Dear MeCCSA members, I urge you to support Professor Elizabeth Grosz's
protest (below) concerning  the unjustified dismissal of this evidently
valuable colleague in Gender and Culture, by writing to register your
disapproval. International support is obviously very valuable,
Sincerely,
Dr. Sally R. Munt
Reader in Media and Communication Studies
School of Information Management,
University of Brighton
Watts Building,
Lewes Road
BRIGHTON
BN2 4GJ
UK
Telephone 01273 600900
Fax  01273 642405

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 12:36:18 -0400
From: Elizabeth Grosz <[log in to unmask]>
To: Sally Munt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Gender Crisis at CEU

DearSally,

Excuse the formal tone, but this is urgent. Can you send it to
relevant Women's Studies people in the UK - esp. Heads of Dept to get
them to write quickly. Thanks
Liz

I write to you regarding a crisis in the Gender and Culture program
at the Central European University in the hope that you may respond
quickly with a letter to members of the Board of Trustees there and
forward this email to others who might also write. Although the
details are still sketchy, last week Dr Andrea Peto was dismissed
from her position in the program on one day's notice, though she had
just been awarded an open-ended contract the year before and was not
scheduled for a review for one more year. The only other teaching
faculty, Dr Miglena Nikolchina was dimissed as Director of the
Program, one year before her contract had finished (though she still
remains on, provisionally at least, as a Professor), and the CEU
Rector, Rector Elkana, has placed himself as interim Director of the
program. He has appointed as the next Director an internal candidate
from the History Program at CEU, despite protests from the
appointments committee that there was not adequate consultation to
make the decision.

  I can attest, from personal experience of the program, to the
thorough professionalism and competence of these two faculty, and of
the program as a whole, which was as dynamic and intellectual
rigorous as any program I have seen, and which had grown in numbers
into a thriving program (primarily directed to Masters students), one
of the only Gender oriented programs in Eastern Europe. It now seems
clear that the program is under threat and requires the immediate
support of feminist scholars from outside Hungary. Because the CEU is
a privately funded university, funded by George Soros's Open Society
Institute, scholars may be able to exert some influence and express
their anger and force an inquiry into these drastic procedures.

I enclose below a copy of my letter to members of the Board, as well
as a list of the Board members and their addresses and fax numbers
(where available), and a copy of Andrea Peto's outline of recent
events.

Thanks,

Liz Grosz

My letter:
I write to you because you are a member of the Board of Trustees for
the Central European University in Hungary to express my concern
regarding the recent dismissal of the two full-time faculty teaching
the Gender and Culture Program at the CEU. I recently had the honor
to teach a short course in the Program (in 1998) as well as to
participate in an immensely productive, highly diversified and
intellectually challenging conference held by the program last year,
so it is with great alarm that I write to you concerning the recent
interventions into the normal running of a highly successful and
internationally respected program.

As both a member of the Women's Studies Department at SUNY Buffalo
and as scholar with over twenty years of international teaching and
research experience in this area - in Australia, Canada, Europe and
the United States - I was appalled to learn about the unprecedented,
and undiscussed, dismissal of Dr Andrea Petö, the removal of Dr
Miglena Nikolchina as Program Director, and Rector Elkana's interim
taking over of the position of Program Director. The direct effect of
this intervention appears to be the beginning of the dismantling of
the Program according to the Rector's interests, rather than
according to those of experts in the field and those working in the
program.

The Program has been highly successful and is extremely well-run. Its
courses are exceptionally stringent, rigorous and provide great depth
and understanding. I can testify to this from my personal experiences
in the program. It has a large, and growing, number of exceptionally
bright students, who have been both trained and inspired to develop
their work in further directions beyond the MA level the program
offers (I have two former CEU students from the Program coming to
work with me at SUNY Buffalo on doctorates). It offers one of the
only such programs in Eastern Europe. For the small resources it has
- two full-time faculty, ancillary staff and visiting professors - it
has accomplished a remarkable amount in its relatively brief
existence. And yet, it has not been given the intellectual and
educational respect and autonomy afforded to all other departments
and programs, the right to direct its own internal courses, programs
of study and departmental governance according to the standards of
other programs throughout the globe.

