STUDENTS AND ALUMNI OF GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY WRITE TO NY ATTORNEY GENERAL

Thus far, the powers-that-be in the Episcopal Church have refused to intervene in the controversy at General Theological Seminary, though the future of the oldest seminary in the church looks bleak, indeed.

After worldwide publicity and further protests, several students left at midyear, and the board provisionally reinstated the faculty only for the rest of the academic year, while canceling their academic tenure. No new hires have been announced and several top librarians have left. Only one entering student has paid a deposit for admission next fall. The seminary’s accreditation by the Association of Theological Schools is under review; if there’s no faculty, no library, no accreditation and no students, there’s no seminary.

How can the church speak out on justice for workers when one of its own institutions treats employees with such disrespect? For church leaders to wash their hands of a controversy that has been destructive to the church's oldest and own seminary is nearly beyond belief.

Perhaps NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will take up the cause. The refusal of the seminary Board of Trustees and President and Dean Kurt Dunkle to address the concerns of the faculty and the subsequent acceptance of resignations that were never offered were and are the business of the leadership of the church. How sad that no statement of concern or compassion was forthcoming from the leaders, and an appeal for justice had to be made outside the church.  Just today, I learned that another GTS faculty member has resigned.  Of the GTS8 faculty, only five remain at the seminary now.

From President and Dean Dunkle's latest communication on the website of the seminary:

Let me open with a transparent recognition: the past six months at General have been challenging for everyone. Our recent upheaval has been painful and revealing. General faces many challenges–financial, missional and cultural–and all of them have been highlighted over this past year.

...to say the least.  But do not despair:

Despite the snapshot of conflict, the portrait of General’s fundamental goal of “educating and forming future leaders for a changing church in a changing world” remains unaltered. Our work to create financial, missional, and cultural sustainability in order to maintain relevance to the 21st century church is now more important than ever.

Good luck with that.  The positioning of the three major challenges facing the seminary caught my attention, with finances in first place, which may or may not represent the priorities of the dean and the trustees.  Dean Dunkle goes on to say:

We are also proactively addressing our financial challenges. Last year, General suffered a $3.0 million cash deficit; this year, we anticipate it to be half that. Next year, we are working hard to cut it in half again. 

The seminary will save money with the departures of the faculty, but the question remains, is it possible for the seminary to carry out it's mission of “educating and forming future leaders for a changing church in a changing world” with the remaining faculty, or are new hires waiting in the wings who will accept lower wages without tenure?  Perhaps adjuncts?  Also, as is stated in the letter to the NY attorney general:

The seminary’s accreditation by the Association of Theological Schools is under review; if there’s no faculty, no library, no accreditation and no students, there’s no seminary.

If there is no seminary, the trustees will save a bundle of money, and then what?  Who will answer the question posed in the letter?

Was this alleged egregious conduct by the administration calculated to force the seminary to close? It appears to have been groomed for failure. The High Line is one of the hottest places in the city right now, and General Seminary sits right on it.

Only deafening silence from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the central office of the Episcopal Church.  If the intention was to close the seminary, then it most certainly should and could have been done with more compassion and dignity.

Since GTS is the one Episcopal seminary under the authority of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, I wonder if GC15 will address the dire situation at its meeting later this year.

UPDATE: There are now four entering students who have paid deposits.

CONFLICT AT GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

From Kim Bobo at Religion Dispatches:

For more than twenty years I’ve supported workers who exercise their rights to organize to improve conditions in their workplaces. Workers care about their wages and benefits, but what usually moves workers to organize is either concern about their clients, concern about how they are treated, or both.

Religious workers who organize are no different. The General Theological Seminary (GTS) faculty organized out of concern for their students, the seminary and a voice in the workplace.
....

1. The faculty has serious concerns about the dean and his leadership....

2. The board disregarded faculty concerns....

3.The board fired the faculty members when they replied....

4. Replacement workers were hired....

5. The board offered to rehire the faculty and renegotiate terms with each person individually....

6. The faculty members accepted provisional jobs and agreed to a process in order to save their jobs....

This is a labor dispute. I know which side I’m on.

Read the details at Religion Dispatches.

