text version

David Smith suggested a text version due to problems with the HTML format
that I previously sent.  He also suggested circulating far and wide.  I
agree.

elson

“USAO uber alles”:  A Leftist Professor’s Experience at a Bible Belt College
by Elson E. Boles, Ph.D.

Last fall, 2000, a law firm retained by the Oklahoma Federation of Teachers
on my behalf informed John Feaver, the president of the University of
Science and Arts of Oklahoma since mid-2000, that if an agreement was not
reached with me there existed several causes of action against the
university and individual faculty and staff.  The causes centered on
academic and political oppression and slander with the intent to have me
dismissed in December 2000.  The law firm obtained letters from faculty who
had already requested the ACLU's aid and who declared they would provide
full support for me in court.  The firm also obtained letters and an
affidavit from students exposing lies and slander spread by Dr. Huguenin and
Dr. Shafer, and fabrications of student testimony by Mr. Terry Winn,
Vice-President of Academic Affairs.  But last December, Feaver and I signed
a written agreement that headed off lawsuits.  People should know what
happened.

Community intolerance of political-academic freedom happens often in Bible
Belt Oklahoma.  In a 1995 article published in Freethought Today, Professor
William Zellner, formerly of East Central University, described intense
institutional discrimination he and his family experienced in Ada, Oklahoma.
After it was revealed in a local newspaper that Zellner is an atheist, his
car was vandalized, he began getting damning notes from students,
threatening telephone calls at home, and an Apostolic church made buttons
which read, I am praying for Dr. Zellner. Then the situation got worse: his
two children, six and nine at the time, were shunned at school and beaten by
Baptist kids. The family car was keyed daily and the family received threats
of violence.

Intolerance within a public university may not be as vulgar as intolerance
within a small community, but it is more ominous.  The closest my experience
comes to Zellner’s is when some students vandalized a large sidewalk
portrait of me.  Drawn by a progressive USAO art student for a contest with
the caption, “Casualty of Academic Oppression,” the vandals painted horns, a
long goatee and wrote “Satan” on it.   It would be funny if it did not
reflect the possibility that some USAO students, like their counterparts at
East Central, might actually believe I’m satanic because I am progressive.

Universities are intended to be special places that cultivate free thought
and expression.  They are not to be run like corporations where individual
freedom takes second place to maximizing cooperation among employees for
increased profit.  Reducing or avoiding political-academic dispute among the
faculty members of a university is not a goal.  In fact, it’s a bad idea.
Critique and disputation are what drive a good university’s research or
teaching goals; they are also expressions of democracy and free speech.
Like the institutions of a democratic state, as my colleague Professor
Savage wrote, “conflict…is not to be avoided as something bad…democracies
[are characterized] by the noise and activity of politics.”

Heated disputes over academic issues may become personal.  All disputes are
personal in some sense, for to challenge an idea is to challenge a person’s
idea.  Faculty members may respond with dissatisfaction, insecurity, or even
hate.  However, personal animosities generated from political-academic
disputes should never be reduced to issues of collegiality.  For if this
happens and a colleague is pressured, censured, or dismissed, then
collegiality is achieved by oppressing political and academic freedom.

This and worse happened at USAO.  Claims of non-collegiality by some faculty
not only cloaked political suppression, but were based on lies and slander
by a few disgruntled persons whose enmity arose precisely from academic
challenges and political activism.  The mordant part of the title, "USAO
uber alles," comes from an email that Dr. Paul Cherulnik, psychology, sent
to faculty member Ingrid Shafer, an instructor from Germany here since the
late 1960s.  She, along with young history instructor, Sanders Huguenin, was
instrumental in having me fired.  Shafer’s reasons for my dismissal are
transparently political.  She suggests that I’m an “anti-establishment
revolutionary” and that my “dogma” is a threat to (her vision of) the
university.  Shafer’s political diatribe against me (below) stemmed from my
criticism of an Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) class.

