See the video
Introduction and other speakers' comments coming soon...
Margo's speech:
Speech structure note: (1) I met and surpassed the tenure criteria in all three areas (teaching, scholarship, and service)
First, I am going to explain to you the criteria for tenure and promotion in the department of Sociology at Ithaca College. The criteria for tenure are divided into three categories.
The first category is teaching.
According to the Ithaca College Faculty Handbook, evidence of teaching excellence is shown by classroom performance, course development, advisement of student's honors theses, and more.
How does Ithaca College judge a professor’s teaching in these areas? Well, who are the people who are in a position to judge the quality of a professor’s teaching? There are students; there is faculty. Let me read to you some of the comments these groups of people submitted for my tenure file.
Students:
Here’s an excerpt of a letter from a student whom I taught seven years ago:
The diverse course material and discussion-based teaching style employed in this course engaged my intellectual curiosity in a way that no other course had. Margo's courses familiarized me with the work of leading intellectuals in sociology. ...Through her teaching style, Margo continually invited the students to explore the course material with a critical lens, welcoming in-depth class discussions that were the catalyst for the scholarly debate that characterized the learning environment in her classroom.
Margo's work extends beyond the classroom as she has demonstrated the role of the intellectual as an activist. (Bernadette Johnston '04).
Here's a part of another student letter:
Margo taught me how to think critically and speak confidently about global politics. I use those skills every day in my job at the National Yiddish Book Center. My ability to understand complex cultural and political issues stems from the knowledge I gained in Margo's classes. (Ashley Keedy '03).
I have in my hand ten other letters from students which are all equally positive. This is more than the number required by Ithaca College to achieve tenure and promotion.
Let me read to you some of the faculty reviews of my teaching. Here's one from a Cornell Professor who viewed my teaching:
I … invited Dr. Margo Ramlal-Nankoe to guest lecture in my course ... "Global Conflict and Terrorism." I requested that Margo lecture on "State Terrorism's Many Forms and Long History," an area on which she does research and teaching. ... What took place that afternoon was quite remarkable. Margo delivered a superior lecture on a difficult topic, perhaps the best in the semester to that point. It was thoughtfully organized, interactive with the students, current yet historical .... The engagement with students in the class was striking. One of them went so far as to volunteer his feelings that evening about her impact -he claims to speak for others in the class as well and does this, based on my observations, accurately... My department has an affinity for the type of research interests Margo embodies. Not everyone is gifted in formulating lectures around these interests, however, and in making the unsettling topics of global development and conflict interesting and even compelling to student audiences. This she accomplished without a hitch. Two students have asked me if there was a chance for an encore later in the semester, should any guest speakers cancel. I intend to ask her. ... She and others like her are possible bridges between Development Sociology at Cornell and Sociology at IC. ... She has earned regard as a scholar and, it goes without saying, the respect of my students. (Charles Geisler, Professor & Director of Graduate Studies Development Sociology, Cornell University to Provost Bardaglio, 2006)
Here is another review, this one comes from a faculty member within my department who observed one of my classes:
Margo did an excellent job of portraying the arguments for and against continued migration and the different approaches to thinking about multiculturalism...Margo projected a clear picture of a society torn between those who promote multiculturalism and those who oppose it...She […] went on to show that among multiculturalists themselves there exists different perspectives and approaches...This particular class … was a superior example of pedagogy and of the teaching of traditional sociology (Professor Hector Velez, Classroom Evaluation for Margo Ramlal-Nankoe, March 21, 2005)
There are many more of these. There are many more for those of you who would like to view them at the end of this whole presentation.
Now let us move on to the next category: scholarship.
In the area of scholarship, the Departmental Criteria require, “evidence of scholarly or critical activity […] articles, books, […] presentations at professional meetings, […] or works in progress that have been judged by departmental and external reviews to be of merit.”
My record of scholarship has been increasing steadily over the years. I have two co-authored books under contract, two published articles, one of which is a book chapter. Three articles have been submitted for review and I have nine peer reviewed conference papers.
**Books**
Pacification of the Working Poor: Welfare State Regimes in the Capitalist World 1870-2000. (Co-authored). Forthcoming, Edwin Mellen Press, 2009
De Neergang van het Gouden Tijdperk van Suiker in West-Indië. (In Dutch). Forthcoming, University of Suriname Press, 2009. (Co-authored).
