To the Point:

A case of irresponsibility

By William E. Scheuerman
UUP President

Several weeks ago, SUNY Trustee Candace de Russy made public statements attacking the quality of race, gender and class studies at SUNY campuses. During her tirade against “identity” studies, she singled out by name African-American departments at SUNY Stony Brook and the College at Old Westbury. Amazingly, she offered no evidence in support of her assertions and, even worse, attacked a department at SUNY Old Westbury that doesn’t even exist!

Imagine how you would grade a student who wrote a paper based on unsubstantiated assertions and make-believe facts. The student would fail. The very thought of a student doing this is bad. But a trustee of SUNY? This avatar of high academic standards sets a sorry example for our students. Hopefully, they’re not paying attention. But it gets worse. Think about de Russy’s distorted statements in light of the fact that Old Westbury has SUNY’s largest population of minority students. Is her attack a case of intellectual irresponsibility or is it something worse?

Needless to say, UUP delegates to our union’s highest governing body obviously care about intellectual integrity, academic standards and broad-brush attacks on the good work of their colleagues. Our delegates unanimously passed a resolution asking for her removal from the SUNY Board of Trustees. So, what does de Russy do? She runs to the media claiming that we want to stifle her free speech. She even appears on the “Personal Story” segment of a national prime time TV talk show to promote her personal agenda. It’s ironic that this grandstanding on free speech is by an individual who devoted a preponderance of her time and energy trying to force out a college president for protecting free speech. She would better serve the University by fighting for a decent budget, a fight we’re all still waiting for her to begin.

Our objections to de Russy’s attacks on African-American studies at SUNY have nothing to do with free speech. UUP has a long and distinguished history of successfully defending free speech. Our differences are about responsibility and obligation, topics about which de Russy loves to preach. Here’s the point: When Trustee de Russy makes a public statement, her identity cannot be divorced from her role as trustee. Why else would the media ask de Russy — or any other SUNY trustee for that matter — to make a public statement in the first place? It’s the institutional role of trustee that gives the individual access to public forums. Any trustee who claims otherwise is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst. Trustee de Russy has no SUNY facts to support her negative assertions. That’s why her statement is irresponsible.

When speaking as trustees, the people holding these positions should praise the institution entrusted to them when it does something well and constructively criticize it when it doesn’t. Just compare de Russy’s comments with the UUP TV ad celebrating SUNY’s remarkable achievements while advocating for additional public support. Something’s wrong here. Shouldn’t she be doing these things? Now tell me, what’s constructive about sweeping generalizations and unsubstantiated public attacks on SUNY? How do you fix something that’s not broken? All the other trustees know that SUNY has first-rate programs. If de Russy believes otherwise, why not seek dialogue internally before wounding our University with a public attack based on erroneous facts and unsubstantiated claims? Every time de Russy publicly addresses higher education issues, she’s speaking as a SUNY trustee. That carries responsibilities. If these responsibilities conflict with her personal agenda, she should resign. Then she’ll be free to say whatever she wants. But the media won’t be around to listen to her extremist CHANGE-NY agenda. And that’s probably unacceptable to her. For it’s becoming increasingly clear that her top priority is access to public forums that allow her to peddle her personal agenda.