Huguenin likewise spread lies about me – that I suffer from “episodic
paranoia,” that I threw a podium in a class, that I was “heavy-handed” with
students.  Huguenin’s animosity, which grew from our petty academic disputes
while team teaching in Spring 2000, motivated him to recklessly distribute
slander which he posed as fact.  He helped organize students to make
complaints about me, however downright false or trivial, in order to
convince others that I should be dismissed (below).  Shafer and Huguenin
even went so far as to get David Newcomb, the sociology instructor I
replaced who left to teach at a military acadamy in New Mexico, to join
their efforts.

Cherulnik summed up the purge this way: “Dr. Boles has been the victim of a
backstage attack by some of his colleagues, led by Dr. Ingrid Shafer and Dr.
Sandy Huguenin and abetted by some administrators whose responsibilities do
not include academics, some faculty who hardly know Dr. Boles, and,
apparently, one ex-faculty member, Dr. David Newcomb. Dr. Boles’ leftist
politics are one reason, as Dr. Savage pointed out.  But more important is
Dr. Boles attempt to influence the content of the IDS courses he has
team-taught with Dr. Shafer and Dr. Huguenin.”

HUGUENIN TO SAVAGE: THE PURGE "HAS TO COME FROM BELOW"

By “leftist politics” Dr. Savage referred to the importance of the
administration’s role in the purge.  President Feaver received phone call(s)
of complaint by local officials after I joined a student protest downtown on
August 1, 2000 against the arrest and handcuffing of elementary kids for
minor infractions.  The children of three of my students had been victims.
USAO is a small conservative liberal arts "university" in small conservative
blue-collar town of 15,000, Chickasha, located about 40 miles south of
Oklahoma City.

The day after Feaver received the phone call(s), news spread on campus that
the administration was furious; a professional staff member told Savage this
as well.

The next evening, on Aug. 3, Dr. Savage overheard part of a conversation
between David Mayes, the Director of Student Services, and Huguenin while
walking past Huguenin’s office.  Apparently they were talking about plans
for my dismissal.  When they saw Savage pass by they stopped talking
abruptly.

When Huguenin approached Savage on the first day that classes began in Fall
2000, as he walked office to office soliciting faculty support for my purge,
Savage refused and said he was concerned about administration involvement.
Huguenin blurted out, "Oh no, they told us it has to come from below. Mayes
isn’t out to get Boles."

That was a revealing comment because Mayes was not mentioned in the
conversation to that point.  By referring to Mayes out of the blue, Huguenin
implied that Savage did hear too much of the conversation between himself
and Mayes.  And by clarifying that he was advised by the administration that
the purge should “come from below,” Huguenin implied that the administration
wished to avoid exposing its own political motivations.  Thus Savage wrote
in the campus paper, “Supposedly he will not be fired because local
community leaders were angry about the protest and are pressuring the
Administration.”  Those political motivations also stemmed from the
complaint I made to Feaver regarding the involvement of David Mayes and
Frank Ohletoint, Huguenin’s student and then-Vice-President of the Student
Senate (below).

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

David Newcomb left suddenly in mid-1999 to teach at a military academy in
New Mexico and I was hired to replace him.  After returning to the US with
my partner and our child after six years of research in Japan and Hong Kong,
I took the first offer that came along -- USAO.  That year, campus politics
became lively after a critical mass of progressive professors was hired --
inadvertently it seems.  Savage, Long (economics) and myself (sociology),
joined Cherulnik and about twenty or so active students.

Conservative students, faculty, and administrators obstructed the new
faculty and student activism and academic freedom on more occasions than we
care to remember.  The struggle between progressive and conservative
students began when Zack Roper (Republican) President of the Student Senate,
and Ohletoint, opposed sociology students’ request to create a democracy
board.  Conservative faculty, including Ingrid Shafer, also opposed the
democracy board.

In mid-October 2000, Roper and Frank Ohletoint ousted left political groups
from the Student Senate while the administration began to censor campus
email to prevent anonymous complaints from students to faculty.  There had
been no abuse of the faculty list serve.   We asked ourselves, “What is the
administration protecting us faculty from?”

This semester, when students requested to print a notice about
Sodexho-Marriott, the campus food service provider, in a paid-for space in
the campus newspaper, the paper’s Advisor, Randy Talley, refused to print
it.  I called Talley to confirm this, and he did, stating that the
university could be sued -- an outrageous excuse.