**Publications**
“Health and Social Security in the African Millennium: A Global View of Strategies for Health Systems and Social Policy since 1945," in: Kelechi Kalu et al., Social-Political Scaffolding and the Construction of Change. Constitutionalism and Democratic Governance in Africa. Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press, 2008
“The Colonialist Path to Freedom, Pacification and the Controlled Abolition of Slavery in Suriname, 1760-1873,” (co-authored) in Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. VII, 1 & 2 (June and December 2000). pp. 42-50.
**Accepted for Publication**
“Europe's Industrial Late-Comers and the Path to Welfare Capitalism" forthcoming in Review: Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center.
**Articles Submitted for Review**
“The Historical Trajectory of the Late Capitalist World towards World-Empire,” Monthly Review.
“Global Contradictions of the Welfare State. Competing Political Philosophies and Historical Models,” Journal of Global Social Policy
**Conference Papers**
"Health and Social Security in the African Millennium: A Global View of Strategies for Health Systems and Social Policy since 1945," 26th Annual Conference of the Association of Third World Studies (ATWS), "Voices of the Subaltern: Identities, Hierarchies and Social Struggles in a Globalizing age." Millersville University, Millersville, Pennsylvania, October 26-28, 2008.
"Imperial Tendencies. A Long-Historical View to the Present," 26th Annual Conference of the Association of Third World Studies (ATWS), "Voices of the Subaltern: Identities, Hierarchies and Social Struggles in a Globalizing age." Millersville University, Millersville, Pennsylvania, October 26-28, 2008, (co-authored).
"The Caribbean in the Global Flow of People and Money during the Mercantilist Era," 32nd Annual Conference of the Political Economy of the World System (PEWS), the World–System Section of the American Sociological Association, Fairfield University, (Fairfield, Connecticut) April 24-26, 2008, (co-authored).
"AfroEurAsia and the Rise of the 'Modern' World," A Global Academic Partnership Conference of the Global Studies Program on Andre Gunder Frank's Legacy of Critical Social Science. April 11-13, 2008, University of Pittsburgh, (co-authored).
“The Arabic-Ottoman World, 7th-17th Centuries: A World-Empire, World-Economy, Part of a Super-World-Economy? A Historical-Sociological Exploration” Paper prepared for Political Economy of World-System Conference on Islam and the Modern World-System (PEWS sections of the American Sociological Association), Macalaster April 2006.
“The Historical Trajectory of the Late Capitalist World towards World-Empire,” Conference on Reflexive Representations: Discourse, Power, and Practice in Global Capitalism. July 4th-6th, 2003, Otto-von-Guericke-University. Magdeburg (Germany).
“The Global Context of the Rise of 'Europe’” 29th Annual Conference of the South Eastern Medieval Association: The Globalization of the Middle Ages. Fayetteville, Arkansas, October 23, 24 & 25, 2003.
“The Atlantic Core and its Peripheral ‘Other’ in the Atlantic World,” Conference on Citizens, Nations and Cultures: Atlantic Perspectives, Maastricht University (The Netherlands), October 2002, (co-authored).
“Hegemonic Alliance and Global Stratification, 1945–2000,” (co-authored). Section on Globalization. American Sociological Association (ASA) Conference, August 2001. Co–panelist with Giovanni Arrighi.
The Ithaca College Handbook requires that tenure-seeking professors submit their scholarship for review by external scholars in their field. The external reviewers who reviewed my scholarship recognized the quality of my work and strongly recommended me for tenure and promotion.
Professor Leeder, a professor of Sociology and Dean at Sonoma State University, said in her review: “Margo takes on vast topics over expansive periods of time and is willing to take risks in her intellectual work....Her work is quite innovative...”
She refers to my work Welfare State Regimes in the Capitalist World 1870-2000 as “an important contribution to a feminist critique of global capitalism and the welfare state.” “Dr. Ramlal-Nankoe’s work is important and cutting edge. She is writing in a complicated field and is one of the few women doing so.”