Dr Petö's three courses were dropped by Rector Elkana without notice,
discussion or adequate reason ("as part of the current reorganization
of the Program on Gender and Culture"), though there is no doubt that
Dr Petö is a highly competent scholar and teacher with a
well-deserved and growing international reputation. This can only be
seen as an intervention in academic freedom, and a breach of the
principles governing any 'open society'. When 'reorganization' is
dictated from above, with no discussion or appeal to alternatives
from participants, those directly concerned - teachers, students,
peers and colleagues - the open society closes itself down. As a
result of these courses being dropped, Dr Petö's contract was
terminated. And as a result of her termination, and the removal of Dr
Nikolchina as Director, the Program has been fundamentally
transformed from the outside.

There were, moreover, anomalies and improprieties in the search for a
new Director for the program. The normal procedures for ensuring the
independence of the search process were violated a number of times,
the least of which was inadequate consultation with the members of
the search committee. The consequence is that the program is under
serious threat; and the status and value of all the international
visitors, and the qualifications of all the students involved in the
Program since its inception in 1994, have been impugned.

At the very least, an urgent and independent inquiry needs to be
undertaken into the Program on Gender and Culture, into its modes of
operation before these recent interventions, into the processes by
which these interventions were authorized, and into the consequences
and implications of these interventions. There is certainly the
appearance of impropriety, and such an appearance is enough to
impeach to quality and international value both of all courses given
at the CEU, and of the management of the CEU. If the most basic
issues of academic freedom, democratic and procedurally regulated
university governance and the professionalism of senior management
cannot be guaranteed, then CEU's reputation will be damaged in the
eyes of the international scholarly community and its accredited
status with the State University of New York will be imperiled. I
urge the Board of Trustees to act quickly in ensuring such an
independent inquiry.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrea's Outline:

1. The Director of the Program Gender and Culture, Miglena Nikolchina
gave me the paragraph the Rector wrote about me to the CEU Board
Members (George Soros, Aryeh Neier, Wolf Lepennies, Natalie Zemon
Davis, Leon Botstein, Istvan Rev and cc. to Joan Scott, Svetlana
Slapsak, Edmund Mokryczki, János Kis, Bela Greskovits, Stefan
Messmann, István Teplán) on 20 June, 2000.

The very public statements  and unbased, personal judgments of the
Rector about my academic abilities are against all academic and legal
procedures of the CEU and they are seriously damaging my academic and
personal reputation.

I am quoting from the letter.

1. 1. "Andrea Peto was originally a Department Coordinator in
History, then became an assistant  professor in History, and was
subsequently released from her post there by the Chairman Professor
Alfred Rieber, with the support of the Faculty."

I was employed as a Coordinator of the History Program in the Autumn
of 1991 when there were no academic appointments available at the
CEU. I started to teach courses in women’s history at the CEU History
Program in 1993. I was employed as an assistant professor in 1995 at
the History department and because my appointment expired I was
transferred from there in 1996. I wonder how does Professor Elkana
know what happened in June 1996 when his appointment as Rector and
President started in Autumn 1999. I wonder if he could attach any
document proving the following statement "with the support of the
faculty".
I was immediately hired by the Gender Studies program as an assistant
professor, I taught the same courses at the CEU crosslisted with the
History Department from 1996. So if I had been removed because of my
academic incompetence that I should not have been hired to teach the
same courses crosslisted with the History Department in the next
academic year, which meant teaching and supervising the MA and Ph.D.
theses of students at the History Department besides my duties at the
Program on Gender and Culture.

1. 2. "She was given a position in Gender Studies."

I was offered an indefinite contract starting from 1 July 1998 as an
assistant professor at The Program on Gender and Culture. The period
between 1996-1998 proved that my expertise is needed at the CEU and I
am a competent academic. My Ph.D. thesis was published before the
degree was granted, my two monographs will be published this year:
one in English, one in Hungarian, I edited two books in Hungarian and
six in English and I published just in the last five years 26 papers
in Hungarian, English, German, Russian, Croatian, Serbian and in
Polish.

1.3."Having reviewed her file, academic record, and listened to the
views of the new Head of the Gender Studies Program I informed her
that she has one of those Hungarian "indefinite ‘ contracts, which
can be legally terminated on a 50 days notice (actually CEU will
offer a 90 days termination and three months severance) and since we
do not wish to employ her in this  next academic year, I informed her
before the end of June."




