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Here’s what I hate — I said in my best Andy Rooney impersonation.
Ogus and his successor Craig Evans, the interim chair of the Berkeley math department, said confidentiality rules prevented them speaking publicly about Coward’s case and referred queries to the university’s spokesperson.
And …
In a statement Janet Gilmore, a spokeswoman for UC Berkeley, said the law, policy and a collective bargaining agreement constrained it from discussing the specifics of any lecturer’s employment.
The excerpts are from this The Guardian story about a popular mathematics professor who is being let go from Berkeley.
Obviously, the reporter spoke at length with the professor, Alexander Coward, for the story. So whose confidentiality is being protected by the university?
As with most confidentiality rules, the protection is put in place ostensibly on behalf of an individual, when the effect more often is to shield the institution from public scrutiny.
I’m not familiar with the laws or union rules to which the Berkekey spokeswoman refers, but this is a public university and a union that represents employees paid largely from tax dollars.
We get a one-sided version of the situation in which the university bureaucracy is painted as petty, incompetent and inept.
Is this a true picture? We don’t know, because the bureaucracy is able to hide behind a curtain of confidentiality.
Will the decision makers be held accountable? Will they even be allowed to voice their side?
Or will it all be resolved out of sight of the taxpayers who foot the bill?