I know which side I'm on, too.  My default position in a controversy between those in power and the powerless is generally on the side of the powerless, in this instance the faculty at GTS, unless there are one or more compelling reasons to take the side of those in power.  The work stoppage was scheduled for a day on which no classes were held, but the Board of Trustees of the seminary quickly moved to terminate the faculty who had not resigned.

The faculty speak for themselves on the GTS8 website, Safe Seminary, and provide documentation of correspondence between the faculty and the Board of Trustees.  The number of "returned" faculty  is now down to seven, because one member of the faculty, Dr Joshua Davis, chose to take severance rather than sign his new contract.

Eight of the ten active full-time faculty members teaching at General Theological Seminary, New York City, have reported very serious problems with the seminary's administration through a number of channels.  After being ignored for months, the 8 faculty wrote directly to the seminary's board of trustees about a hostile work environment created by the Dean and President, the Very Rev. Kurt Dunkle, and then undertook a legal work stoppage.  The Board of Trustees responded that they accepted the faculty's resignations, when in fact the faculty members did not resign.  The 8 faculty members are Dr. Joshua Davis, The Rev. Mitties McDonald DeChamplain, Dr. Deirdre Good, Dr. David Hurd, Dr. Andrew Irving, the Rev. Andrew Kadel, the Rev. Dr. Amy Bentley Lamborn, and the Rev. Dr. Patrick Malloy.

I've been following the story from the beginning, even before the faculty was terminated, and the many details make it a challenge to explain the series of unfortunate events that led to the present sad situation without getting lost in the weeds.  I was stunned by the response of the Board of Trustees to the work-stoppage, which unnecessarily escalated the controversy to a point that made it difficult for the trustees to back away from their position, since they would then appear to be "giving in" to the faculty.  Why didn't the trustees pay attention to the faculty's reports of serious problems at the seminary?  Why didn't the Executive Committee or members of the Board of Trustees agree to to meet with the GTS8 before the situation became critical?

The allegations against Dean Dunkle are quite serious.  It seems to me that if the Board of Trustees had done what was proper from the beginning, which was to place the dean on paid leave until the allegations against him were investigated, and the GTS8 allowed to continue teaching, there would have been much less disruption and turmoil at the seminary for both students and faculty. If the allegations about the dean were found to be baseless, then he could have returned to his position, along with a mediator who would help mend relationships at the seminary.

After more than a month, the faculty was reinstated only provisionally, not to their status quo ante; they were required to negotiate the contracts of their "return" to the seminary individually, an unfair divide-and-conquer tactic; and they lost titles and tenure.  Academic Dean Dierdre Good was demoted even before the one-day work stoppage.

The trustees called upon the law firm of Covington and Burling to investigate the allegations against Dean Dunkle, but no report was ever issued on the findings, and there was only the one statement from the Board that, "...after extensive discussion that there are not sufficient grounds for terminating the Very Reverend Kurt Dunkle as President and Dean."

I find it quite telling that after investigations of both dean and faculty, the details of which little is known, the trustees so swiftly accepted the non-resignations of the GTS7 (formerly 8), terminated their employment, stripped them of titles and tenure, even as Dean and President Kurt Dunkle was permitted to remain in his positions of power, as the board decided after "extensive discussion" that there were no grounds for terminating the dean.  In addition, the faculty and members of the Board are prohibited from discussing the details of their provisional acceptance back into the seminary community, which the faculty never left.  Of what the faculty is guilty to deserve such punishment, we have no knowledge.  How is this justice?
  
The burden of demonstrating to the wider world that justice has been done rests with those in power. Justice must not only be served, but must also be seen to be served.  Commentary by the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees is not encouraging.  “I think the trustees felt, who are these people?” Bishop Sisk said.  The actions of the Board of Trustees and the lack of transparency as to the reasoning behind them seem unjust.  Without justice, the seminary itself is diminished as a Christian institution.  Collateral damage extends to the institution of the Episcopal Church and remains, even now, an embarrassment to the church, and to me personally, as a member.  I search for Gospel values in the decisions by the leadership of this Christian seminary, and I don't find them. How do their decisions build up the Kingdom of God?