1. 3. 1. Review

According to the Faculty Compendium in the case of indefinite
contracts there are reviews at the end of the second year of the
employment (Section IV. B. 4). In my case that should happen in
summer 2001. According to the CEU Regulations a junior faculty is
entitled for a promotion at the end of the sixth year of his or her
year of employment (IV. B. c.) in my case that would be Summer 2001.
There are established university procedures of both the review and
the promotion processes ( IV. B. c., IV.B. 1-3).
I did not know if there is a review going on. I have not received any
information or written guidelines on how the review was conducted,
who conducted it and with what kind of intention.  If there was a
review, it should have been a "special" one, so I would like to know
who conducted it.

1.3. 2. Personal and Academic Files

Moreover the way how the Rector was reviewing my file was mishandling
the academic files (see CEU regulations on the academic files IV.1.;"
The academic files are consulted when considering applications for
personal development funding, research leave, re-appointment and
promotion"). I was not asked in any form to submit the required
additional material  (IV.B.1.c.) which is needed in the case of
promotion.
The Faculty Compendium gives a very broad right to the Rector to
consult with personal files,: "they are accessible only to relevant
academic staff member and administrator (unit head) in addition to
the Rector and President and his/her designees." The "new Head of
Gender Studies" was given the right and invited to look at my
personal files, I suppose as a designee of the Rector. When this
"special" review was conducted the Director of the Program, Miglena
Nikolchina was not invited to join the Rector to express her opinion.
There is not a written evidence about authorizing an other CEU
faculty member by the Rector in order to consult and comment my files
because this person was asked by the Rector to conduct a "special"
review following the wish of the Rector.

1.3.3. Employment

The question of employment is not a question of "wish" of
unidentified agents ("we") but it should follow the established legal
rules and academic procedures.

1.4. "That we decided to forego the chance of participating in an
international research program (the participation in the Athena
thematic network, which incidentally was never discussed by the
Senate (which would have been organized by and through Andrea Peto,
is clear under the present situation)"

The Program on Gender and Culture was approached to apply for
external European Union research funding of 150 000 USD. This program
is the only CEU unit which is eligible for applying European Union
funding because of our long cooperation with the ATHENA network. I
was negotiating with our partners in the past years, with the support
of the Academic Pro-Rector, who even participated in one of the
conferences we organized at the CEU in March, 2000 to prepare these
research projects.
No CEU Senate decision is needed to participate in ATHENA projects,
because the previous Rector, Professor Jarab already approved the
affiliation of the Program to the Project. There is no precedent that
the CEU Senate has ever decided upon a relevance of an academic
research activity of an Academic Unit because that would mean
violation of academic freedom.
I do not consider self-evident or clear why Professor Elkana`s
opinion should be the only one taken into consideration on issues of
European institutional cooperation in gender studies if the experts
of this field of research (gender) in the European Union think
differently. The ban on participating in comparative academic
research projects for simple personal reasons is giving very
controversial signals to the European Union about the intentions of
the CEU promoting open society.
2. On 30 June 13.00 I was given a paper signed by Dr. Elkana saying
"We regret to inform you that, as part of the current reorganization
of the Program on Gender and Culture the following course will not be
included in the Program’s curriculum starting with the next academic
year"  and he listed the three courses I am teaching.

2.1. Reorganization

The CEU Program on Gender and Culture according to the Senate
decision on 26 May, 2000 is under review. The review procedures are
outlined in The Faculty Compendium Part VII. C. 1. a. regulates the
procedure in details. There are two types of reviews: "strategic" and
"other" reviews, in case of The Program on Gender and Culture it has
not even been decided by the Senate which type of review will happen
and when. But if I assume that the Rector has long term plans, so
"strategic" review procedure is the following: "Units should set up a
strategy committee consisting of the senior academic staff member and
one representative of the junior academic staff members each year.
For Interdisciplinary Programs. Members of the Interdisciplinary
Program Committee will serve on the strategic committee. The
committee should hold a joint session with the- unit’s Advisory Board
every two years and it is required to submit its plan for the next
two years to the Academic Pro-rector."

