Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” I have been silent for a summer and a semester. It is time again to talk about freedom of speech and faculty governance at Rensselaer.

At the September 9 meeting of the Faculty Senate, Acting Provost Bob Palazzo said, “There should be no fear of reprisals for communicating and sharing of ideas regardless of where one stands on an issue.” I believe he was sincere at the time. He was later confronted by an edict from on high. He and we live in tyranny.

My personal issue is a written reprimand I received as president of the Faculty Senate. The reprimand was not for what I did but for an action taken by a Governance Committee consisting of four senior faculty, two of whom were members of national academies. The Faculty Senate appointed the committee. The charge to the committee was to consider ways to improve faculty governance, and they decided to poll the faculty for opinions. I did not create or edit the questionnaire. I merely allowed it to be distributed. I was reprimanded for this. The president of the Faculty Senate is expected to control activities of the Senate and its committees so that they conform to the desires of the administration. Interestingly, the committee members were not overtly reprimanded, although two have subsequently left Rensselaer and the other two have been remarkably silent. We live in tyranny.

The objections of the administration to the survey were legalistic and specious. I spent a reasonable amount of money proving that fact. I spare you the details, but if you are interested, call me and I will tell you.

I filed a formal grievance following procedures in the Rensselaer Faculty Handbook. To my knowledge, no grievance against the administration has ever succeeded. The president has the last say. In my case, the Grievance Committee recommended to the president that the grievance be removed. She had two months to reply according to the Faculty Handbook. She did not. Instead, after four months, she had a lawyer write a letter, on which I was not copied, denying the validity of the grievance. This is justice at Rensselaer.

If you are staff or any of the faculty who have recently been denied faculty status by an act of the Board of Trustees, live in fear if you cross the administration. Academic freedom does not extend to you. If you are tenure-track but untenured, you must share this fear. If you are tenured but seek promotions and good raises, toe the line or expect retribution. To those few who are more or less immune to the whims of the administration, recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., and do not let your lives at Rensselaer end silently. Speak out lest we continue to live in tyranny.

Bruce Nauman