Professor Frances A. Viggiani, a professor of Sociology at Alfred State University makes the following remarks about my book project Welfare State Regimes in the Capitalist World 1870-2000:
I am impressed by her continued focus on historical sociological analysis, world-systems theory and comparative studies of the modern welfare state. […] Her work is innovative in that it continues to draw on the world-systems approach at a time ...many scholars focus on a relatively a-historical approach to globalization
Speaking of my article “Europe’s Late-Comers & the Path to Welfare Capitalism,” Professor Maria Lugones, a professor of Comparative Literature, Philosophy and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Binghamton University, writes “an extremely impressive achievement, Nankoe offers us an extremely clear text, very useful for classroom use as well as for research purposes”
About my co-authored article “The Colonialist Path to Freedom. Pacification & the Controlled Abolition of Slavery in Suriname, 1760-1873,” she writes “extremely interesting...is carried out elegantly […]”
She finds my work overall “consistently clarifying, original, ambitious, and rigorous.”
Professor Richard Lee, a professor of Sociology, and Director of Graduate Studies at Binghamton University states, “The book project Welfare State Regimes in the Capitalist World 1870-2000, is ambitious and well worth the effort.”
(All Quotes from Department Recommendation of my Scholarship, 2005 and 2007).
I did not receive a single poor review from my external reviews .
Finally, the third category of the tenure criteria: service.
The Sociology Departmental Criteria requires “service to the department, school, college, and community.” Examples of Department service include serving on personnel and curriculum committees, advising sociology students, and other such things. Service to the college includes advising student organizations and serving on college-wide committees like the Human Subject review Board, the diversity awareness committee, the Judicial Affairs Committee, and the Curriculum committee. Finally, service to the community includes things like giving public lectures to organizations around the community.
I have served in all three capacities: department, college, and community.
As part of my service to the sociology department I served on the personnel committee for about seven years; here I participated in conducting searches for potential new faculty, for example. I also served on and contributed to the curriculum committee in my department for about four years. This committee helped plan the department's overall course offerings and content, and my particular role was to ensure that there were sufficient international/global sociology courses being offered within the department.
My service to the college as a whole included advising student organizations including the Caribbean Student Organization, Students for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, and the Ithaca College student UNICEF group. I advised and helped these student groups bring educational speakers to campus, like Ali Abunimah (Renowned Palestinian journalist and founder of Electronic Intifada), Sara Roy (a Harvard scholar who teaches and writes extensively about the conflict in Israel-Palestine), Marty Rosenbluth (filmmaker who directed "Jerusalem: An Occupation Set in Stone"), Yoaf Peled (a professor at Tel Aviv University), Adhan Musallam (a professor at Bethlehem University), and a lot of others. The college-wide committees on which I served include the Human Subject Review Board, a couple of committees that were formed to create minors (like an Asian studies minor and a Middle East studies minor), and many others. I also served the college by helping to create a September 11th class after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
I served the community as well through my participation in public panels, my hosting of Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival events in my classes over the years, my serving on the Board of the Ithaca Finger Lakes Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, my serving on the Board of the Women's Peace Institute, my assistance in founding Aceh Fund for victims of the tsunami in Indonesia, and in various other ways.
As part of my tenure review, the Sociology Tenure and Promotion committee (which included all tenured Sociology faculty) summarized my record of teaching, scholarship, and service.
Let me quote some of their summaries to show you the extent to which my excellence in all of these three criteria was recognized by the people who knew of my qualities directly and who had reviewed all of the material in my tenure file:
Of my teaching, they said:
"Margo Ramlal-Nankoe has expanded students’ views of the world, enriched their understanding of very unfamiliar issues, and exposed them to a valuable analysis unlike any other in our department.”
“[…] Dr. Ramlal-Nankoe's] work in the area of teaching should be judged excellent and that it meets our expectations for tenure.” (Professor Susanne Morgan, Synthesis of Dr. Margo Ramlal-Nankoe's Teaching, 2005).
"Most students also tell us that working with Dr. Ramlal has transformed their views, their life, and/or their plans for the future, that she made a difference in their lives."
"Dr. Ramlal clearly attempts to teach her students to become active agents for change and justice."
"I was particularly impressed with the letters that talked about Professor Ramlal having faith and confidence in students that led to their increased self esteem and confidence." (Professor Judith Barker, Department Recommendation of Dr. Margo Ramlal-Nankoe's Teaching, 2005).
