April 18, 2012
To: Andrew Leuchter, Chair, Academic Senate UCLA
*CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM** *(CS4AF) is a group of 134 scholars at twenty California institutions of higher education. We are writing to express our concerns about your handling of the events surrounding Associate Professor David Delgado Shorter’s, World Arts and Cultures course website which followed a complaint by a well-known partisan duo who have been harassing California faculty for some time (Amcha).
Our concerns involve the possible violation of academic freedom; the overstepping of your authority as Chair of the Academic Senate; honoring of complaints by a clearly partisan political group over collegiality and protocol regarding treatment of tenured faculty at UCLA; and setting up Prof. Shorter to be judged in the “court of public opinion” by releasing information to the press without his knowledge. Continue reading