The Lombard Mennonite Peace Center will begin to facilitate mediation at the seminary beginning in December and continue into the following year.   The faculty requested an ombudsperson to be present in the seminary Close when they resumed teaching, and I have heard that the greatly admired Bishop Frederick Borsch will be at GTS this week, available for any who wish to speak to him.  I'm not certain he is called an ombudsman, but his will be a welcome presence.

The story was widely covered by various news sources, including The New York Times, which reports the story here and here.

HILLARY CLINTON - ANOINTED DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT?

President Obama has long ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion.
....

Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.

While there's much to admire about Hillary Clinton, she made several statements in her recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic that worry me.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.

I remember my doubts about the suggestion to arm "vetted rebels" in Syria. What could possibly go wrong?

As I see it, Clinton is not wise to so quickly distance herself from President Obama. As you may recall, Al Gore hardly, if ever, mentioned President Clinton during his campaign to succeed him, nor did he allow Bill Clinton to campaign on his behalf, even in carefully chosen locations where Clinton was quite popular. Still, the president was always the ghost on the stage of every campaign event. I've always believed that Al Gore would have won by a large and indisputable margin, had he not run such a poor campaign and had he not so obviously run away from Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton ought perhaps to take a lesson.

Of course, Clinton had many kind words for the “incredibly intelligent” and “thoughtful” Obama, and she expressed sympathy and understanding for the devilishly complicated challenges he faces. But she also suggested that she finds his approach to foreign policy overly cautious, and she made the case that America needs a leader who believes that the country, despite its various missteps, is an indispensable force for good.

How's that for damning with faint praise?  Au contraire, Madame Secretary, the president is wise to step away from the fantasy of American exceptionalism in which we bear the burden of setting the world to rights, as we see the right.  Also, for a Democratic would-be candidate to criticize the Democratic president in these difficult and tumultuous times seems disloyal.  I realize that she will inevitably differentiate her policies from those of the president, but she seems to be making serious mistakes in her statements in the interview.

If Clinton is the candidate, I believe she could lose the election by taking the anti-Obama track.  She cannot win without an enthusiastic turnout by African-American voters, and Obama still retains a fair amount of support among Democrats of all colors. She appears opportunistic, and, even worse, ruthless in her ambition.

Clinton takes a harder line against Iran than Obama, but negotiations require some wiggle room unless one's position is, "My way or the highway."

HRC: I’ve always been in the camp that held that they did not have a right to enrichment. Contrary to their claim, there is no such thing as a right to enrich. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no such right. I am well aware that I am not at the negotiating table anymore, but I think it’s important to send a signal to everybody who is there that there cannot be a deal unless there is a clear set of restrictions on Iran. The preference would be no enrichment. The potential fallback position would be such little enrichment that they could not break out. So, little or no enrichment has always been my position. 

Not much wiggle room there.

Clinton's seemingly unreserved support for the policies of the present Israeli government is worrisome, too.

Much of my conversation with Clinton focused on the Gaza war. She offered a vociferous defense of Israel, and of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well. This is noteworthy because, as secretary of state, she spent a lot of time yelling at Netanyahu on the administration's behalf over Israel’s West Bank settlement policy. Now, she is leaving no daylight at all between the Israelis and herself.

“I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets,” she told me. “Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command-and-control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult.”

While it's true there is wrong on both sides, Israel's response seems disproportionate, as is indicated by a comparison of the numbers of Palestinians and Israelis killed and wounded.  Also, if the Israeli government truly wants peace, perhaps the leaders might consider a bold, unilateral, admittedly risky move to lift the blockade of Gaza, remove the checkpoints which make travel so difficult for the Palestinians, and stop the spread of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.  So long as Israel's neighbors in Gaza live in miserable conditions, Israel will not have peace.

Note: To disagree with the present policies of the Israeli leadership does not make me antisemitic any more than disagreement with the policies of my own government makes me un-American.

If the interview is Clinton's pre-season launch of her candidacy for the presidency, and I think it is, then she's made several missteps, and, I hope she sets herself aright.  I don't think any candidate, except in certain circumstances, a sitting president, is entitled to anointment as the chosen candidate for a political party, but I fear the stage is being set for anointing Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate.  I hope other prominent Democrats in the party rise to challenge Clinton, so we have a real contest and open discussions of various policies for moving the country forward and winning the election in 2016.