The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs convened Monday afternoon at the Alexander G. Ruthven Building and over Zoom to discuss faculty engagement across the three University of Michigan campuses, ethical investing at the University and other topics.
The meeting began with a discussion among SACUA members about recently formed committees and their goals. Tom Braun, professor of biostatistics and SACUA member, said the Faculty Advising Group, one of the new committees, is currently working to create a faculty salary report.
“There are two faculty members who are analyzing the data along with a graduate student from the Econ Department, and their task now is to make sure that the processes they use for the report are right,” Braun said. “They then are going to proceed with whatever current salary information they have, and with that data, the hope is by the end of the summer we are going to have a report.”
Braun said the committee intends to use this report to make recommendations regarding faculty salaries to the administration moving forward.
“Once that report is done, I know that the two faculty members who are responsible for this will give several recommendations to the Provost’s office as to where to go,” Braun said.
SACUA also discussed further building relationships between faculty through social events that would engage faculty from across different schools and U-M campuses. Simon Cushing, U-M Flint associate professor of philosophy and SACUA member, said gathering faculty from all three U-M campuses may be hard to achieve, especially in person.
“Zoom makes it easier (to meet), but I don’t know if it’s the same experience if you do it over Zoom instead of in person,” Cushing said. “We could insist that you have it in Flint every once in a while, but getting people down from Ann Arbor would be hard, and since you outnumber us by so many it almost wouldn’t be fair.”
Soumya Rangarajan, clinical assistant professor of internal medicine and SACUA member, said she liked the idea of having social events on all three campuses because she believes it is important for faculty to experience the University as a whole.
“I think it’s important to see the other campuses,” Rangarajan said. “I’ve never stepped foot on the Flint or Dearborn campuses, and I think it’s really important, especially for us involved in the Senate Assembly, to know what things are like in the other campuses. So at least maybe one event a year for those who are interested in seeing that would be good.”
SACUA moved on to discuss ethical investments at the University and on other college campuses. Rebekah Modrak, Art & Design professor and SACUA Chair, said she recommends the committee to talk about ethical investment in a broader manner rather than specifically addressing the issue of divestment.
“My recommendation would be not to talk about divestment since the Regents have turned us down twice,” Modrak said. “So it seems like the approach is not to tackle it straight on like that but to talk about it in a larger framework of ethical investment that aligns with the values of the Vision 2034 plan.”
Rangarajan said she would be interested to know about the University’s decision to divest from oil and gas companies in 2021 and how that related to ethical investing.
“I would be curious about the history of when we divested from oil and gas,” Rangarajan said. “How did everybody get together on that? I am actually fascinated that was able to be pushed through because it seems like people have such differing opinions on these things.”
Derek Peterson, history and Afroamerican and African studies professor and SACUA member, added that the University’s choice to divest from oil and gas companies and other financial decisions have been made in line with the idea of ethical investment.
“Michigan has already made choices with ethical investment — for example not sending money to Russia after the Ukraine invasion, as well as South Africa — it is just not named as such,” Peterson said. “There’s also no container or framework in which faculty and other parties at the University can make claims about the ethical character of our investments because the University has this absolute policy about shielding the endowment from pressure.”
SACUA members then discussed how some universities, such as Michigan State University, are transparent about their investments while the University is not. Luke McCarthy, Faculty Senate Office director, said the reason the University is not transparent with their investments is because it signs non-disclosure agreements but McCarthy questioned if those agreements were ethical.
“There are a number of firms that the University works with that would not have worked with us if we did not sign a non-disclosure agreement,” McCarthy said. “Maybe these non-disclosure agreements shouldn’t be signed. That may end up limiting the fund managers the University works with, but perhaps for the community’s ethical perspective, that’s worth it.”
Finally, Braun addressed an email sent to the entirety of SACUA following the publication of an article from The Michigan Daily that criticized Braun’s comment regarding Jewish members’ concerns about antisemitism in the Senate Assembly. Braun said he felt it was an attempt to silence him.
“It is unacceptable for a member of SACUA to be personally and publicly attacked in front of all SACUA members for comments made during a SACUA meeting,” Braun said. “The intent of the email sent to us was to humiliate and shame me into silence due to a personal disagreement between me and the chair of SACUA. We all as members of SACUA have the right to present our views and the views of those we talk to without any suggestion of our motives or personal character.”
Modrak, who was recently elected SACUA chair for the upcoming school year, said the email was unrelated to herself and that the writer only mentioned her due to an interpretation of Braun’s comment on antisemitism.
“That had nothing to do with me,” Modrak said. “Those were comments you made in The Daily that a faculty member responded to. She mentioned my name in the context of the fact that I’m Jewish, and you said there was no Jewish representation.”
Daily Staff Reporter Alyssa Tisch can be reached at tischaa@umich.edu.
The post SACUA discusses committees, faculty engagement and ethical investments appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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