(NAME-MCE) Hiring Coup or Tainted Appointment?

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Hiring Coup or Tainted Appointment?

July 13, 2009

Texas Tech educators and others debate university's selection of
Alberto Gonzales, Bush's attorney general, to teach political science
and help recruit Latino students.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/13/gonzales

On August 1, Alberto Gonzales will start working at Texas Tech
University, where he will teach a seminar in political science while
helping the university (and Angelo State University) recruit and
retain first generation college students. In announcing the
appointment last week, Texas Tech officials praised his "experience"
and "expertise," noting the important legal jobs he held in Austin and
Washington working for George W. Bush.

In most cases, landing a former U.S. attorney general would be a coup
for a university, and law schools would be lining up with job offers.
But the ties between Gonzales and Bush -- and the role Gonzales played
in decisions that critics view as unconstitutionally eroding civil
liberties -- mean that this appointment isn't escaping notice, even at
the generally conservative Lubbock campus. Criticism has come both
from those offended by the Gonzales record and those disturbed by the
idea that -- at a time of tight budgets -- the chancellor of the
university (Kent Hance, a politician turned educator, who was once a
Democrat but became a Republican during the Reagan administration)
would find $100,000 to create a job for Gonzales.

To date, however, there are no signs that the criticism will prompt
any change at Texas Tech. The Daily Toreador, the student newspaper,
on Friday ran an editorial saying that hiring Gonzales was worse than
hiring Bob Knight, the controversial basketball coach. The editorial
said that the idea put forth by Texas Tech officials -- that Gonzales'
success as a Latino who rose to top positions of power makes him a
role model -- is negated by what Gonzales did in those positions.

Leaving Washington "in disgrace, Gonzales did not fulfill his duty as
attorney general, and he did not reach his full potential as a role
model for minorities," the editorial said. "So why hire him? This
trumps hiring a fiery coach from Indiana known for tossing a chair
across a basketball court. Gonzales is notoriously accused of much
more serious problems."

Texas Tech alumni have created two Facebook groups -- Citizens Against
Employing Alberto Gonzales at Texas Tech and Alberto Gonzales Doesn't
Belong at Texas Tech -- to oppose the appointment.

David Ring, a high school government teacher who holds bachelor's and
master's degrees from Texas Tech, said a variety of factors led him to
create the first Facebook group. He said that as a teacher he tries
"to instill in my students that while our system is complex, slow, and
incomprehensible at times, it is overall the best system for our
nation. One of the aspects is that personal responsibility must be
balanced with freedom. Someone like Gonzales acted under the guise of
never being personally responsible for his actions."

As an alumnus, he added: "What does it say about our institution that
it is willing to give someone who has almost seemed to go out of his
way to flaunt the law such a position? Making $100,000 to teach one
section of no more than 15 students (along with special recruiting and
speaking duties) doesn't seem like a fare shake to those professors at
the school who, I don't know, haven't perjured themselves in front of
the U.S. Congress."

Ring said he realized that he wasn't a "major donor" likely to
influence his alma mater, but that he and many fellow alumni wanted to
try.

Outside Texas Tech, the appointment is also attracting attention (and
much of the debate in the Texas Tech and Lubbock, Tex. newspapers has
concerned how negative that attention has been). In a column on The
Huffington Post, Steven G. Kellman, who teaches comparative literature
at the University of Texas at San Antonio, questioned why Gonzales,
who never studied political science beyond the undergraduate level,
was hired to teach the subject. And he rejected the idea that Gonzales
was qualified by virtue of his experience in government.

"At most accredited universities, new professors are chosen through
searches conducted and vetted by credentialed faculty in the relevant
field. Chancellor Hance's unilateral hire constitutes academic welfare
for a government wash-out," Kellerman wrote. "If universities filled
their faculties not with certified experts but with the objects of
their expertise, children would be teaching pediatric medicine and
psychopaths social psychology. Now that Texas Tech has stocked its
menagerie with an errant elephant, what other species are next?
Bernard Madoff is otherwise occupied, but he might have been hired to
teach business ethics...."

Generally, faculty leaders at Texas Tech have been quiet about the
appointment. While Faculty Senate leaders did not respond to messages
for this article, they have told local reporters that they are not
taking a position at this time. One faculty leader who asked not to be
identified, noting a conservative culture at the university, said that
the Gonzales appointment was consistent with administrators' not
valuing what should be part of a liberal arts education -- part of
which is instruction by scholars. She noted that at a Texas
legislative hearing last year, Hance told lawmakers that research on
"the best part of Shakespeare's play" at other universities wasn't as
valuable as research Texas Tech conducts for the Pentagon.

Hance defended the hire in the university announcement and in an
interview with The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. He said that he met
Gonzales in the 1980s, and that he had turned from a "political
acquaintance" to a "good friend." While the newspaper noted the
negative reaction it was seeing on its Web discussion boards, Hance
said he had received many positive e-mail messages about the decision
and wasn't paying attention to the critical messages because "they
didn't come from loyal university donors."

He also said that the challenging issues Gonzales was forced to
address because of 9/11 made it inevitable that there would be some
controversy over his record.

Gonzales told Legal Times that he was excited about the "adventure" of
moving to Lubbock and working at Texas Tech. He said he hoped to offer
students exposure to his experiences in the White House. “There were
some extraordinary decisions and events that occurred during the
previous administration,” Gonzales said. “I have the advantage of
having been in the Oval Office when those decisions were made," he
said.
— Scott Jaschik