Of my scholarship, they said:
"Margo’s scholarly work meets and exceeds the requirements for tenure and promotion of the Department of Sociology and of Ithaca College.”
"Margo brings to Ithaca College a valuable perspective that is unique in the department. She studies global issues from the perspective of World Systems Theory along with other recent theories of modernization."
"[A]nother paper ‘Early Modern Capitalism and Global Human Relations,’ ... is a fascinating study of how intellectuals provided the rationale for oppression. This work fits nicely with modern critical theories of the role of intellectuals in society." (Professor Jim Rothenberg, Department Recommendation of Dr. Margo Ramlal-Nankoe's Scholarship, 2005 and 2007).
Finally, of my service they wrote:
"Since her first year at Ithaca College, Dr. Ramlal has served as a resource for those faculty who wish to integrate a more global international perspective into their teaching and/or scholarship."
"For students Dr. Ramlal models a version of citizenship which urges them to take a hands on approach to creating social justice." (Professor Judith Barker, Department Recommendation of Dr. Margo Ramlal-Nankoe's Service, 2005).
And they quoted Dr. Raquib Zaman, a distinguished professor in the School of Business who declared:
"It is imperative that we are able to keep Dr. Ramlal-Nankoe at Ithaca College for the benefit of not only our students but also the community a whole."
As a result of me meeting and exceeding the tenure criteria, my department voted to recommend me for tenure.
Speech structure note: (2) Despite meeting and exceeding the tenure requirements, some in my department and the administration sought to deny me tenure.
However, I did not receive unanimous support from faculty within my department. With such strong record, how was it possible that some faculty within my department opposed my tenure? Well, there were four faculty who voted in favor of me receiving tenure; there were three who voted against.
One of these three opposed my bid for tenure because, after he had sexually harassed me for over a year, I complained about his behavior to the Sociology Department Chair. His harassment consisted of repeated inappropriate statements to me such as: “Margo, you are too close to your husband” and “Margo, you are a fragile woman. You need someone to protect you.” I obviously did not feel comfortable expressing to him my discomfort with these statements because he might retaliate against me—which he ended up doing when he voted against my tenure because I eventually reported his behavior to Ithaca College's Affirmative Action Office and the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences. This faculty member had a history of using his position of power against vulnerable females: after a field trip to the Dominican Republic which he attended together with students and another faculty member who acted as the trip's supervisor, many--I think all--of the female students on that trip complained about experiencing sexual harassment from this professor. This incident was widely discussed at a department meeting. Like I said before, when I spoke out about his behavior, he turned against me.
As far as I can tell, the other two faculty members who had voted against me did so because they were close friends with this professor; they were trying to protect him. For example, when one of these individuals--he was the Chair of the Sociology Department at that time--discovered that I had complained to Ithaca College's Affirmative Action Office about the sexual harassment from the first professor, he threatened to vote against my tenure; which he later did. The third faculty member who voted against me was the director of the Center for Culture, Race, and Ethnicity. He joined his friend and spread sexist rumors about me around the Ithaca College campus which were reported to the Provost and Affirmative Action by other faculty. So, I've now explained to you the motivations of these three faculty members.
However, I did not only have enemies within my department; the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences also turned against me because he did not like my involvement in activities relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In 2000, I became active in groups that dealt with the Israel-Palestine conflict. I've already mentioned my involvement in Students for a Just Peace in Israel-Palestine and the Ithaca Finger Lakes Committee for a Just Peace in Israel-Palestine. I also spoke at a few public panels put on by academic departments at Ithaca College.
The Dean disapproved of the criticism with which these groups and I analyzed Israel's actions and policies. For instance, in an email the Dean wrote to a professor who co-advised Students for a Just Peace with me, that a certain activity which the student group was requesting funding for was anti-Israel and he therefore denied funding for this event. This activity consisted of bringing two speakers, a Jewish professor from Israel and one from Palestine to Ithaca College to share their perspectives on the occupation of Palestine. While these speakers were critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, they were in fact not anti-Israel. The Dean, by denying funding for this event, exposed his bias.
The Dean exposed his bias again when he denied one of my students, a student who was the President of Students for a Just Peace, funding for his study trip in Palestine, claiming that it was too dangerous. This student eventually went when I helped organize a fund-raiser--right here in the Worker's Center--for his trip.
