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Puerto Vallarta News NetworkEditorials | Opinions | September 2007 

Tyrannosaurus Academicus - Part 4
email this pageprint this pageemail usDr. Mark B. Ryan - PVNN


The Mexico City College Story
1940 - 1963 (click HERE)

by Joseph M. Quinn
At the beginning of the following semester, university guards, in the company of the newly appointed departmental chairman and a university auditor, abruptly forced students to abandon the office of La Catarina, turning off electricity and padlocking the doors. After seven years of existence, the one independent student newspaper in Mexico was closed down. Some 30 faculty members sent a letter to the rector and the governing board, protesting the treatment of the department and the newspaper. Cries against censorship predictably appeared in newspapers and electronic media, and the public eye began to focus on the way the UDLA was being managed.

To counter the negative publicity, or at least to prevent its intensifying, the administration made substantial payments to local newspapers. But students involved with La Catarina took their case to international universities with which the UDLA had had exchange agreements, and articles about the censorship soon appeared in various college newspapers in the United States. Strong objections were voiced from Texas Christian University and extended even to the Harvard Crimson. Eventually, in the face of international opprobrium, the administration backed down and temporarily restored La Catarina to its student staff. The new chairman of the Communications department was reassigned to the office of public relations, replaced by a veteran member of the department's faculty.

For a short while, the administration seemed humbled and conciliatory. The rector allowed the formation of a faculty committee, called the Colegio Académico, intended to develop more collaborative procedures of governance, and especially to guarantee more institutionalized processes of hiring and dismissal. Its efforts were promoted by the then- Vicerrector General, or provost, who was genuinely interested in effecting a more participatory governmental style, and who by that time was known to be at odds with the rector on several major issues. But when in May the Colegio Académico submitted its preliminary report, outlining suggestions for very different procedures and implicitly reproving many administrative actions over the previous two years, the rector responded with authoritarian vengeance. The Colegio was disbanded. The provost was summarily fired, along with the University attorney.

Three auditors, recently contracted at the behest of the advisory board to make financial transactions more transparent, were also dismissed. In protest of these firings, which were executed without consultation with the advisory board, the chairman of that body resigned. The university was plunging into one of the major crises of its history.

A group of concerned professors met at the house of one of them to discuss the situation, exercising a right of free assembly that surely would be recognized in any first-rate university, and that the Mexican constitution itself guarantees. During the meeting, a university guard arrived to demand the presence of the meeting's host at the Rector's offices "to sign papers," presumably of forced resignation. Within three days, not only he but a dozen other prominent faculty who were in attendance at the meeting had been forced to resign-their offices locked down, their office computers repossessed, they themselves escorted by guards from university premises and prohibited from returning. The group included some of the university's most respected professors-some recently named as "Catedráticos", the university's newly-established highest academic title, others members of the SNI, the dean of the residential colleges, and former deans of schools, former department chairmen and honored teachers. Despite years of dedicated service, and despite their academic and administrative contributions, they were dismissed without any evaluations or reviews, or even direct personal inquiries into their intent or concerns. The cause, clearly, was merely their dissent, and the rector's perception of them as a threat to his personal power. Wiser administrators at competing institutions-including some of the country's most prestigious, such as the Colegio de México and the Tecnológico de Monterrey-have since made offers to several of them.

The rector's stated rationale for these firings was that the professors were involved in a "conspiracy" to sell the university. The charge stemmed from a proposal, made two months previously by Dr. Neil Lindley, an American member of the University's advisory board, that an international consortium of foundations, universities and private individuals be assembled to offer to purchase the university from the family foundation that currently governs it and owns the campus. That proposal was made openly, and certainly not conspiratorially, though it was presented along with severe criticisms of the university's current governance and governing structure. In fact, the proposal was intended to go to the heart of the university's troubles.

For many years, professors and administrators, especially those knowledgeable about governance issues elsewhere in the academic world, have recognized problems with UDLA's governing structure, with its concentration of authority in a family-owned foundation. Those problems have been discussed openly-indeed, they form the principal reason that, this past January, the University was formally placed on Warning by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), its accrediting body in the United States. For many years, the University has been one of the few Mexican universities accredited by one of the regional accreditation agencies in the U.S. But that status is in jeopardy. With ultimate authority centered in a single family, according to SACS's criteria, governance is easily prone to "undue influence" by a minority. Another fundamental concern posed by family control is the University's ability to raise funds. Major donors are reluctant to give large donations to a family foundation, which, they fear, could too easily change its intents and purposes in the future. Without such support, the UDLA is unlikely to fulfill its vision as a major international center of learning.

In years past, the university has been able to satisfy SACS's concerns because of the relatively strong role of its advisory board, called the Consejo. Under Mexican law, the ultimate authority is the Patronato, the family foundation, which is legally in charge of the institution. But until four years ago, the University could make a strong case that authority over all academic concerns rested with the Consejo, which has been a relatively large body with broad membership. A long-standing legal case, however, pitted two groups with links to the foundation's founder against one another, wrestling for its control. In 2002, the case was finally resolved, resulting in a change in the make-up of the Patronato. The group that took control, direct descendants of the foundation's founder, William O. Jenkins, had backgrounds only in business, not in the academic world; indeed, only one of the five family members on the Patronato has a university degree at all (and his role is limited to suplente, or "substitute"). But they took care to assert that they, as members of the new Patronato, were the ultimate authority in all matters; the Consejo's role was declared as strictly "advisory."

If feasible, a consortium such as that proposed by Dr. Lindley could resolve the problems by creating an independent governing board that could attract major donations. Dr. Lindley is the son of one of the university's most influential past presidents, and his proposal was certainly made with the best of intentions; indeed, it might offer the only way that the University could grow into an international institution of the first order. But the proposal was recognized, even by its proponents, as preliminary. It would take a long time to implement; its participating organizations (initial expressions of interest were largely American) would have to become more international in scope; and its legal implications would need more thorough investigation. And in any case, it could only be a proposal to the Patronato: it could not be executed without the consent of the family foundation, which would have to agree that it was ultimately for the benefit of the University, or of the foundation, or both.

Of the professors at that meeting in May, very few had any substantial knowledge of the proposal. Only one had been in contact with Dr. Lindley on the subject, and then only to consider very general themes related to its feasibility. It was not even discussed at the meeting, which focused entirely on internal governance at the University and the possibility of writing a public protest of its management. In fact, when the proposal was first presented at a meeting of the Consejo, the Patronato's representative did not dismiss it out of hand; the proposal it had lain quiet, without stirring major controversy, for two long months. But brandishing illicitly acquired-and misinterpreted-e-mails, the rector cynically took a nationalistic posture, claiming that a foreign "conspiracy" was attempting to take over the university, and attempting to link the meeting to its purposes. His declamations were full of politically charged, even xenophobic rhetoric: this was a "golpe de estado," or coup, promoted by foreign "enemies of the university."

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