Meanwhile, servile faculty barnacles proclaimed that “USAO couldn’t be more
open,” that “expelling a few students for obstructing university business
while protesting does not necessarily mean that freedom is being repressed,”
and that USAO “tolerates a wide variety of unconventional activity,” as
Professor Darryel Reigh stated in a campus paper article.

Another example of USAO “tolerance”: a female drama student complained about
the Victorian-like censorship by the administration of the word "Vagina"
(reduced to “V”) on the main campus marquee and direction posters that were
supposed to advertise the “The Vagina Monologues.”  The dark irony is that
the conspicuous title was intended to bring attention to a play designed to
raise awareness of patriarchy and women’s issues.  Then numerous people
witnessed Randy Talley chastising the student for her complaint which was
written into the play program.  Equally ironic, that week Darryel Reigh
exclaimed to all faculty by email how great the play was, as if to confirm
his statement about USAO openness.  But of course, he made no mention of the
censorship of the play’s title, and probably didn't even notice.

The administration’s bias in favor of servile Student Senate leaders became
obvious and blatant.  Immediately after progressive students informed the
Vice-President of Academic Affairs, Terry Winn, that they were gathering
signatures to impeach Roper, he made numerous phone calls throughout the
campus in search of Roper and left messages to warn him.  Students charged
that Roper and Ohletoint had disregarded procedures; that they failed to
hold elections for positions, did not follow election procedures for office
positions, and did not make copies of the constitution available for
students to check if procedures were being followed.  The constitution “was
lost”, Roper claimed.  The Administration said it found nothing awry.  And
then administrators threatened progressive students with expulsion for
protesting against corruption and favoritism in student government.

Progressive faculty took these developments seriously.  Dr. Savage suggested
that the Administration should “submit to an external investigation into
whether they actively aid one student faction (the servile one)” (Trend,
Nov. 3, 2000).  Professor Long sent a faculty-wide email with an attached
petition and explained that, “We are concerned about the allegations
surrounding the Student Association and feel the faculty has a
responsibility to see that the charges are thoroughly investigated.”  Both
were bold moves and not taken lightly, as neither faculty member has tenure.
Finally, Dr. Cherulnik and other faculty members wrote to the ACLU for legal
aid for the students.

David Mayes told the students that if they did not file a lawsuit he would
ensure that they would be recognized by the Student Senate and invited to
join numerous committees.  Mayes, Huguenin (a faculty sponsor of the
senate), Roper, and Ohletoint, suddenly found the constitution and made
about thirty copies.  Ohletoint announced his resignation, but
administration and faculty supporters encouraged him to renege, to claim he
did nothing wrong, and so he remained vice president until the next
elections.

"NOT ON MY WATCH"

My purge unfolded in this political context.  After Huguenin tried to
solicit Savage, Savage informed me.  Had he not, I would never have known
about the purge until December, when notice must be given.  Other than
Huguenin and Mayes, we didn’t know precisely who was involved.  Savage and I
requested to talk with the complainants who conveniently hid behind a veil
of anonymity.  Communicating through division chair Miller, they refused.

It was impossible to defend myself against allegations that I was not
allowed to know in full or to understand their context.  In fact, at no time
prior to calling for my dismissal in September 2000 did any of the
complainants ever suggest to me they had a serious problem.  In view of the
fact that I suggested to Huguenin on at least four occasions during the
Spring 2000 that we should organize our differences for a more constructive
classroom experience, which he never agreed to do, I now believe that the
refusal to discuss matters by he and the others was to avoid a questioning
of their reasons by myself and Savage, to avoid scrutinizing their evidence,
and to avoid exposing their personal-political motivations.  For such
scrutiny may have led directly to the administration, who had, as noted,
advised Huguenin that the purge must "come from below."

In fact, when Savage and I talked with Feaver, we were struck at how he went
out of his way to raise the issue of academic freedom at the very beginning
of our meeting with him.  "That won’t happen on my watch," he boasted. When
we talked with Bernard next, he did the same, claiming that the President
was a defender of free speech despite complaints from downtown officials.
Oops.  By raising the implication of the calls from downtown, Feaver and
Bernard had anticipated, and unintentionally opened our eyes to, the
significance of the protest I had joined in August, 2000.