The Dean's bias was recognized by other faculty at Ithaca College. After a professor seeking tenure in the Politics Department was unanimously recommended for tenure by her department, the Dean, going against the evidence within her file (all of which indicated that she had met the tenure requirements), denied her tenure. This professor was co-advisor of Students for a Just Peace with me. Even though the Dean did not state that his decision to deny her tenure was based on this professor's involvement with Students for a Just Peace and other activities relating to Israel-Palestine like me, her department strongly suspected that his decision was based exactly on this.
Another professor from the Department of writing told me when he first came to Ithaca College he had a cordial relationship with the Dean, who had approved his tenure. However, after he spoke out publicly about Israel-Palestine issues, the Dean became openly hostile towards him. When he was invited to speak at another university to speak about strategies to teach about the Vietnam War the Dean rejected his application for travel money. When he asked the Dean why he rejected his application the Dean responded "Because I can." When an Ithaca College student had committed suicide, the professor suggested to the Ithaca College Administration that the college close for the rest of the day in remembrance of the young man. The Dean angrily called the professor "arrogant" for no apparent reason. Later when the professor asked the Dean about his response the Dean admitted that he had responded without reading the professor's email. This shows the hostility with which the Dean viewed and treated people who spoke out on the topic of Israel-Palestine.
The last thing I’ll say about the Dean and his thoughts on Israel-Palestine are this: I remember I once met the Dean while I was shopping in a supermarket in Ithaca and he told me that his son was serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, IDF. Now, one, I don’t know if that’s true (but I can’t imagine why he would have said that had it not been true); two, I say this not to imply that everyone with a son or daughter serving in the IDF will treat people who speak out about Israel’s policies in a discriminatory way—but the fact that his son served in the IDF certainly fits the picture of the person I’ve already shown to be belligerently pro-Israel.
Finally, I’ll just say that the Dean was not alone at Ithaca College in his pro-Israel prejudice. For example, this year [2009], Ithaca College alumna Emily McNeil published an article in the ICView entitled “The Violence Must End” in which she described disgusting acts of Israeli settler violence she had witnessed or heard about from Palestinians while she was in the West Bank. According to Maura Stephen’s, the editor of the ICView, the President of Ithaca College, Tom Rochon, pressured her to issue an apology for the article. Moreover, the President suggested that he would be implementing some sort of censorship panel for the ICView moving forward. In response to these actions of the Ithaca College Administration, many Ithaca College faculty signed a letter of protest, stating, among other things, that “the underlying message of Rochon’s promise of a more explicit editorial regime in the future seems to be that the economic health of the college depends on censorship, and that, in this case, the public perception must be that the institution does not challenge official Israeli positions.”
Thus, I have explained why these faculty members and the Dean opposed and antagonized me during my employment at Ithaca College and during my tenure process; let me give just one more reason why they opposed me: I believe they thought that they could get away with their scandalous actions because they wouldn’t face opposition from me, a woman of color who is a non-citizen immigrant.
They thought I would not have the strength and resources to stand up for my self and fight because they presumed that I didn’t have rights as a non-citizen immigrant, that I was some sort of subservient Asian woman without a voice; that I was invisible and would remain so.
After I had appealed the tenure violations, the co-chair of the Sociology Tenure and Promotion Committee informed me that the department chair said to her, "I never expected her to fight, I thought she was subservient."
Speech structure note: (3) These biased faculty and administrators, in an effort to smear my record, repeatedly violated my tenure process
Let me now move on to the third section of my speech. I've already explained to you that the criteria for tenure and the fact that I exceeded all of these criteria. I’ve already explained to you that these individuals tried to denigrate my record because of their biases against me and the fact that, due to their own arrogance, they thought that they could get away with it.
Now let me explain to you what they actually did during my tenure process, and I’ll specifically highlight where they decided to violate the established rules and procedures governing my tenure process because they thought that breaking the rules would allow them more opportunity to smear my record of teaching, scholarship, and service.
