Law Prof. James Pope called out @RutgersU for hiring union busters @JacksonLewisPC and layoffing workers for no reason at all. Check out the #THREAD of his message to the Board of Governors.

My name is James Pope, and my current job title is Distinguished Professor of Law. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my comments.

In my view, our university today finds itself at a crucial moment in what can best be described as a culture war.

I've been at Rutgers for 34 years, and during that time, I've witnessed a succession of administrations conduct a slow but deadly assault on the university’s core missions of education, research, and public service. Other speakers are delving into the particulars.

I want to stress that the problem is systemic. It's hard-wired into the university’s accounting system and deeply embedded in the central administration’s institutional culture.

Under the RCM budgeting system, as we all know, academic units are supposed to be held financially responsible for their own activities. But the rules are rigged so that nearly all of the productive units are constantly running deficits,

while the central administration accumulates huge pots of discretionary funds. The result is entirely predictable—what we get out of that is unrestrained administrative bloat, where Rutgers is a national leader and leader of the Big Ten,

and we get runaway investment in speculative side enterprises, like the sports entertainment business.

It will not be enough to reverse the Barchi administration’s most destructive policies; I'm sorry to be blunt, but we need a thoroughgoing housecleaning. The people who hired Jackson Lewis; ordered the layoff of Part-Time Lecturers, who are our most cost-efficient teachers;

and protected highly paid administrators and coaches while claiming that it would be “illegal” to implement a work-sharing program for dining hall workers, most of whom are workers of color—those folks are deeply committed to the wrong side of the culture war.

They cannot be trusted to carry out the university’s core missions, and nothing good will happen as long as they have their hands on the levers of the university’s financial and employment policies. Thank you for hearing me out.