The Disturbing Politicization of UVA’s Faculty Senate
Inside Higher Ed, an online publisher of news and opinion in the higher education sphere, recently published an article entitled, “The Angry 8: On Faculty Senates.” The thrust of the story is that the faculty senates at many colleges and universities have been hijacked by a relatively small number of activists who have turned the amorphous concept of “shared governance” into a license to criticize and intrude into decisions far beyond academics and their areas of expertise. One can now add the UVA Faculty Senate, under the leadership of Jeri Seidman, to the list of such faculty senates. The leadership of UVA’s Faculty Senate have in essence become avatars of politicized, partisan advocacy rather than a voice for academic excellence.