But first, before I go into what my tenure process looked like, let me briefly explain what a regular Ithaca College tenure process for a candidate that, like me, clearly exceeds the tenure criteria would be. According to the Faculty Handbook, first the candidate’s department votes on the whether or not to recommend that the candidate receive tenure. They vote to recommend tenure. The candidate’s tenure file then goes to the Dean; he makes a positive recommendation. Then the tenure file goes to the All College Tenure and Promotion Committee. They vote to recommend tenure. Then file goes to the Provost. He votes to recommend tenure. Then the file foes to the President of the College. He votes to recommend tenure. Then finally, the file goes to the Board of Trustees. There, the final decision to grant or not grant tenure is made. All the levels above the initial level, the department, tend to support the department's recommendation because those are the individuals most familiar with the candidate.
Now for how the process worked in my case: In my case my whole tenure process failed.
Starting in 2004, the faculty who I had complained about for sexually harassing me launched an attack on me and my work. This was before the department vote on my fourth year review. The fourth year review is important because if you pass it your chance to get tenure in the future increases. This faculty member was trying to obstruct my chances for tenure. His attack was behind my back in an email he wrote with a lot of bias and circulated through the whole department including faculty who barely knew me. His was urging the department not to support me and created a hostile environment for me.
After I complained to Affirmative Action about his slanderous actions and that of another faculty member who was one of his close friends, the sociology chair, also a close friend, immediately retaliated against me and threatened to strongly oppose my tenure. He said this to the co-chairs of the Sociology Tenure and Promotion Committee. When he threatened to also write a negative observation report about my classes, one of the faculty arranged to observe the same class he was observing to rebut his false statements in his observation. She did.
After his first email attack on me the faculty member wrote a letter stating that he would not participate in my tenure review. Though it was not written, the co-chair of the Sociology Tenure and Promotion Committee had informed me that Affirmative Action had requested his other friend not to participate in the vote because of their actions together against me. However, almost a year after his withdrawal letter and a few days before the department vote on my tenure, he inserted two letters in my tenure file. In one he stated that he had decided to exercise his right as a tenured faculty member and would vote on my tenure. His second letter was a print of another email attack on me more vicious than the first one with blatant racist statements. This letter was addressed to the entire Sociology Tenure and Promotion Committee who he urged not to support my tenure and he reminded them how they all perceive women of color. He wrote, "We had little or no expectations of her, she is after all a woman of color."
I protested immediately to the Sociology Tenure and Promotion Committee that this faculty member and his friend could not be allowed to vote because, aside from their slanderous campaign against me they had also not fulfilled their required faculty duties of observing my classes and producing the required observation reports of my teaching. In fact, the faculty who had sexually harassed me, had never, not even once in my 12 years of teaching at Ithaca College, observed a single one of my classes. But the department chair, knowing that he would be the only vote against my tenure without these two, insisted that they join him in the vote against me.
The department chair, who had expressed his bias and threatened to oppose my tenure before the vote committed another serious violation of the Sociology Department Guidelines for Tenure and Promotion by writing a negative letter about me to the Dean which he included in my tenure file but did not share with me. The Faculty Handbook states that, with the exception of the external reviewers' letter, all letters in a candidate’s tenure file should be known to the candidate:
a. A planning unit or school personnel committee evaluates the performance of each tenure-eligible faculty member and makes recommendations with justifications … to the dean (with a copy to the faculty member) …. If provided in the approved planning unit or school procedures, the chair will also evaluate the tenure-eligible faculty member and make a recommendation with justifications to the dean (with a copy to the faculty member). … The dean must not communicate the dean's judgment on reappointment to the personnel committee until the committee submits its own recommendation. (Faculty Handbook, 4.12.4 Procedures for Major Formal Evaluations of Tenure-Eligible Faculty).
The Handbook contains such a policy so that a candidate can view and rebut any claims made against her in her tenure file. Like I explained before, the Chair declined to follow this rule because, had he followed it, I would have been able to submit a letter of rebuttal to my tenure file, exposing his false claims and his bias.
Despite this opposition within my department I was recommended for tenure.