Further, their implied defense of my participation in the protest
contradicted comments from USAO employees.  One professional staff member
told Savage the day after the protest that the administration “was furious
with Boles.”  He was quite serious.  The atmosphere on campus became uneasy.
Word spread quickly in mid-September that some faculty and administration
members were seeking my dismissal and that people should support the
administration and stay clear of me.  One day that week the above staff
member was about to sit for lunch.  The moment he noticed me eating with
Savage, he stopped dead in his tracks at the chair he was about to sit in,
turned around, and sat at another table.

Another faculty member, the Faculty sponsor of the Young Republicans, Stuart
Meltzer, began walking up to faculty members and questioning them if I had
requested a letter of support.  It was a form of intimidation.  And another
professional staff member complained to me that his/her superior had advised
against writing a letter of support for me if I were to ask for one.

USAO UBER ALLES!

A number of conservative faculty besides Meltzer openly opposed my
participation in the protest downtown and my politics.  Besides Larry
Magrath (biology) (who wrote a letter of sympathy to Assistant D.A. Robert
Beal who others and I had criticized), Ingrid Shafer sent an email to all
faculty members criticizing me for protesting and criticizing Beal.  Echoing
what seemed to be the administration’s view, on 9-16-00 she wrote: "I don't
want to sabotage our efforts by provoking the ones in power …I love USAO,
and will do my best to neutralize any action that might be perceived as
reflecting negatively on USAO."

She meant neutralize me, not just my actions, for she wrote this precisely
two days after sending a letter to Dr. Miller, division chair, calling for
my dismissal.  According to my lawyer, Shafer could hardly be more clear
about suppressing political and academic freedom than by stating that she
would "neutralize" a colleague over a political dispute.  But that was just
a teaser.

Shafer had the temerity to write to me that she wished I had discouraged
students from protesting on my behalf against her efforts to have me fired.
She rationalized it this way: "it does not help make students in general
feel more secure. In addition, it provides one more opportunity for
polarization and detracts from the ONE thing they should be concerned
about -- their academic work" (email: 9-30-00).  Intolerance of outspoken
criticism is a pattern with Shafer.  She openly opposed the creation of the
USAO democracy board by sociology students because it is “divisive” and
because “it implies that USAO isn’t already democratic.”

But the clearest evidence of Shafer’s political intolerance is her letter to
Miller calling for my dismissal.  For instance, citing a part of a lecture
note from my website on Talcott Parsons, she stated, based only on this
evidence, that I demonized other views. However, in portraying me, in her
written words, as a "romantic," "dogmatic," "anti-establishment
revolutionary," and in claiming that the content of my lectures is
"controversial" in order to support her call for my dismissal, Shafer
herself demonizes and oppresses academic freedom.

Shafer was motivated to launch this attack in part because of the lies she
was fed by Huguenin, and because I took a critical approach to the World
Thought and Culture III class, which she designed decades ago.  My approach
was the opposite of the course’s point as it was to be taught that summer.
Huguenin, who was the only other team instructor until I was notified two
days before class began, had chosen to only use _Classics of Western
Thought_.  I critiqued the Eurocentric assumptions of the course and
proposed to explain to students the unequal social context and relations
behind the so-called great achievements of European elites.

Shafer was appalled that someone might disagree with the way she envisioned
“her”course.  She opposed alternative approaches in meetings, according to
Dr. Lewis, the former director of the Interdisciplinary Studies program
(IDS) (Lewis is leaving this year to teach at Oklahoma University.)
Consequently, she aggressively attacked me the very first week that I
lectured.  One student, who I never had in any class before, became so upset
by Shafer’s strong remarks that she wrote a two-page letter of complaint to
Dr. Lewis, which included the following:

“My objection here is not necessarily the content of the discussion. It was
in Professor Shafer’s mannerism, being so adamant in a hostile, even
accusatory tone of voice! It was as if she was attacking him.  Professor
Boles, appeared visibly shocked at this manner of interrogation, but managed
to very eloquently inform us and her, that he would, in fact, provide
empirical evidence in today’s lecture and future lectures throughout this
course to substantiate this area of study. Unfortunately that was not good
enough for Professor Shafer, who snaps back, ‘Let’s hear your empirical
evidence!’ (I swear, this is the only time I have ever seen a college
professor heckled in a lecture. That it was done by a colleague seemed
absolutely ridiculous!)”

