ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND TENURE: NEW MEXICO HIGHLANDS UNIVERSITY1

Academe, May/Jun 2006 by Nails, Debra, Baez, Benjamin, Hollinger, David A, Collins, Linda, Et al

This report concerns the actions taken by the administration of New Mexico Highlands University to dismiss Professor Gregg H. Turner and to deny tenure to Professor David J. Wiedenfeld.

New Mexico Highlands University (usually referred to as Highlands or NMHU) was established in 1893 by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature as New Mexico Normal School, admitting its first students in 1898. Bearing its current name since 1941, Highlands is a statesupported coeducational institution and a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution.2

The university is located on a 175-acre campus in the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, some sixty-five miles east of the state capital, Santa Fe. Satellite learning centers are located in Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, Farmington, and Roswell.

Highlands offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in five departments in the College of Arts and Sciences and in schools of education, business administration, and social work. As of fall 2005, approximately 2,340 students were enrolled on the main campus, some 45 percent of them graduate students, served by a full-time faculty of approximately 115. Nearly 60 percent of the Highlands student body and nearly 30 percent of the faculty are Hispanic. The university was first accredited in 1926 by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools and, as chronicled by Highlands 's official historian, the university has intermittently experienced problems with accreditation and faced allegations from its faculty of administrative interference.3

Manuel M. "Manny" Aragon became the sixteenth president of Highlands on July 1, 2004, succeeding Dr. Sharon S. Caballero. Prior to his appointment to the presidency, Mr. Aragon was for many years majority leader of the New Mexico Senate and well known throughout the state. Dr. Janice Chavez served as the interim provost during the 2004-05 academic year, when most of the events described in this report took place. She resigned in July 2005 and was succeeded by Mr. Placido G. Gomez, who has the title of vice president for academic affairs. Dr. Rolando M. Rael, a tenured member of the Highlands faculty in the Department of Natural Sciences, held the position of interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences during the 2004-05 academic year.4 The university's five-member board of regents, appointed by the governor, is now chaired by Mr. Javier M. Gonzales, a Santa Fe business executive who replaced former governor Toney Anaya as chair in January 2005.

I. Background

Meeting in December 2003, the board of regents took two actions with important ramifications for the future of the university. In the first, the regents voted unanimously not to extend the two-year contract of President Caballero beyond its expiration date the following June and authorized a national search for her successor. In the second, they adopted a broad-ranging, thirty-three-page five-year strategic plan that included a mission statement with the following opening paragraph:

New Mexico Highlands University is a diverse comprehensive quality university serving the global community by integrating education, research, public service, and economic development, while celebrating our distinctive northern New Mexico cultures and traditions. We achieve this through a university-wide commitment to quality student-centered education, recognition of the growing importance of the Spanish language to our nation's interests, and an acknowledgment [of] our many responsibilities to residents of northern New Mexico as the principal educational institution in the region.

The eight-point strategic plan called for a series of new initiatives establishing strong partnerships with other academic institutions, including area community colleges, and identifying and vigorously addressing the educational, social, and economic needs of the region. Its chief priority, explicit in its prefatory vision statement, was to turn Highlands into "the nation's premier hispanic-serving institution." With respect to recruitment and retention of faculty, the strategic plan called for Highlands to do three things: build a "highly qualified diverse faculty"; "improve full-time-part-time faculty ratios and retain [a] high percentage of terminal degree tenure-track faculty"; and "recruit and retain faculty with demonstrated competencies for high productivity and outstanding performance." As will be made clear in the pages that follow, the interpretation and transformation of these three seemingly uncontroversial goals are crucial to understanding the tensions that were to develop in the first year after President Aragon's appointment.

With regard to the board's two actions, board chair Anaya was quoted as having stated at the same December 2003 meeting that "the regents decided a new direction was needed to help the university meet its mission and attain long-term goals.... We have adopted a very ambitious strategic plan for the university, and we feel strongly that we need to reach out for someone with the experience that will help ensure that we reach our goals." According to a report in Alburquerque Journal, the regents indicated that they were seeking a "strong personality to raise money, increase enrollment, and build profitable partnerships."