As I mentioned previously, these department faculty were not alone in their opposition towards me or in violating the rules of my tenure procedure: the Dean exploited and joined this opposition. When he received the letter from my department recommending me tenure based on my having met the criteria as the majority of my department concluded, the Dean actually demanded a separate letter from the chair of my Department who he knew opposed my tenure. He said that, if he was not provided this letter, he would return my tenure file to the department until he had received the chair's letter. This is a violation of established procedure. The reason he felt it necessary to ask for this letter—even if he had to break the rules to get it—became clear immediately: he based his recommendation against me receiving tenure solely on arguments from the negative Chair’s letter, totally ignoring the department’s extremely positive recommendation based on their synthesis of my whole tenure file. This Chair’s letter, by the way, is the same one which I described not being able to rebut—because I didn’t even know that it existed until I saw the Dean’s recommendation against my tenure citing it. The Dean wrote: “Based upon the bare majority positive recommendation of the Sociology Department's tenured faculty—voting four to three in favor of tenure and promotion to associate professor, the negative recommendation of department chair …, and my own thorough review of the file materials presented in support of these recommendations, I regretfully recommend that since the candidate's file does not present sufficient evidence of meeting the college's criteria for tenure and promotion to associate professor, my recommendation is negative.” Notice that the Dean does not actually provide evidence that I have not met the criteria for tenure and promotion.
Since the Dean had aligned himself with the biased opposition in my department and, instead of addressing their bias and correcting their violations, brought his own biases and violations into my tenure process, at this point I appealed all their violations of my tenure process to the Faculty Personal Appeals Committee, the FPAC. After approximately less than one month of deliberation, the FPAC agreed with my claims that substantial violations of my tenure process had occurred. The FPAC concluded that the dean and the faculty had acted in violation of the Faculty Handbook Policies and the Procedures for Tenure and Promotion at Ithaca College.
ALLEGATION ONE: “The Department of Sociology failed to follow its own internal guidelines for Peer Visitation Policies... Each tenured faculty member in the department will visit a minimum of two classes...” (Decision Faculty Personnel Appeals Committee, April 19, 2006)
ALLEGATION TWO: "[I]t is our conclusion that the candidate did not receive a copy of the chair's independent letter. The letter was sent directly to the Dean's office and included in her file. The Dean then reviewed the candidate's file and wrote a letter regarding her file. At no time was she given an opportunity to respond to the (chair's) letter, a clear violation of Section 4.13.1.5 of the Ithaca College Policy Manual...”The Dean provides the faculty member with written copies of all recommendations...” (Decision Faculty Personnel Appeals Committee, April 19, 2006).
I finally thought that my situation would be addressed when the FPAC decided to send my file to the Provost to remedy all these violations.
The Provost is the person who works directly under the President. He conducted his independent review of my file. He recognized all the violations to my tenure file. But the Provost, instead of recommending that I receive tenure and dismissing the biased and violational recommendations of the Dean and the minority of my department, offered to extend my tenure for two years, giving me time to improve my scholarship and re-do the tenure process. I strongly opposed this “solution;” I demanded he recommend me for tenure immediately and direct the higher levels of the tenure process to ignore the Dean’s recommendation against me. Instead, he insisted that his offer was the final offer.
I requested the Provost to prohibit the three faculty members who had been involved in violations and the Dean from future participation in my tenure review. Of these four individuals, the Provost only agreed to prohibit two faculty members.
So, while I did not receive total or immediate results from the Provost, it did seem that my next tenure review would be fair and would thus result in me getting approved for tenure at every level.
But guess what happened next? The Provost Left! He left before the measures he had promised (for example, a meeting between himself, the Dean, and my department members) were all implemented. He resigned from his job before my new tenure review had started and the meeting he had planned with the department and Dean never took place.
With the Provost gone and the new Provost refusing to honor all of the provisions of the contract the old Provost had made with me which was suppose to govern my second tenure review process, I expected a repeat of the first tenure travesty. What I actually experienced was even worse than a repeat of the already spoiled process.
First, my entire department had turned against me and they all—except for the two faculty that were still barred from voting—voted against recommending me for tenure. In voting against me, many of them completely contradicted their previous assessments of my teaching, scholarship, and service. Also, more violations—some recognized by the Appeals Committee—occurred. For instance, there was exclusion of all the alumna letters, students evaluations, letters from peers on campus from the department consideration of my teaching; a department level voted on my tenure without the required service statement; and a faculty member had decided not to support me for tenure before the submission of my tenure file.
The Dean was still against me.
And even the FPAC, the appeals committee, was now against me since the membership of the committee had changed and now serving on the committee were faculty close to the Dean and some of the faculty members in my department who most opposed me.