Another student in the class, Ms. Hill, wrote in a letter to Vice-President
Bernard that, “It was no secret that Dr. Huguenin disagreed with most
everything Dr. Boles said, and most students with which [sic.] I have spoken
agreed that Dr. Huguenin’s dislike carried over into the personal realm.”

Professor Cherulnik thus commented in a campus-wide email: "New faculty who
suggest that [courses] could be improved by introducing a more global and
democratic analysis of ideas or more rigorous standards face the USAO
equivalent of excommunication. That is what happened to Dr. Boles. It may
cost him his job, as it has cost others tenure and promotion in the past"
(11-27-00).

HUGUENIN'S LIES

Assistant Professor Huguenin did the leg-work organizing my purge. We had
prior petty political-academic disputes in our American Civilization (US
history) class in Spring 2000.  It was my worst teaching experience ever.
Toward the end of that semester, he sought out any critical comments or
rumors from students and faculty that he could use to tarnish my image,
however absurd or trivial, however outdated.  From his letter to Dr. Miller,
here are the most damning lies:

1) Huguenin lied that I threw a podium in class.  Six very reputable
students in the class – those whom I was able to contact on short notice –
including Sherry Borden, Johnna Kauffman-Evans, Barbara Henderson, Alexander
J. Russell, Shana Bratcher, and Jessica Thomason – each wrote letters to the
administration revealing that the allegation was fabricated.  The two
students who made this claim, who sat in the back of the room and did
poorly, told Huguenin and Shafer who of course were uninterested in
verifying the claim.  On the contrary, one of them helped the two students
write up the claim and deliver it to Dr. Feaver, then vice-president.

2) Huguenin lied about my lectures as “incomprehensible,” “jargon,”
“confused,” and “riddled with errors.”  Had such remarks not been made in a
letter calling for my dismissal, they could simply be dismissed as mere
academic and personal conflict.  But as reasons for my dismissal, these
falsehoods clearly constitute repression of academic freedom.

3) Huguenin lied about the "Jared Standridge situation."

Huguenin claims that I pressured Jared Standridge into dropping charges
against another student. That student threatened Standridge for
repeatedly harassing his wife Dava.  When Standridge learned that Dava was
filing sexual harassment charges, he wanted to make peace. They all came to
my office and I helped them resolve their disputes. Standridge later wrote
in a letter that I was “surprisingly impartial” and he expressed his
appreciation for my help.  Had Jared felt that I’d pressured him as Huguenin
wrote, then he certainly wouldn’t have enrolled in my Japanese language
class this semester!

4) Huguenin slandered me and lied by stating that I “exhibit episodic
paranoia”:
This claim was based on an incident involving Stephen Wilcox, sociology
student.  Wilcox admitted in writing  that during fall 1999 he asked a
friend to help him try to get me to visit his apartment to smoke marijuana.
Of course, I never would do such a thing.  Wilcox’s friend told me about the
plan, and that Wilcox intended to "get dirt" on me because I "had dirt" on
him.  The dirt was that Wilcox had told me that he had smoked pot with
former sociology professor David Newcomb on several occasions.  He told me
this in order to convince me to sponsor a NORML speaker at USAO.

FORMER FACULTY NEWCOMB’S INVOLVEMENT

I could care less about Wilcox’s personal habits or Newcomb’s.  But I was
shocked when I learned that he could conceive of such a plan and had
encouraged his friend to participate.  I immediately called Shafer, who at
the time seemed to be a friend, and I asked her for advice.  Shafer asked me
to send an email to her about Wilcox’s plan, which I did.  But after I
criticized the IDS program, several months later, she contacted David
Newcomb and sent my email to him.  Newcomb subsequently called students who
were involved in a petition effort on my behalf.  The evening before Newcomb
called these students, Shafer confronted one of them in the Oval.  She
became visibly upset when the student told her that over 100 signatures had
been collected against her attempt to have me dismissed.  Was it a
coincidence that Newcomb called the same student the next day and warned him
to desist?

