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 Editorials | Opinions | September 2007 
Tyrannosaurus Academicus - Governance at the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla
 Dr. Mark B. Ryan - PVNN
The Universidad de las Américas, in Puebla, Mexico, has been among the country's premiere secular, private universities. Established in the 1940s as Mexico City College, it was initially a small liberal arts college on the American model, created mostly for the scions of American families living in Mexico.
Subsequent evolution expanded its mission and reach, eventually taking it to a new and spacious campus on the outskirts of Puebla. There, in the 1970s, it passed from predominantly American to Mexican control, from predominantly English to Spanish speaking, from a largely American to a Mexican student body.
It retained, however, vestiges of its American roots, including student residences, a strong emphasis on English languages skills, international connections that gave it a visibility and appeal to foreign students and scholars, and a self-image as a bridge between Mexican and Anglo cultures. These characteristics, and the subsequent efforts of generations of administrators and faculty, helped to give it a unique place in the world of Mexican higher education.
In the two-year administration of its current rector, the UDLA has sunk into ever-deepening crises. Assuming power to hire and fire faculty at will, Pedro Angel Palou has recently dismissed approximately twenty-five high-level faculty and administrators for opposing his style of governance or for questioning his expenditures.
In the process, he has also dismissed loyal office workers for simply being, in his perception, personally linked to higher-level figures identified as adversaries. These forced resignations follow earlier ones, as well as the voluntary resignations of prominent but disaffected faculty.
The rector has spoken of defending the university against a "conspiracy," but the widespread impression on campus is that he has adopted Draconian measures from the political world of his formation in order to rid the University of any open opposition. In the process, faculty and administrators have been subject to intimidating actions and threats, including required loyalty oaths, spying on private messages, eavesdropping on telephone conversations, and the tracking of "suspects" by guards, not only on campus but at private houses.
In at least two cases, departing administrators report that they have been threatened with physical assault by a former colleague loyal to the rector. The firings - in many cases of people who have given decades of service to the University - have involved lock downs of offices, forced evacuations under the eye of guards, impounding of computers, and abrupt requirements to vacate University-owned living quarters, where phone and electricity service have been cut off. Once a place of free and open discussion, the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla is immersed in a pervasive climate of fear and demoralization.
The most recent spate of firings has threatened the academic integrity of key University departments and the efficient functioning of administrative areas. Over half of the full-time faculty in the popular department of Communications were dismissed, along with nearly half of the prestigious department of Economics, and three from International Relations.
Administrative firings included the provost, the chief financial officer and two of his auditors, the dean of the residential colleges, the University attorney, the registrar, the chief of admissions, the principal development officer, and the director of the University's ambitious office of events.
In protest of these firings, the chairman of the University's advisory board resigned, along with several of his colleagues; subsequently, that board, once considered the ultimate authority on academic matters, has been dissolved altogether. The entire six-member advisory board of a fledgling medical program has also resigned in protest.
Three days before the opening of registration for the fall term, nearly half of the courses in the department of Communication lacked assigned instructors, as did all of the courses in a newly formed department of medicine. Chairs of the departments of Economics and International Relations have warned that they will be unable to mount their programs as designed. Only nine of 50 courses listed by the department of Economics are scheduled to be taught by full-time professors with doctorates, and new students are not being accepted into its graduate programs.
A significant lowering of admission requirements, particularly in proficiency in English, failed to prevent a drop in overall student enrollments. (The University's officially promulgated enrollment figures are widely mistrusted. Previously published official figures, however, indicated an enrollment of 7,723 in the fall of 2006; figures given to the press by the current Academic Vice-rector total 6,718 for the fall of 2007, representing a drop of some 13%.)
How did all of this come to pass? Before the arrival of Pedro Angel Palou as rector, the University had established procedures of governance expressed in an "estatuto orgánico," or bylaws. Those procedures may have been far from perfect, and some of them were under contention, but they embodied conventions of collaborative governance that are common in academe. Professors had a voice in selecting academic officers such as the provost, deans, and department chairs; academic policy was vetted through academic committees; new faculty appointments were recommended by departmental committees after international searches. But Palou's formation, and his notions of governmental procedures, were drawn from the world of Mexican politics, and especially from the ruthlessly authoritarian traditions of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in Puebla state.
In common Mexican parlance, adherents of such traditions are called dinosaurios, or dinosaurs. Though he was known as a novelist and some years back had a stint as a professor in the University's department of philosophy and letters, Palou had come directly to the rectorship from a political appointment as the state's cultural minister, and his alliances and models were drawn from the political milieu. As a leader, he proved to be the quintessential dinosaur. The two styles, collaborative-academic and authoritarian-political, quickly came into conflict.
Dr. Palou took the helm at a time of financial constraints, falling enrollments, and economically motivated downsizing of administrative operations. Funds were somehow found, however, for projects that aggrandized the new administrators. A major expense in Palou's first months was the moving of the Rectoría, the administrative offices, from the building in which it had been housed since the campus was built, to lavishly remodeled offices in the Hacienda, a building that had predated the University. Aesthetically, the remodeling was of the highest quality; in flush times, it might have been justified. But in the context of cutbacks, it gave a hint of the administrators' priorities.
With no public discussion, the University urged professors out of faculty residences, leaving houses unoccupied. Residences that were designated for upper-level administrators were remodeled and expanded-including the Rector's own, enhanced with new constructions and the demolition of a neighboring house for extended gardens-but others were destroyed or left vacant. A major element in faculty compensation thus began to disappear.
Meanwhile, at major expense, the University began publication of a new, slick, nationally distributed literary magazine that would showcase the Rector's writing and that of his literary associates, but that had little relationship to the University or its programs. Continuing promotional travels on the part of the rector and others have added to its costs.
Additional funds have been spent on other efforts that have little relation to the University and its purposes, but that undoubtedly promoted the rector's personal interests. A very costly book on Puebla that was contracted in his term as the state's cultural minister was eventually published with University funds, and former financial officers also report that the university covered expenses associated with the rector's unsuccessful campaign to become director of CONACULTA, the Mexican government council on culture and the arts.
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