UNITED ACADEMICS IS DEFENDING PUBLIC EDUCATION AT THE UO 

University budgets reflect priorities. This is especially true during times of scarcity. So why are UO’s leaders disregarding our shared values and commitments to make hasty, irreversibly damaging cuts?

Amid a slew of layoffs and program cuts at the UO, faculty members in United Academics 3209 feel that the UO’s current leadership is failing to prioritize our collectively shared values amid their hurried attempts to meet a projected budget deficit. That’s why UA (along with other campus unions and partners) is working to defend public education and research, democratic principles of shared governance, and our beloved university community. 

On this site, you can learn about UO’s current position, who makes decisions, and how we can reform university finances to be more democratic and transparent. You can also take action to help us fight back against existing and planned cuts:

UO’s Mission Statement

“The University of Oregon is a comprehensive public research university committed to exceptional teaching, discovery, and service. We work at a human scale to generate big ideas. As a community of scholars, we help individuals question critically, think logically, reason effectively, communicate clearly, act creatively, and live ethically.”

THE BIGGER PICTURE ON CUTS

This fall we will welcome the largest incoming class in UO history. At the same time that freshman already struggle with overenrolled courses, the UO administration is rushing to cull faculty who teach thousands of student credit hours.

These extreme measures are being undertaken by UO leaders without engagement in authentic deliberative processes or transparency for the faculty, staff, students, and community members who actually help the UO flourish as an institution.

Ultimately, the duty of the President and Board of Trustees is to uphold the mission of the university. This is their primary obligation—not to donors, athletics, or their own salaries.

We are simply demanding accountability to the UO’s institutional mission and stated values.

ATTACKS ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND TENURE

President Scholz and Provost Long have mandated faculty and other workers simply “do less, better” (June 3 Town Hall). But their idea of “less” and “better” apparently includes taking the axe to entire programs and units in order to meet their budgetary goals:

  • At the UO and on the federal level, the Humanities appear to be a specific target for cuts, despite how critical these fields are at this moment in our society and history. These fields teach students how to use history to contextualize current events; how to think critically, write clearly, and provide evidence for their claims; and how to thoughtfully engage with the diversity of life and ideas on our planet.
  • Many of the specific programs rumored to be under fire (such as Judaic Studies, Arabic Studies, Holocaust Studies, WGSS, IRES) are tasked with teaching topics that are increasingly surveilled and censored as part of an authoritarian national shift. For UO leaders to cut these programs at this time is to bend willingly to a federal agenda seeking to wipe out academic freedom, speech, and dissent itself. 
  • Some of the programs targeted have recently hired new faculty who left tenured jobs at other institutions to come to the UO, and now face the elimination of their entire units after uprooting their lives. New faculty have moved across the country and left tenured jobs to work for the UO, and now leaders want to lay them off. Laying off new tenure-line faculty will do IRREPARABLE damage to UO’s ability to recruit top researchers and educators.

By eliminating entire programs, UO will necessarily be laying off tenure-line faculty—including fully tenured faculty who are meant to have the most robust job protections available. This itself constitutes a major threat to the entire tenure system. While tenure is often understood simply as a perk designed to create job security, it is really a protection against ideological coercion for faculty who engage in research which may be unpopular or unflattering to those in power.

If successful, these attacks on marginalized programs and tenure will undoubtedly have wide-ranging effects—including amplifying the current federal government’s attempts to chill speech on campuses.

Take Action to Defend Public Education:

1. SIGN OUR PETITION TO UO LEADERS

2. SEND AN AUTO-FILLED EMAIL TO UO LEADERS

3. CALL OR EMAIL OREGON LEGISLATORS

Finance FAQs

Learn more about UO’s financial position, who is making financial decisions, and how we can reform the UO’s finances to avoid unnecessary and damaging program and worker eliminations.

Cuts Tracker

We are keeping track of where cuts are being made and projected to be made at the UO. We believe this is a necessary step to ensure accountability to the UO’s academic mission and stated values.

Cuts Coverage

Read media stories and op-eds written by faculty about the impacts that UO leaders’ proposed cuts will have on the quality of research and education at the University of Oregon.

QUICK ANSWERS

What is United Academics?

We are the representative of the faculty at the University of Oregon. We are a union affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers. We promote and defend quality public higher education by working together to uphold the University of Oregon’s academic and research priorities.

What is impact bargaining?

When employers make changes that impact working conditions, wages, and hours, unionized workers gain the right to bargain the impacts of those changes under Oregon state labor law.

UA has issued a demand to bargaining to the University of Oregon over the impacts of layoffs and future proposed cuts. We expect to enter negotiations with the UO soon.

But the UO says it’s broke!

With rising tuition, rising state appropriations and a rising Education & General budget, it is hard to argue the UO is broke. Their financial position is better than ever according to their own records. You can learn more about the UO’s financial position and why UA is questioning the claim of a “structural deficit” through the Finance FAQs tab.

But UO says their biggest expense is personnel. Where else could they make up the projected deficit?

If you’re a little short on funds one month do you A) just pay less on your mortgage this month! or B) cut back on your fun budget? We believe gutting programs and faculty that take decades to build is simply not the answer.

Learn more about other ways UO could meet the projected budget deficit under “Alternatives to Layoffs”.

Can UA strike over these layoffs?

Due to federal and state labor laws (and the no-strike clause of our contract), UA cannot engage in a legally protected strike over these issues. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fight against cuts, or fight for more transparency and a seat at the table.

This is why we are appealing to you now. With enough pressure from UO constituencies, we hope to convince the UO administration to change course.

Where are you getting your numbers?

UO is required to release certain financial data to the public on their Institutional Research website. This includes information for salaries, demographics, etc. Information about budgets and projections is found on the UO Business Affairs website. Some information about salaries of our comparators can be found in the annual Faculty Compensation Survey by the American Association of University Professors. Information about student enrollment is from UO Student Services and Enrollment Management.

We have done our best to provide accurate numbers and projections. However, UO purposefully makes it difficult to analyze the data they provide (for instance by using dashboards or providing data via pdf instead of in a spreadsheet), and so some numbers are necessarily estimates. As we get information to provide better estimates and projections we will update this page.