Also, on top of having no one I could look to for correction of all the "normal" violations, Ithaca College began retaliate against me for going increasingly public with my case. For example, this past school year was supposed to be my last year teaching at Ithaca College. However, as soon as I started speaking out to local media last semester, the new Dean blocked my classes from student enrollment during pre-registration for Spring 2009. To make things worse, Ithaca College abused my non-citizen immigrant status by refusing to sponsor my visa to teach while I am under contract until the end of this semester. By doing that Ithaca College has attempted to obstruct my stay in the US where I have been living with my family since 1988. As a result of this I had to leave the US before the end of the Fall 2008 semester to go back to the Netherlands to apply for my visa. This brought a lot of expenses as I had to stay abroad for almost two months. But the abuse was not over yet! When I returned from the Netherlands on January 20 to teach my classes I found that my classes had been cancelled.
Thus, no one in the Ithaca college administration would help me.
I looked for support amongst the faculty at Ithaca College and, I should say, I found some support amongst many faculty members.
Here is an excerpts from a letter written to the Board of Trustees by a concerned peer:
In January 2008, a number of her [Professor Margo Ramlal-Nankoe's] colleagues here at Ithaca College signed a letter expressing our profound dissatisfaction with the process regarding her tenure review and called for the establishment of an independent committee to review her files in place of her department.
[T]he fact that several faculty members from different departments in this institution were willing to write and meet with the university’s administration with regards to this case indicates a critical need to ensure that justice is done and seen to be done.
I call on the Board to uphold the integrity of the college’s review process by investigating and querying the sudden and unexplained reversals in the affirmation of the candidate’s teaching file and service record by her department and their overall commendation of her scholarship records. In 2005, the voting majority of the department’s T&P committee endorsed her as meeting the standards for tenure and promotion to Associate professor. When her tenure review process was extended as a result of evidence of violations in her case, 3 of the 4 members of the 2007 T& P committee inexplicably changed their minds and defined her as no longer meeting the requisite standards for tenure. It is therefore highly disturbing that a candidate whose teaching and service records has earned accolades and predominantly positive votes from her colleagues in a tenure review process that followed 8 years of close observation and interaction with her, is suddenly dismissed as having a poor teaching and service record a few months after she complains of some procedural violations regarding her file...[T]e sharp contradictions and changes in the department’s opinion of the candidate and the now unanimously negative vote in 2007, which sharply contradicts the previous positive support, might emerge out of intra-departmental animus or opposition to actions taken by the candidate in protest of violations committed by certain members of the department during the 2005 tenure process.
I write out of a determination that individuals have a right to expect fair, non-discriminatory treatment in their tenure and promotions review especially when they have devoted so many years of dedicated service to the institution ― in the classroom, through student organizations and in the larger campus community ― as is evident in the case of Dr Ramlal-Nankoe. Such rights must be upheld in an institution that seeks to stake a claim to justice and fairness and to sustain the continued enthusiastic service of faculty, both domestic and international. It is particularly hard for those who recruit minorities to deal with the discrepancies in this situation and to continue to communicate this as an institution that endorses and welcomes a diversity of individuals, approaches and ideologies.
Dr Ramlal-Nankoe’s treatment appears to ignore the record of substantive achievements in her file and the testament of numerous students and faculty from within and outside the institution who have written to provide evidence of her positive accomplishments and impact. Having constantly encountered students in my classes who reinforce our subject matter with issues they have learnt from Dr Ramlal-Nankoe and the support they have received from her, I am puzzled by the determination to suddenly dismiss her positive teaching file and service records and to refuse to engage her scholarly work.
I also began searching for support within the Ithaca community at this point—tonight’s meeting, as Troy mentioned, is part of that search.
And here we are. I have decided to reach out to tell my story in the hope you will support my struggle for fairness and justice! If no one hears me, I will not be able to teach, I will lose this struggle for tenure that I have rightly earned after my successful teaching career of 12 years at Ithaca College. If you support me and force this process to be made public, I will have my first genuine tenure review at which I can demonstrate that I meet the criteria for tenure and promotion. With your support I can win this battle of mine that I have been fighting for almost five years now; this battle that is a battle for all of us who care about the quality and diversity of our world’s educational institutions.