2.2. Courses

It can not be the exclusive right of the Rector of  CEU to cross out
any course from the list of courses even if in this case he appointed
himself as the Director of The Program on Gender and Culture from 1
July, 2000. It would have been appropriate to know on what basis
Professor Elkana thinks that there is no need for these courses.
These courses were submitted to the Head of the Program in time,
discussed and approved. These three courses were already advertised
in all official CEU Admissions Booklets and documents and the
students applied with the hope that the curriculum will be same when
they are arriving to Budapest.
If a reorganization of the Program has started after these courses
were accepted to be taught at the CEU, I should have been asked how I
could fit my previous courses into this "new concept" which
supposedly has a detailed written documentation after discussed and
approved by all necessary university bodies.

3.  I was organizing a three-day long conference: Rethinking Women's
History in post 1945 Central Europe: Women and War, financed by the
CEU Research Board on 30 June from 16.00 onwards. I was shocked to
recognize on 1 July at 9 am that my access to the CEU server was
denied.
The system accepted email messages sent to my email address but there
was no message bouncing back from the system administrator to the
sender saying that I was denied to get access to my email at the CEU.
Hopefully the CEU system administrator acted according to the certain
written order and respected my privacy rights. I was not given any
oral or written information that I will loose my access to the CEU
server three hours after I was given the document  mentioned in point
2.  This decision  causes a serious moral and financial damage to me
that my colleagues think that I did receive the information they have
sent to me but I am lazy to respond.
I am keeping all my academic files of the past nine years of my CEU
employment on the CEU "p" drive  if they are unaccessible for me it
prevents me to continue my work.
The CEU students have an access to their CEU email address via
internet for six (6) months after they graduated from the CEU. As a
Faculty member, the elected junior members of the CEU Senate till the
next Senate election, recipient of the CEU Research Board Grant
1999-2001, Chair of the CEU Disciplinary and the CEU Computer
Committees I was disconnected in three hours following a very
contestable decision of one person.

I would like to stress that as one of the first employees of the CEU
I deeply believe in the mission of the CEU as a higher educational
institution promoting academic freedom, transparency, rule of law and
privacy, but these above mentioned events seriously questioning if
these principles are followed in my case.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Board of Directors:
George Soros
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th St
New York, NY 10019
Phone: (212) 548 0100
Fax: 212  5484679
<[log in to unmask])

Leon Botstein
President, Bard College,
PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
Ph: (845-758 6822)
Fax: (914) 7580815
<[log in to unmask]>

Colin Campbell
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
437 Madison Avenue, 37th Floor
New York, NY 10022-7001
Ph: (212) 8124200
Fax: (212) 8124299

Gerhard Casper
President
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305
Fax: (650) 725-9520

Professor Natalie Zemon Davis
Department of Comparative Literature
University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario Canada M53 1A1
Ph: (416) 978 6363
Fax: (416) 9786867
<[log in to unmask]>

Yehuda Elkana,
CEU President and Rector
Nador u. 9
1051 Budapest 5, Hungary
Ph: (361) 327 3000
fax 36-1-3273001
<[log in to unmask])

György Enyedi
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Roosevelt Ter 9
Budapest1051, Hungary
Phone: 36-1-302-4808
Fax: 36-1-331-4379

Katalin Koncz, Open Society Institute Budapest
Fax: 361-3273106

Rektor Prof Dr Wolf Lepenies
Institute for Advanced Study
Wallotstrasse 19, 14193, Berlin
Ph: (49) 30 890010
Fax: 49 30890013000
<[log in to unmask]>

Ewa Letowska
Polish Academy of Sciences

Aryeh Neier
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th St
New York, NY 10019
Phone: (212) 548 0100
Fax: 212  5484679
<[log in to unmask]>

William Newton-Smith
Baillol College, Oxford

Professor István Rév
Open Society Archives at CEU
PO Box 458
h-1396 Budapest 62, Hungary
<[log in to unmask]>

István Teplán CEU Executive Vice-President
Nador u. 9
1051 Budapest 5, Hungary
Ph: (361) 327 3000
Fax: (361) 3273007

Miklós Vásárhelyi
Soros Foundation
Hungary



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