THE TIES THAT BIND: OHLETOINT, MAYES, AND WINN'S ROLES

Huguenin communicated with his student Frank Ohletoint and Student Services
Director David Mayes to “guide” conservative or unwitting students to take
trivial complaints to Mayes and to Feaver.  He then told faculty members
that they should speak with David Mayes about the “numerous” student
complaints about me.   This is how the purge from below was initiated.

Ohletoint’s involvement was initially puzzling since I had never met him.
Ohletoint was the vice-president of the Student Senate and in that capacity
worked closely with Student Services Director David Mayes.  Roper and
Ohletoint are also Huguenin's history students, and Huguenin is a faculty
sponsor of the Student Senate.  Ohletoint and Roper also fought pitched
political battles with left sociology students in the Student Senate
beginning fall 1999, as noted above.

When sociology majors and other students learned of the lies spread by
Huguenin and Ohletoint, they began to write letters and petitions, which I’
ve made available to all faculty members.  Frank Ohletoint took several
students as a group to make complaints about me to Dr. Feaver, even though
the remarks were groundless and frivolous, as Mayes himself admitted in
writing.

One of these students informed me that she had been solicited by Ohletoint
and taken by him to meet Feaver.   In an affidavit for courtroom purposes,
she testified that Ohletoint said he got information about her complaint
from Mayes, and that Mayes had leaked a confidential comment she made in
passing to him during a regularly scheduled counciling meeting.  Ohletoint
later admitted that he had asked Mayes for information about student
complaints from Mayes.  Mayes denies giving Ohletoint the information.
Further, she testified that when Ohletoint approached her, he said that the
purpose of the meeting was to “jeopardize Boles’ job.”  When asked about
this again in the affidavit, she says states, “Yes. Mr. Mayes also told me
this.  They told me that they don’t like Dr. Boles.”

Based on this student’s testimony, I requested that members of the grievance
committee investigate the events.  I received no reply for over three weeks
(a response is required in two).  I then went directly to Feaver to ask why
I’d received no reply.  He advised that I not pursue the matter formally and
offered to put Terry Winn in charge of investigating Mayes.  Winn told me
emphatically before he began his investigation that he had hand-picked Mayes
and couldn't believe the allegations were true, but he'd investigate.  (Is
it also relevant to establishing their close ties, and therefore Winn’s
bias, that both are good friends and attend services at the same church each
Sunday?)

When the above student read Winn’s investigation report, she became so
disturbed that she agreed to provide a legal affidavit.  She stated that
Winn and Mayes “misinterpreted everything that I have told them for their
own purposes.”  According to the affidavit Winn attributed statements to her
that she did make.  Winn’s report was outright misinformation designed to
shift attention from, and cover up, Mayes’ culpability.

The affidavit also reveals that Mayes never informed her of, or obtained her
permission to write, a complaint about me on her behalf.  After Ohletoint’s
meeting with Feaver, Mayes himself wrote the complaint and sent to Dr.
Feaver as a “follow up.”  In doing this, Mayes broke USAO procedures.  Winn
defended Mayes, stating that because there is no explicit statement in the
grievance procedures prohibiting Mayes from not following the procedures, it
was therefore okay for him to not follow the procedures.  Further, Winn
found no problem with Ohletoint organizing other students to make complaints
against me that were clearly politically motivated and when they were
unfounded as Mayes himself admitted.

Is it any coincidence that Winn’s wife, Dr. Tina Winn (psychology), joined
the posse in following weeks even though we had little, and only cordial and
pleasant interaction, to that point, as she admitted in writing?  Is
unquestioned loyalty a benefit of nepotism?  And what about Linda Crumb,
business, who doesn’t even know me?  Was it unquestioned loyalty to the
administration for career advancement?

I’m off to another campus, which is the opposite of USAO in almost every
way, not least of which is a much higher salary and health insurance
coverage for my family, and for this I’m fortunate.  Three other faculty
have also left this year, and two more would have left if circumstances had
permitted.  Perhaps within a year or two USAO will once again return to its
quiet, self-contented, and stultified ways.  For that is what fits USAO.

Elson E. Boles
Assistant Professor, Historical Sociology