicated both Rickert and Thrombley in a conspiracy to change a document supposed to have been kept secure in the file.

Thus the Arbitrator agreed to allow a search for the documents during one lunch recess. After the recess, the testimony records the exchange between the Arbitrator and Dean Rickert:

“Arbitrator: …Dr. Rickert informed us that the document which was to be produced at the end of the recess was, in his mind, the final recommendation by him and not as was intended by the Arbitrator the November 13th recommendation, and that the November 13th recommendation is no longer in existence.”

Not only had the document been destroyed but, though Rickert initially claimed that he was thinking of the November 13th version, after the recess he claimed that the version he meant as still existing was the November 18th version and that the earlier version had been destroyed.
There was, therefore, no means of proving that the original document had existed – except for Barense’s claim – and that it had been changed from positive to negative most likely under Thrombley’s direction.

Penultimate Comments

Throughout the grievance process – the Agreement lists four distinct steps – the whole issue of academic freedom had been lost in favor of more provable claims that the process of reappointment had been violated. For six months the claims and counter-claims droned on. At each stage of the grievance process, the final decisions made by President Bjork were negative: Barense was not to be reappointed. Indeed, that final decision could only be made by Bjork unless the whole struggle ended in the courts. Even the final Arbitrator’s July 1975 opinion could only recommend  an ad hoc committee to re-examine the long, sad struggle.

Jack Barense had moved on. For a time he worked with the ACLU in New Jersey and then went to law school earning a JD so he could practice public defender law. Sadly, Jack Barense died in 2002. I am not aware that he ever taught again.

What About Academic Freedom?

If we lived in a dictatorship or in a society of robots, we would have little need for statements about academic freedom. In such a society, each of us would teach what we were told to teach. In such societies, literature tells us, there is always some individual, some single entity who refuses the directions and demands of the group. This is true in “1984” and in “I, Robot”.

There are, therefore, two parts to any concept of academic freedom. The first has to do with the degree of restrictions laid on the individual by the group. The second has to do with the individual and how she responds to the directions of that group. Thus, the 1940 statement of the AAUP addresses itself to both parties. In that statement, the demands that the group offer and support academic freedom for the individual is clearly stated. But, also clearly stated, is the responsibility of the individual in expressing that academic freedom.

The fundamental, underlying principle in any discussion of academic freedom – and this is where all discussions must start -- must be, as the 1940 statement makes clear, that “the common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition”. If all parties do not agree with this fundamental principle that any discussion of academic freedom will be nearly impossible to undertake.

In an already established college, the dimensions and qualities of the “free search for truth” are well-known, have been thoroughly tested and are part of the institutional culture. Thus, if I had been hired as a new faculty in an established college, I would have been given already written syllabi with established texts and assignments to teach. After a few years of obedient service, I would have been allowed, perhaps, to select my preferred texts and to make my designed assignments. Eventually as I rose through the ranks, I would have been allowed to design whole courses as long as they fit into departmental curricula.

Stockton, however, was in the unique position of having the new faculty design and implement the curricula considered, by them, to be appropriate and relevant to themselves and to their students.  In a very real way, they designed the institution in which they were going to teach. They became both the group and the individuals in that group.

In 1970, both the administration and the faculty understood that the faculty brought with them appropriate professional goals and that those goals would be realized in individual, program curricula. For example, the founding Dean of Arts and Humanities assumed that his literature faculty knew how to construct a curriculum appropriate to the field of literature and one which could stand the scrutiny of other departments of literature in other colleges. In other words, he felt assured that his faculty knew what the “free search for truth” meant for teachers of literature and that they would produce a curriculum that would manifest that search.

This assumption was true across the college and across all disciplines. We all understood that the faculty would create programs of learning that were like most other programs of learning in other institutions.

My point in this, is to assert that the “free search for truth” was well understood, well implemented and defensible at Stockton in 1970. There was no need –– nor was there any intention –– for the administration to create curricula before the faculty had input. So, the possibility of limiting the faculties “free search for truth” was never considered. We wanted, and trusted, the faculty to create their own curricula.

It was in the area of “free exposition” that problems occurred. There is no doubt that history had “set us up for conflict”. First of all, was the revolution of the 1960s going on in America which by 1970 had spilled over into academia. In addition, Stockton hired the youngest faculty in the state. These young men and women were increasingly resistant to older, restrictive power arrangements. Also, we had presented the new college as being genuinely new. Faculty were attracted to Stockton solely for that reason. Finally, old definitions of what teaching was and the style in which it was done were being roundly rejected.

It was certainly clear to the founding administration that the rules of power, the content of the curricula and the relationships between faculty and students were going to be tested.

It didn’t help that we opened in a derelict hotel in Atlantic City. There was very little about us that look like, sounded like or felt like a traditional college. Given all of this, one might expect that Stockton was a hotbed of controversy over academic freedom. One might expect that a restrictive administration would be constantly in conflict with the permissive faculty teaching radical social, political, cultural ideas to unsuspecting, first-generation college students.  If one assumed that he would be wrong. Most courses and most teachers taught traditional material in generally traditional ways.

I’ve included this sad case at this point because it seems, in hindsight, to be a classic incident of the threat to academic freedom. The teacher was free to design the course as he saw fit. The administration seems to have seen the incident as an example of bad judgment, threatening the wider reputation of the college in the community and against the values and mores of the larger society.

Indeed, the college had been featured in the local press as supportive of a nudist beach at Lake Pam and a clothes-optional sauna in the gym. The wider community had condemned the college for these incidents so the college was especially sensitive to the nude encounter.

In spite of the fact that the panel did not conclude that academic freedom had been violated, it does seem to be a classic confrontation. The teacher designed the course to include various learning experiences. The administration saw the incident as beyond the pale of acceptable pedagogy and, therefore, a threat to the whole institution.

Stockton has been fortunate (this is, I suggest, due to its newness) in not having many confrontations over academic freedom. There is a long history now of faculty determining what is pedagogically appropriate and of designing courses that include those experiences. But, and understanding this is critical, there are lines which, if crossed, may well produce a confrontation. Once again, all of this supports the principles stated in the 1940 statement.

I believe that the insistence of the 1940 statement that there be a balance between an individual’s opinion and the wider, traditional search for the truth is vital and critically necessary for democracy to exist. We must be permitted to express our beliefs but we also must be prepared to accept the consequences of that expression. That balance is absolutely essential in an institution of higher learning.