UCLA seems to phase out concerned professors

Have you ever sat in class, bored senseless, and wondered,
“Where in the world did they find this professor?”

Sometimes it seems professors have an agenda of their own
““ like they are more concerned with hearing their own voice
than actually engaging students to think critically and actively
participate in their own education.

But don’t get me wrong. UCLA still has some great faculty
and outstanding professors, right?

Joshua Muldavin, former geography professor, was known to spend
more time during his class talking to students and answering
questions rather than preaching and rambling. Infamous for his
Geography 5 class, he incorporated politics and economics into a
critical analysis of the world around us and our own role in
it.

Wish you could take his class?

Too bad UCLA denied him tenure, forcing Muldavin to take his
gifts elsewhere.

How about “Boots” Pascual, a beginning and advanced
Tagalog lecturer, whose research into second language acquisition
led him to a first-tier university like UCLA? Boots took the time
to speak to students beyond the confines of lectures and office
hours, and dared to teach a language class without using a hundred
dollar textbook.

Too bad UCLA let him slip through their fingers over the
summer.

And what about Dr. Pauline Agbayani-Siewert, who recently earned
tenure in winter 2001, making her the only tenured
Pilipina-American faculty at UCLA? Her extensive research in
cross-cultural mental health practice, in conjunction with various
public and community-based organizations, focused on Asian and
Pilipino American populations that are often overlooked or ignored
by other “public” agencies.

Dr. Agbayani-Siewert’s published work still is relevant to
social welfare and policy researchers today. Undergraduates and
graduate students alike were privileged to share a classroom with
her, and her community roots ensured students would be challenged
to see the connections between one’s education and the
community.

Thus her abrupt, forced resignation from the UCLA School of
Public Policy and Social Research earlier this summer may come as a
surprise to the reader. A job offer from California State
University Los Angeles was met with hostility by the Dean of Public
Policy to the point where Dean Nelson not only ignored the
recommendations for a retention package of Dr.
Agbayani-Siewert’s home departments ““ Social Welfare
and Asian American Studies ““ but also actively recommended
against it without justifiable cause.

Notice a disturbing trend? Apparently at UCLA, being
student-friendly and encouraging students to think critically about
issues concerning their majors or social change means you must be
doing something wrong. Muldavin, Pascual and Agbayani-Siewert,
along with countless other professors, have been systematically
pushed out of the university without just cause within a three-year
span.

Dr. Agbayani-Siewert and Boots Pascual’s cases in
particular exemplify UCLA’s seemingly discriminatory
practices involving Pilipino faculty and other professors of color
who dare to challenge the homophobic Eurocentric narrative that has
historically silenced progressive points of view.

It is absurd that administrators can make unilateral decisions
affecting professors whose classrooms they do not sit in and
students whom they have never met. The university has a
responsibility to fulfill its so-called commitment to diversity and
academic excellence by providing students with faculty whose top
priority is to develop students’ consciousness and critical
thinking skills. An education won’t do us any good if we
don’t know how to use it.